Gadgetory

we have the man who coined the term net neutrality here please welcome Tim whoo hi I I have to say I realized now after having three guests the most guests we've ever had on the show up by the way right that we have a lot of obstacles to getting onto the couch well that's what it means to be fancy that is room just you gotta put up you got to make the barrier to entry very high Tim thank you for coming tim is the author of a book called the master switch it looks like this it's available in stores around the world and was it by the way apparently very hard to find we went we had some of our people go looking for copies of this and even want to call Barnes & Noble yeah it's almost like it's almost like they don't want it to be sold they don't want to hear the truth of his book but um you coined the term net neutrality what does it mean I mean these people people on the street don't know what it is what yeah you know it was watching that video and I was thinking you got a lot of taxis in this video and it's exactly the principle that applies when when you get into a taxicab the taxicab has to take you where you want to go you know imagine get on you in the taxicab this actually happens in some countries and you say i want to go to know Brooklyn and you end up in the gift store yeah yeah you know this country when I want to go home from Manhattan yeah like I want to go to Brooklyn they're like no I don't go too well there's that problem too but essentially is the idea that the taxi is supposed to take you where you want to go and the basic principle is the internet was built on the principle that the carriers take your data where you want it to go and that people are allowed to communicate over the internet without interference by the people in the middle it's a pretty profound principle and the fact people don't know about it is is you know on the street doesn't mean it's not important because I think some of the you know most important principles are just sometimes very subtle you know they operate at the scent of subterranean level like e equals MC square geometry don't need to know where ya know I think it's the I need to know I'd sounding is that important well we can debate about that but it a lot of these things you know freedom is a I have a thing that you can't really you know experience you just experienced its absence right you know when you're not free but you you don't notice when you're able to go to internet sites when you want to or say what you want to because you just live in life you just live in and you're just doing what you want it's when you aren't able to do that something to notice it and i think that's that's that's why this is a profound principle it was baked into the original design of the internet it's what made the internet so revolutionary in so many ways I mean what made all these companies able to grow without asking somebody for permission the companies like Google ebay amazon whatever they just started their businesses they didn't sort of have to say you know AT&T or Verizon I got a good idea you want to you know run my service to you should've been like well you know well you know check it out wait for five years ten years see what happens I mean it's a very profound thing that as I said before you don't notice freedom you notice its absence and and and whose job is it to ensure net neutrality is it is it the government's job is it Verizon's job is it the citizens job I think it's kind of everybody's damn it i knew i knew i was going to say that but i'll tell you that in a functioning system it's never completely possible to allocate a responsibility to you know one entity when you talk about something like how do you guarantee freedom of speech well you could say well you just have to have the government do that but you know the government did I work for the government sometimes they're they're lazy not everything gets to them they're not all-powerful but the government does but the government did do a lot of stuff to guarantee free speech they knew the only mess with it so it you know they're not completely reliable no one's totally reliable it's a little paranoid although but terms of free speech but you have to admit like the US government has done a relatively good job of saying like we've got we need a free speech and we're going to push that on our citizens we're gonna say like you can't just limit what somebody has slowed the courts have said that right the executive branch now and then is like maybe we don't want so much free speech maybe we'd like the New York Times to to say that there's weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or something I mean like that's not freedom of speech that's manipulation of the price well that's true I'll just say that the federal the executive branch hasn't been exactly reliable to hell with the executive you know that they have their moments but laws exist sorry I have to get off track but they are but we have let we have said not their legislation but we've said uh we've got some basic rules here that we believe in right one of those roses free speech and we and people fought on both sides of it but we have kind of pushed this agenda of free speech is valuable we need to protect it there has not been a similar there's not been a similar fight for the Internet that's right nobody has said the free internet the open Internet is important and we need to protect it what they have said is with like things like SOPA right the free internet we want to protect we want to make sure we have money right and there you've got people who are backed by lobbyists right pushing laws that will ultimately diminish the openness of the Internet right you notice elf a fan are you how would that be possible I don't know you tell them I like soap i don't like by yourself and that's great but uh but i mean so so so what do we do I mean what's the obstacle here how do we how do we combat I mean it feels like we've got verizon and AT&T mm-hmm largely controlling the pipes was a few other players in there but not that many right and they are dictating in many ways what happens on the internet or what happens with the internet right you obviously have forces you've got forces from places like Hollywood what you talk about in your book and you've talked about elsewhere I ran into some Hollywood forces recently that there were very psyched on on the idea that you know that it's it's like Verizon 1880s responsibility to block things so that's a fairly scary concept what what are we supposed to do how do we how do we how we fix this you need two things you need a norm and you know and you need a law so first of all it has to be a principle that Internet freedom is sacred and fundamentally important to to a civilized nation it has to be understand stood at the level of free speech just like we've you equate you see you queen a neutrality with free speech yeah I think it's the sort of the flip side of it I mean free speech is I can say whatever I want net neutrality is I get to connect with whoever I want you know unless there's a really strong reason not to free speech is an absolute net neutrality is an absolute but as a general rule i get to connect with you oh man what are those reasons how do we pick them how do we decide well that's another story and and you know there's obvious examples in free speech you have principles like it might send a very serious message to assassinate the president but that doesn't mean it should be legal right it obviously needs to be prevented so similarly with net neutrality you can think of I think very narrow categories but certain reasons that it might be reasonable to influence what people can connect to but they're rare they're sort of like interfering with terrorists efforts to sort of attack the United States or the country's things like this are elderly or nog raphy child pornography is probably another except what about pirated movies no i mean because what one man's pirated movie you know one man's pirated movie is another man's innovation what is exactly a pirated movie is often not exactly clear and I you know you say it is if we know what a pirated movie is and sometimes you do but so the copyright law is so unclear that sometimes it's not legal it's sometimes legal and the other issue I have with with with pirated movies is that fundamentally I don't think it's important to pass laws protect an industry that is in decline and that you know I think we go in a dangerous direction when we have an industry which is essentially in in decline and you know it is has been in decline for some time to try to use all the powers of government to try to save them right this has been an issue since the 16th century is every time an industry is dying it says I'm threatened by piracy can you give us some examples the booksellers in the 16th I can give you a million examples my book is full of them again the master switch by Tim Wu available available in paperback 1595 very affordable available in ebook form i would imagine yeah it's 10 it's i think it's about nine dollars on nine dollars on amazon you where they're taking a cut of the profits but not hopefully not too big no it's good but so no see you have examples so you've got I have tons of examples you know if you look as early as 1920s for example at that point sheep music was the dominant industry for distributing music and I said sheet music she oh sheet she amazed I did anybody else think he said sheet music yeah I felt like the animal thought I don't realize that all neither heard of that so I got no but the way you made music in the 19th century it was actually nice as you bought music and then you took it home and played it you know that was like that was the recording industry in the day no they were the dominant way of distributing music along came the record player and the sheet music was suffering because people listening to records even playing yourself so what they say they said the recording industry are a bunch of pirates who are destroying American culture they're just taking the sheet music recording what's on it and then selling is exactly like these guys are destroying America because you know America used to be a place where people sing and dance and and now you know people are listening these crazy photographs and and player pianos and we've lost our culture and its disaster out of work everyone's out of work out you see the hair the same thing every 20 years I mean it is what that is with the entertainment industry is saying I mean I mean Ari Emanuel said you can't make curb your enthusiasm in any other way than to have this big industry behind it and if you don't if you don't have the 3 million dollars per episode there's a hundred maybe 500 year old tradition of making starving artists the the kind of symbol of what is really an industry that's dying that's being replaced by different technology same thing Atma and cable came out people are like cable and I don't love cable but when it came out as a new industry and they said these cable guys are a bunch of pirates all they want to do is loot Hollywood loot TV the same thing is said every single time is this a bit you become what you despise because I feel like you've got the Cable guy's really hey we're innovators and now they're the old guard and you've got internet a television sort of this whole IP you know revolution right and the cable guys are going like we got to do something about this everyone becomes what they despise did you know that oh really okay I don't know got something terrible in that case which is absolutely terrible so so so obviously very complex lot to talk about here we're not going to get to all of it tonight but but but I mean how are we doing I mean we've got verizon as I was saying earlier they've got this monopoly how do we regulate these guys I mean they own the pipes they build the pipes there doesn't seem to be a ton of regulation there's a fear with government regulation that you're going to end up in this kind of down this rabbit hole of right you know it can be like Brazil nothing will ever get innovated on I mean what how do you strike a balance how do you do this I think you have to have just very simple rules net neutrality rules that say you must allow people to connect with who they want to connect with exactly what I said before they have to be regulated basically like New York taxi cabs and I know New York taxi cabs don't always obey the rules right but the basic rule when you get in a taxi cab as it goes where you want to go not where they want to go right and as long as I understand that position I think it's relatively straightforward but that is it difficult because as you pointed out there is a growth a return of the power of the telephone and cable monopoly you know for most of the history the United States we had one company AT&T running the show and things of the way you know like the Terminator robot if kind of going back to the way they were and we have to be very careful to see that our phone companies verizon AT&T comcast I guess their cable company don't end up hat being essentially the gatekeepers of the internet that's extremely important so what do you what do you say it like people here what's the best thing you can do what is the best thing you can do you think the best you can do is complain or get angry yes when no problem yeah we got ready for that read it read it helps you just need to be not willing to accept it when your cable company or your phone company says we're going to decide what the internet is you have to take possession of this thing and say it is our network I mean some of the people on there were like who owns the internet people on the internet and that's actually true right it was not designed to be owned by anyone but I phone companies all intents and purposes verizon on the internet you but UK I can't just go get on the internet I have to go through something somebody oh I have to go through some of that somebody else home look you have to take a taxi to go to Brooklyn doesn't mean the taxi owns broad but I can also buy it but I could buy a car you got to go through the Brooklyn Bridge and I can't drive and I could drive that road is anybody can drive on by the way this is a metaphor that apparently people who like so if I hate but I mean you can but I can go buy a car and drive myself to Brooklyn you can't drive yourself to the Internet to get to Brooklyn you got a cast Pass I the Brooklyn Bridge or blue manhattanville bridgeberg yeah those guys earlier they don't own Brooklyn right you know you got to go through them if they had a policy like oh we're only going to let so and so through that would change you could get there but doesn't mean they own Brooklyn and it's very important not to convince to get confused a gatekeeper with an owner right they're completely different people someone has a tollbooth does not mean they own the thing but the gatekeeper has a lot of houses and how about our is the owner they have a lot of power and that's why since basically medieval times there's been a series of laws designed to guard the gate keepers so you think violent revolution is the only way to solve this maybe I'm paraphrasing all right we just arrived up but you're working on a new book II just tell me question you know I'm interested basically what technology should do next I think we're starting to solve some of the problems of scarcity that have obsessed humanity for 500 years or so and I think we're starting doing at this question of what do we do now now that we have a lot of things enough food enough information what's next that's my next book I think huge party it's gonna be the answer Tim thank you so much right really off ledger timber everyone and again again the master sway in book stores now