Gadgetory

well okay okay all right whatever we're starting hello let's start by the way in case you're wondering why we always do this to tape and not live it's because I can't say that hello that laughing almost every time alright ready yes and welcome to the verge cast the flagship podcast of The Verge top bids but here's what I'm gonna tell you this is a completely renegade episode of The Verge cast our producer Andrew Moreno is not here we are live foolishly on hangouts on YouTube which may or may not be working and there's a live audience here chatting at us but I am at my parents house in Wisconsin hi dieter where are you I'm in a little town called Magnolia Arkansas which is a lovely town and it has internet interestingly enough I think it's the only internet option here is this man Internet yeah that's about right I bet I also have Matt Internet that's the only option at my parents house here in Racine Wisconsin how are you I'm at the New York office and I'm literally the only person here other than some guy is going around cleaning stuff how's the internet new office uh well that's exactly why I'm here when I am at home I think my router is misconfigured and whenever especially Google Hangouts is the worst it just chokes it just sits there and it doesn't work for a little while so as you might be guessing as you may have surmised from our internet banter we're here emergency renegade broadcast for one reason which is that the home pod has been delayed videos like now that's gonna be props look at this funny prop everybody yeah you have to you have to describe it for the audio list now I had like a 2004 product called home pod by a company called Mac since it's basically a home alright alright Paul put that on no no one wants your 2004 internet radio here alright but here's why we're actually doing it on Wednesday which is the day before Thanksgiving we're recording this on the blackest of black Fridays on Wednesday ajit pi and the FCC put out their proposed order to completely rescind all net neutrality rules the United States so Tom wheeler the former commissioner the former chairman of the FCC in 2015 reclassified internet service broadband service is a title to common carrier service which let him put rules on it like no blocking no locking no paid prioritization no throttling transparency rules a G PI and the Republicans thought this was a terrible idea they thought it would reduce broadband investment pi his publican okay which is I'm with you yeah what do you do he his became that I became the chairman of the FCC when Trump became president he has spent I would say the past year making his case that investment has been lowered he has not and I think this is an important point he has not taken any interviews with anyone who disagrees with him he's only insisted that he's right I think this is a point I want to come back to a whole lot as we talk about this on this podcast and he put out his notice of proposed rulemaking a few months ago which we read and reacted to and he put out his proposed order on Wednesday there's gonna be a vote he's pushing a vote on December 14th so yeah there's he's he's all about like look I put out the rules before you know the public gets to see them that's not what Tom wheeler did but he put them out the day before Thanksgiving and he's holding about in two weeks so it's like six and one half of the other right yeah people are mad I'm mad dude I'm mad you're mad Paul probably not pretty mad I'm glad phonce glad but people are right now today protesting it Verizon stores if they spent all day yesterday protesting there there are the battle for the Netcom is running huge call in campaigns we're writing posts on the site and because we talk about the rich guys so much Paul said to me indeed er why don't we have an emergency rope session so everyone else is on vacation except that for people covering Black Friday deals in the verge and we are basically at our parents houses except for Paul's in the office does my parent do an emergency session so here's what I will start I will start with yeah this is the important thing man there's so much hang I think I just I want to point out that neela is like lightning fast overview elides over like a million points that we would have previously spent the entire verge cast on yeah like a million points there's just so much history and pain and sorrow and like actually very interesting like debates that we have had that are embedded in that little story that Neil I told and so like if you like see us like pause and like have a well of feelings during this podcast it's because like oh man you just said the thing I could talk for an hour about that but I have to shut up now so I just want to point that out there's a lot so I think yeah there's I mean that this is just long history this is you know in 21 I'll start with the the main thing which is remember with the railroads the main thing is we now have a document from PI a legal document in which he makes his legal argument yes so we don't have to have like a moral debate about this right we're not having a how do we think the internet should be regulated we have guess what we're gonna have I know but okay there's a there's like a foundation under it and there's an argument under it that we can I can at least refer to you because I've opened it I'll slack it to you guys you but it's here right and in so it I can there's like a summary over the top right so that it says this is the fact sheet docket number 17 - 108 over 20 years ago President Clinton Republican Congress established the policy United States observe the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists unfettered by state new regulation federal state regulation that's great that's a great line and then it's you know goes on say this declaratory ruling report in order would return to the bipartisan consensus on light touch regulation ending utility style regulation the internet promote future innovation and investment and more investment in digital infrastructure will create jobs increase competition and lead to better faster cheaper and an access for all Americans especially those in rural and low-income areas so that's right like that is pies like moral argument and he's got all this stuff he wants to do so the stuff he wants to do he wants to restore the classification of broadband internet access service is an information service which is it's a lot ok what's happening I just I just breathe in just like just it's just taking a couple of deep breaths yeah he wants to reinstate the private mobile service classification of mobile Robin Internet access service this is this one these two work together in a particularly hilarious legal way so I'm just I'm just gonna explain the information service thing so right now the internet under net neutrality is classifies a telecommunications service via the definition of that is a telecommunications service provides point-to-point connections without any additional layers over the top an information service which is what the courts and the FCC called the internet before is like you get additional things so like think about America online in the 90s you would dial into America online it would present you an interface that interface would have lots of bits and pieces like an email client and forums and like a well shopping or whatever and then you could like take a right turn out an interface on to the main Internet that's an information service does that have anything to do with the common carrier does so if as an information service its title one which is not a common carrier is in telecommunication service its title 2 which makes it a common carrier so they're saying America Online under that definition in like in that way of AOL where you would dial into an AOL server and then it would like mediate everything and present you with applications and whatever is an information service and what I have always thought it was broadband which is I have a cable modem I plug my Wi-Fi router into it and I choose a web browser that has been classified as a telecommunication service for the past two years pi is not classifying that is an information service and his argument for that is like legal argument for that is based on the fact that Internet service providers this is true this is his argument they provide DNS servers in caching equipment and that is equivalent to AOL's like AOL chat in like user groups in a little shopping like I'm not kidding that that's his art yeah but if those things are information services that mediate your your internet experience and it you know you also get you might get an email client from your broadband provider or you might get like custom web browser or any of the other garbage that you don't actually want and because of that it's information service this is literally his argument in this document I mean if I wanted if I wanted to actually start an information like a more modern equivalent not AOL might be what like the Bloomberg terminal like that to me sounds like an information service you're free to do whatever the hell you want on the information service so I'm gonna pay you to get access to the news that you provide in a terminal I will just do it everything to be fine but nobody does that on the Internet and so the this idea that was DNS and caching houses the information service it's like no no it doesn't right like I I'm trying to I'm trying to approach the argument on like his his terms if he's setting the rules of the of the debate and the rules are that counts as a you know bespoke I am directly giving you a thing information service and not selling in service I don't know like that's like they that seems odd to me that seems like it seems like a fig leaf it seems like not true at all but right if we are going to accept the argument on his terms right at least I mean I think this is a caching server is equivalent to AOL online or copy serve or the Bloomberg terminal or whatever so 100% the argument and so like when I say like there's a document here that we can refer to the argument you just made is referred to in the document right I mean this was an argument that happened there was a court case called Brand X and Brand X argued that it was information service and the FCC said it wasn't Brand X 1 oh that's fine um but the the point here is paragraph 29 we begin by evaluating the information service definition and conclude that it encompasses broadband internet access service of course you do yeah but the Commission has looked to dictionary definitions and found the term capability to be broad and expansive including the potential ability and the capacity to be used treated and develop purpose to a surface because literally well they pulled high school freshmen like term paper out of this thing added up at the dictionary sure did because broadband internet access service necessarily has the capacity or potential ability to be used to engage in the access and activities within the information service definition which are generating acquiring storing transforming processing retrieving utilizing or making available information via telecommunications we conclude it is best understood to have those capabilities so this is about as wacky of a legal argument as it gets right they have this word they can define the word as they're saying is expansively as they want it has nothing to do with your experience using the Internet they've just defined it as can you generate a choir store or transform process retrieve utilize or make available information via telecommunications well that's an information service so we'll just stick broadband internet under that and the the you know they go on to say the record reflects the fundamental purposes of broadband internet access service are for generating and making available information for example through social media and file-sharing which is not what you do with what you get from your service provider but that's what they're saying you do so that's the first piece it's the it is the foundation upon which this entire argument with the internet a telecommunication service broadband internet access from your provider is it a telecommunication service or an information service and all the stuff that we will talk about competition and whether you have one provider to all of that comes down to what do we do once we how do we define it once we know what competition is like right does it make any sense yeah sure what one of his one of pies points is that this is how broadband providers were originally classified so 2015 was the anomaly to move it to telecommunications and we're just reverting back to what the internet always was so that is that that yeah he's argument but it is not I don't think it's backed up because for the longest time the way people got on the Internet was with dial-up modems and so you have to do the mental exercise of separating out the phone line which was always a title to common carrier service so your your phone company could not restrict or throttle whatever was happening on your phone line and then there you had ISPs and when so here in would really my parents house was the first place I ever got on the Internet our phone company at that time was called a mayor tech you might guess that is now it's all things inevitably are but our phone company at time was called a mayor tech I had there was like fifteen different little ISPs and we're seeing Wisconsin right I actually worked at one of them it was called Cornett I was like in middle school and my job was to go and reset this Supra VDOT 92 modems everyday because they would all crash so I walk into a room and like reset 200 modems that was one competitor you could get internet access by calling a Merritt X Bank of modems you could call a OLS Bank of modems you could call Prodigy's Bank of modems and Ameritech running as a line couldn't stop you right they couldn't say you can only call a mayor tech to get internet access so that allowed competition to flourish because Ameritech which controlled the title to phone line wasn't allowed to tell you who you could call simple so there was like this huge range of IP providers the SP providers at that time the inter was new they're running dial-up modem they were doing all kinds of stuff to make the internet work better than a neighbor competing and the FCC was like we're gonna leave that alone because fundamentally its title 2 on the phone line does that make any sense Paul so like there's an argument to be had about when the Information Service classification showed up and the the opt the opposition to PI would say it showed up with the Brand X case when the when a court made a firm ative decision that the internet was title 1 mm-hm right so well there there's this weird period where like you know net neutrality proponents say we got it wrong right and so then we fixed it because the early part of the internet that everyone talks about where it was like this explosion of providers and service and there was like free internet providers should you ads and bla bla bla bla the backbone of that was title 2 phone lines and so now I think you can get to a place where you say ok well the backbone because I didn't have a lot of phone company providers the backbone of that is now broadband providers because I only have one broadband provider in this house in Wisconsin and I should be able to go to all these other competing services but you can't do that like that's the thing is when if when you had a bunch of different ISPs all going to the phone line you could pick one and we don't have that now and so we have to you know the the provider and the service provider are collapsed the same thing the broadband provider it's like look at cell service in like the UK you can take for a bunch of different providers but they'll kind of use the same backhaul as my understanding it's all like you can switch right oh if you want to go down that rabbit hole so in many well I've been ready to talk about this for two days so they like many European countries the UK is one I think the Netherlands is another they have what's called local loop unbundling which is super boring but they there's one set of fibre to everybody's home yep and anybody can lease that fibre and start an Internet company because there's tons of capacity so people in the UK can generally pick between like 45 broadband providers in some countries in Europe there's no there's not like a lot of you know the EU has net neutrality rules for the countries themselves allow different things to happen because you have so many providers to choose from that you can switch you that's where the competition piece of this comes in so there's a ton of like you have earth links and aol's you have all the the ISPs like you had in the dial-up days but you have a government granted monopoly or government-owned infrastructure yeah so like BT generally owns the fibre I'm not like completely up-to-date on how it works in in the UK but I thought we were agreed that like the Ma Bell era where 18 he had illegal government-granted monopoly on telecommunications infrastructure was like a bad phase and we're glad we're over it so yeah so we've arrived in a place where we still have government-granted monopolies right we the I think that the local loop unbundling piece that a lot of European countries do is a recognition of the fact that digging a hole in the ground is hard right and you should probably only dig a hole and put an infinite capacity fibre line down once right so yes the the United States has philosophically chosen what they call facilities based competition I mean this is like just nerdery and it's what explain facilities competition I have a God okay so the best example of this is 3G standards which is if you remember them the UK used UMTS they use GSM for 3G and the United States Verizon used CDMA a spring whose ladies it WiMAX and that was that was for yeah it's also CDMA but then yeah so we decided that we would we would allow all these providers to do with it to basically not have standards right we're gonna allow different kinds of competition and some cases that work so the one competition that you could have back then was a mayor tech grant copper wire to your house to get phone service MCI was doing a microwave transition transmission so yeah I don't remember what MCI stands for completely but it used to be like microwave communications infrastructure whatever and that was Sprint used to do a thing and you know they had HD voice so like the idea was the physical infrastructure would be competitive and provide a different kind of end-user service to you and so the United States is like built on that model the Europeans generally have said what if we had a giant government like a meta government and like we pick standards for competitors so like this is why in Europe you can buy any phone you want put any SIM card and you want everybody uses GSM you have like different kinds of competition but there's not there's not WiMAX vs LTE or whatever everyone has to use LTE so like we gotta get out we got to get out of these weeds but it's these are the weeds so this is what I mean like these are the deep deep weeds in the the deepest weed of this is that a G PI is saying because your internet service provider when you access the internet through your broadband modem provides DNS and caching it is providing an information service and if it if it supplies anything else to you if it applies a comcast.net email service it is sure definitely not intelligence maybe we can move to an adjacent weed with this the one thing that has been kind of a big controversy in this whole debate and I'm not really sure where we're at with it is is peering like hey peirong so something like an isp like Time Warner Cable is that still company I don't even know it's not it's called spectrum now spectrum suspect Herman can say Netflix hey you can host your movies in our day and I our data center you know and you can just link right into our customers you don't have to go over you know regular pipes to get to our customers you can just get straight to them and just pay pay some money right so that is again I think where I keep coming back to is the consumer experience right that's basically what we cover it's basically who we talked to hopefully that's who's in the chat right the consumer experience of the Internet is that you have one provider or two potentially that take like 86 percent of Americans only have two providers and you get what you get and it's really hard to switch away then there's the backhaul portion of the Internet where Netflix is like making deals for data centers were like network companies like level three are making deals with other network companies like Comcast to like trade traffic back and forth that originally was not what you're talking about paid peering was originally not in like the net neutrality order it was all about the consumer line yeah the FCC put it part of it in a net neutrality order and that was a big win for Netflix but it's not I don't think that's what people are mad about I don't think people give a about paid peering Arrangements on the backhaul part of the network I think they care about the fact that they don't have many choices for internet access and if there is P does something stupid they have very little recourse and the recourse most people would want is not to file a lawsuit which is what Piatt Singh can do but res which providers to somebody else let me let me back up just a minute so like we can talk about the peering stuff we could talk about whether or not DNS and caching counts has an information service but like I don't I hear these legalistic arguments and I don't feel like they're being made in good faith like do you really think that like I do PI and his fellow FCC commissioners are sit and you know you know getting high and talking about the philosophy of what's the difference between this and that or is it what I actually think is happening is he wants to do this thing and he's finding you know a legal reason to do the thing that he wants to do but yeah what happened in the first place No Shh so hang on let me let me that's that's possibly true but this is the thing I was tweeting about the other day why does he want to do the thing is the the question like that the philosophical argument that I think like we've had before Paul said we want to try and avoid I don't think we can is whatever like we just decide we want to do to like run the internet the best way possible we're gonna find a legal fiction to make that possible right we're gonna like you know look up a definition of the dictionary find a word in the definition to make it fine but why is pulling these regulations away the thing that is so important for him to do and like III genuinely truly want here like the freshmen dorm room explanation of why the regulations actually hurt innovation because the explanations I've heard regulation bad like okay it actually hampers investment and innovation I kind of don't believe that and I don't think there's good evidence for that I feel like there's another reason and I don't want to go full you know anti corporate conspiracy and say it's just about Verizon's profits but I feel like that might be on the table but there's got to be another reason I'm not thinking of because I'm dumb to justify this thing and then I later on towards the end of this we need to talk about the definition of arbitrary-capricious but let's let's get looks like yeah step out and be like why just why shop ha I'm sure you have an answer but I'll give it a very simple one um I can't look into a gpi's heart hmm I can't I mean you could you could get yourself a chest saw what so someone's been in Arkansas too long I can't look in the man's heart but what he says is that the net neutrality rules are passed we're all investment in broadband infrastructure is down and so if you if you take the rules away and the rules are costly or whatever the investment will go back up and what you want is more investment in broadband infrastructure because everyone was infrastructure investment right that's his argument now okay there's a lot of argument about whether his numbers are right just a lot of argument and one of the main things to argue with is 18 T is so huge they they tip the scale so 18 T finished its LTE rollout it finished a huge network investment it bought DirecTV for one period of time it it it paused investment on its network and so over the period that PI is claiming 18 T alone is enough to say over the year ago period broadband investment has fallen 200 million dollars but that's just 18 T every other company is out there saying we're gonna keep investing in our network so you can look at the title you can slice it you can have all kinds of fights but that's like the main argument over his metric Paul you have another answer yes Wall Street Journal PC said that growth it slowed it wasn't it's not like net down but it's what cement down if you count ATT and the reason you you can't eat right it's it's net down if 18 T is allowed to say we bought DirecTV and hit and hit cause an infrastructure invest so here's my freshman dorm I didn't go to college so are just freshman dorm conversations um if you think of what the FCC was like originally it's like the US government is going to own the airwaves and lease them to companies the airwaves are going to be private a public good and therefore no company will be allowed to own them yeah I would I would say that like the font the fundamental like debate that with that that start the start of this explanation is whether or not the US government is an effective proxy for the people like the people in the airways the US government regulate manages them for the people well the but the the people don't own Google the people don't own Twitter's correct that's correct so so so you have the airwaves but this the FCC making all the pipes dug underground a public good is is in a sense almost like asset seizure it's the government saying that because this is so important to people and obviously the Internet is very important for people and it is a good for people it now needs to be a public good so that we can make rules for it right and uh this is a very baseline life liberty property kind of thing I think that is the government overstepping its role and I think it's the FCC overstepping the role that was was assigned to it by Congress and you know a jatai a lot was always talking about the FEC or sorry the FTC like they can manage this if there's an anti-competitive practice of one of these companies we have agencies for that to solve that but we shouldn't protect Internet companies from monopoly status and then make a bunch of rules that actually manage how they're allowed to implement their property right so Paul real quick it sounds like the the end of that argument is you don't think that back in the day the FCC should have even like regulated had title 2 in the first place like it should not have regulated telephone lines and you know kept you know ATT from like you know blocking me from calling you and changing prices and like the kind of stuff that they won't have to stop doing I don't think the government should be in the role of protecting monopolies like if you when monopolies really hurt consumers it's when the government is propping them up and I think that's what in say TT and even like with with the train the whole common carrier concept for trains it was just very unimaginative it didn't imagine a world where maybe trucks would also deliver goods and trains would almost be you know a bit of an afterthought right I think the philosophical debate you're having there is how much does the government assume the future will be better if the market is left to operate right and you have to like digging a hole in the ground is difficult like it's just a hard thing to do yeah easiest way to dig a hole in the ground is to to connects everybody is to do it on public streets so the government does on the streets yeah say okay you have access along this street to dig a hole and the main thing they did Paul and I agree with you this is this is the heart of the problem is they granted monopolies to some companies to put pipes in the streets right so in Philadelphia Comcast sued the government for providing public Wi-Fi and killed public Wi-Fi because they didn't want competition with Comcast right and the governments were like let that happen and let it die but the ability for a competitor to come in and put another private pipe in the ground is restricted just by reality that's an enormous ly costly thing to do it's restricted by throughout the country all of these restrictive agreements that local governments have entered into with private enterprise for short short term capital so yeah you're a little in I have a house in upstate New York like mid-hudson cable in upstate New York like has the deal with the county government to provide interacts s there there is just not enough like market saturation up there for another competitor to come in it's just never going to happen and like you can tell me 5g wireless will come in one day but like I can't get a 3G signal so like the the ability for in some of these places for that competition to happen is very low and I think you know just decide how either pragmatic you are or how I be realistic you are when it comes to is is are these pipes in the ground part of a public infrastructure that we all rely on or they absolutely private property that we can't touch and the phone company example the reason 18th he was granted that monopoly is because the government decided the better outcome was for everyone in America to have a phone connection the the other thing I'll point out that with the Train common carrier thing it's like you're not wrong they're like yes the government is bad at forecasting future disruptive innovations however it's a very complicated story because with trains in particular they got out animated by trucks you'd say but like that was only possible because the government built the National it's always like this this interplay between like what the government as essentially the voice of the people is doing to try and like create the great greatest public good and balance that against personal freedom and like like you know the invisible hand of the capitalism is always more complicated than it seems strictly in principle because the things that cause that disruptive innovation are often also the result of government action one might suggest that the Internet itself is the result of you know DARPA and ARPANET and ARPANET which was government funded so like it's always more complicated weak like the the reason that like I don't find the regulation bad argument compelling is I feel like it doesn't address the realities of like what the actual market is doing well I think it just comes down to common sense and I want to switch to one thing but Paul I think it comes down to we have these laws in the book the FCC is not writing laws it's deciding which of these two regulatory schemes we should use for the internet you know Congress could write a law if you believe this Congress can do anything but Congress could write a law it has two schemes in 2015 it picked one scheme two broad public acclaim all right the FCC is supposed to work in the public interest a lot of people supported that scheme only big Internet companies didn't support that scheme right so only Verizon and AT&T we're making the argument that they shouldn't be regulated and they're out there you know prompt comcast is like oops like tweeting crazy things today like will never block anything we don't these rules don't worry we're gonna follow them anyway because we love you like fine right so the best they all know and Terry I saw on that by the way was Comcast also promises to be at your house between 1:00 and 5:00 like right like so that the the Internet companies know what the public wants right there's just no market force if Comcast decides to break all of its promises it's very hard for a lot of people to leave Comcast by the way disclosure Comcast through its NBC unit owns a minority stake in Vox media which owns the verge there's your disclosure yeah so that's like Paul I think that's the problem you can have competition this is Craig Aaron from Free Press told me this in 2014 it's a quote in a piece I wrote you can have competition or you can have regulation Comcast is trying to have neither right so it it does a lot of lobbying work to make sure it's the exclusive internet provider in the markets it's in and it's doing a lot of lobbying work to say we shouldn't be regulated you can't have enough you gotta have absolutely dislike the the lobbying against competition and that's one of the reasons why it terrifies me that the FCC has this much power because let's say the roles were reversed right let's say the status quo was the 2015 internet like that the internet had been classified under title 2 this whole time and then 2015 comes along or let's say 2017 right now you've got a president who was you know elected but didn't win the popular vote he nominates one person who is already on this Commission to be the leader of this commission and now the whole internet changes and that's why they I understand that the Congress makes a law and then you get a regulatory agency to sort of enact that role that the Congress created for it but this is basically one person being the deciding vote of what billion dollar companies and billions of dollars worth of infrastructure how that's actually used like if somebody if somebody showed up some regulatory agency and said you need to like go home and deflate all your footballs and basketballs for some reasons law and then there's an agency and then there's this guy who drinks coffee out of a Reese's mug thinks I should deflate all but it's like I own those I can decide how I want I can make those laws all day long Paul I can tell you how fast to drive your car I can tell you if you want to I'm in Wisconsin so that's like I've seen a lot of these folks grant if you want to go hunting you gotta wear blaze orange right like if you build a house it's got to be up to these codes like we make those rules all of the time literally all of the time it's illegal for you to show up in my house and punch me in the face like that's your body like I can't tell you what to do with your body is again I can absolutely tell I can tell you not to put drugs near body like there are all kinds of rules we make and I think this is where you're either super philosophical and idealistic or you're just pragmatic about reality and I think where I come down is there's not enough competition to be that philosophical and idealistic right if there was more competition I would be absolutely fine saying and I think this is true and mobile right in mobile you have at least four competitors and t-mobile is a disruptive competitor and a teen teen Verizon are having to react to it I think there should be more competitors I think that would be even better but you can at least see how that market is working people are switching to t-mobile they're doing binge on t-mobile CEO is like making videos he's like middle fingers in the air he's throwing bombs eighteen teen Verizon are now doing things that look a lot like t-mobile and what's really interesting about that cycle is they're all starting to do unlimited plans because they'll have to layer on more and more services so t-mobile started with free music streaming and then 18t started doing for music streaming so then t-mobile started doing free video streaming and now they're all just doing unlimited plans right and it's like when the market speaks when people actually have a free market choice the thing that they want looks an awful lot like net neutrality right when they don't have a market choice the thing they want is regulation that gets them net neutrality so either way what people are saying is don't monkey with my internet connection and they'd have what they need is recourse if you start monkeying with their connection but the recourse is one person appointed by a president who's elected every four years sure but like well that is absent recourse is the same no but Paul's making a really good point that the whiplash of the rules around how the internet gets served to humans in America changing every time there's a new administration there's a new group of people and the FCC it goes from three to two to two to three is crazy making and yes but like a great it would be great if Congress would make a law you know I my personal politics I think that if this Congress could actually pull that off I don't know if I would like that law but the Leeson we would have less whiplash we can argue local law let me finish let me finish this isn't I'm gonna i'm putting the ball on the tee for you new i me write hate the team i've walk it over to the tea with the baseball you've got the big giant plastic bat it's a wiffle ball you're gonna hit it it will go very far is it one of the rules around the way the FCC is supposed to work that we're not supposed to have this whiplash that they have to have good legal justifications that it can't be I think this phrase is arbitrary and capricious right okay thanks for the ball on the tee wow it is a slightly different volunteer than I thought was coming I think I'm playing hockey it's very confusing so weight hurt just to Paul's point is in the narrow point which is we had an election in out everything's different yes it actually doesn't matter how that the mechanics of that don't matter so like we had an election we elected Obama there's Obamacare we had an election we left did Trump and they're furiously trying to undo Obamacare that happens all the time like you can't stop it the end point of that is we should have a king okay the king well no I'll never change it I vote for a queen actually finish this thought so the JISC on that like so they do along repeted to check on that which is what you want which is you can't elect somebody new have them appoint some new people in regulatory agencies who weren't actually elected is what dieter is saying which is the FCC has to like provide stability to the market they understand that it needs the market needs ability and they are not allowed to change their mind an arbitrary and capricious way that's in the administrative law of our country so pi has to make a case that since the time of net neutrality passing 2015 something has changed so much that provides some a reason to undo it right and his argument is that broadband investment has slowed that's his argument so we pass net neutrality if broadband investment had like everything was going great then he wouldn't be allowed to change it there'd be a lawsuit and they would sue and the court would say this is just an arbitrary change you're not elected you can't do that he's saying well broadband investment has slowed that law was obviously bad that regulatory interpretation was obviously bad so I'm changing it it's not arbitrary and that's where the fight is going to be so the information service thing the broadband the broadband investment thing all that stuff is what people are going to fight about so like also I think the court just based on what I'm seeing today I think would be foolish for a future court so I know free press is gonna sue the FCC the ACLU is gonna sue the FCC the e FF is gonna city the FCC they're he's gonna take this vote on the 14th and he will immediately face a lawsuit that says this is arbitrary and capricious and you can't do it right and that somebody in our chat right now is the FCC doesn't answer any wanted to be on the peoples reach no it's not you can just file a lawsuit and I think pi is walking into a lawsuit that says his decision is arbitrary and capricious and so he just the FF has a Twitter thread here that I'm looking at yeah well actually before just like the thing you didn't say in that rant is that we just we just know that this is gonna pass that the FCC is going to vote to undo net neutrality rules and convert it to title one like it's it's three to two you can call your Congressman to put pressure on the FCC check people on the board you can call to PI you can call whomever we know this thing is gonna pass right it's gonna happen yeah and then the lawsuit starts in the lawsuit sites oh okay and this is like are you enough of a single-issue voter to vote democratic or republican based on broadband regulation it's yes correct but it happens ask our / the donald cuz at that sighting place right now right so yeah the the donald trump subreddit on reddit is like torn asunder right because that wouldn't exist but for net neutrality if your isp could have slowed down reddit in the early days or they could have looked at the Donald Trump phenomenon and Russian interference and decided to start blocking certain kinds of content you wouldn't really be able to stop them and you wouldn't really be able to switch right read it it existed before 2015 right but the arguing people lobbied for net neutrality before 2015 and the run-up to the FCC's decision right because the Brand X decision was bad is like a piece of this in the background and people really wanted net neutrality because they started switching in huge numbers from dial-up internet to broadband internet and realizing they had no competition they were pretty far down that road by 2015 and Comcast wasn't blocking read it because read it did a black guy I think your your your your being over these are the optimistic about broadband penetration the United States were sold to me like going into 2015 like you don't want to get like a ten dollar bill because you decided to use Twitter that month or something like that or you don't want to pay extra for Netflix or you'll have a slow lane or something like that and I am arguing that broadband company should have the right to do any of that stuff but I really don't most companies don't do something that their customers will absolutely hate we we end up disliking a lot about what companies do but but you can definitely push it too far I mean I would just again there's like philosophy and there's realism and there's like the the reality is Comcast as most-hated company in America do you things our customers hate all day long mm-hmm right 18 t is like they're around people don't love them they have an enormous number of customers they clearly realize that there's a line that they're gonna push asked that there's in Comcast just passed that line all of the time Comcast blocked BitTorrent there's another company called Madison River systems that blocked vonage Comcast prioritizes its own TV service to various devices like ATT wants to buy Time Warner the main thing a teen teen wants to do with Time Warner content is give it to you for free versus you know non Time Warner content like this is the future right it's it's coming at us and they want to do these things that people don't want them to do and what people want as a rule preventing them from doing those things or you could start all over and build more competition but the world in which you know the so Comcast bought NBC right they signed a consent decree saying they would basically abide by net neutrality until next year next year that consent decree goes away there's no net neutrality and suddenly NBC programming Universal movies will come to you for free over to Comcast lines and everyone else will hit the cap so the minions will be free and I don't know mallanna won't be right like that's not an outcome that people want and we all know just the phrase the minion totally free is a contradiction in terms because by definition by the dictionary definition their minions they're not supposed to be free I'm not saying everybody gets everything they want no matter what the rules are sometimes you just might find ya but Paul you don't have a choice right what you need is these companies can do things you hate and they do them all the time because you can't leave right another thing the philosophy question here is Paul doesn't believe these companies are gonna do bad things but maybe they will but who knows but should we make a law preventing a company from doing a bad thing before they've done the bad thing okay so this is this goes to the other thing that PI brings up and then Paul had been talking which is maybe the FCC doesn't need this power because the FTC the Federal Trade Commission or the Consumer Protection Agency will be able to do this stuff either so I'm just gonna read more from PI's document because I think it's important to keep referring to his actual argument so he says most of the examples of net neutrality violations discussed in the net neutrality order could have been investigated as antitrust violations which is where the DOJ or the FTC comes in Madison River communication blocked access to voice over IP to foreclose competition with its telephone business and antitrust case could have focused on whether the company was engaged in anti-competitive forclosure whether one regards Comcast's behavior towards BitTorrent as blocking or throttling it could have been pursued as an antitrust or consumer protection case the FCC notice of BitTorrent service allowed users to view a video that they might otherwise have had to purchase through comcast video on-demand service a claim that would've been considered anti competitor anti-competitive Comcast also failed to disclose its network management practice and initially deny that it was engaged in throttling potentially unfair deceptive acts or practices so he's saying okay Comcast is throttling BitTorrent if we discover it and they haven't disclosed it someone can sue them very unclear who if you that if the DOJ wants to make the case that throttling bittorrent unreasonably preferences Comcast like video on-demand service they can bring a lawsuit too so instead of a rule what you have is the hope of more lawsuits and to be clear the one thing that this new this removal of net neutrality is leaving in place is the rule for transparency about actions sure yes that probably would like the the companies to say what they're going to do now how much transparency in the form of that transparency is not it's not mandated right because how can you possibly tell a private company what to do ever except be transparent sue so if they could bury it in a small print and this is the important an important loophole they don't have to be transparent about anything they define is a reasonable network management practices so if throttling a bunch of Netflix at 8:00 p.m. is a reasonable network management practice because I using Netflix they want to preserve some service or some bandwidth for Hulu they don't have to tell you that you have to discover it then you have to sue them to say this isn't a regional network management practice and then you have to further win a lawsuit saying this is anti-competitive so like that's a lot of lawsuits so what you had was a rule and now PI is saying where we can just have a bunch of lawsuits that get us back to the rules which seems like if what you're worried about is costs you have just created the opportunity for legal costs to skyrocket well I so here's a straw man's situation for them for the reduced investment right I'm Verizon I want to do this kind of crazy thing I'm not sure if the FCC will allow me to do it under the 2015 rules so I do it and then the FCC says no I can't and then I need to argue in court that the FCC was wrong to ever even have these rules or outside of these 2015 rules I do it and then the the FTC says that's anti-competitive and then I can argue whether or not it's anti-competitive I don't have to argue that the FCC has overstepped its bow to argue against the entire existence of a government agency I just needed to decide what helped or argue in front of the court whether or not what I've done is anti-competitive and there's a lot more literature in legal like my lawyers before I do that that potentially anti-competitive thing my lawyers can look at this great body of legal argument about what ends up qualifying as anti-competitive we're with the FCC I'm not quite sure what what they're going to decide and it's up to them I don't really track I think there's a body of law for everything I think the country is very old well it's not that old but the country is like you know up 100 years old there's literally every word in entice document here there's body of law undergirding every single work right that's how precedent works there's like branching precedent and your lawyers do lawyer stuff I think what you're asking is like are we making are we making rules where you have to fight against the rules or are we making rules where you're free to do something and somebody else can come in and fight to enforce the rules right or right is is the burden on the company or is the burden on the consumer that might be harmed I generally think the burden is on the company and I think only for this reason the the the best way for a consumer to address a harm is to stop paying you right that's what we want but Paul I think you and I are actually far more aligned I think the basic free-market principle there than anybody would suspect like if you if I don't like what I'm getting if I don't like the value I'm getting from you when I pay you for a service I should just take my money away you'll you'll react to that yeah the problem is that 51% of Americans have nowhere else to spend that money so they're stuck so you now have this like incredible leverage as an internet service provider to do anything that you want and there's there's no immediate redress for me I have to spend more money to pay a lawyer to address your behavior so if we pass that cost back to that that set of internet service routers and say here are the rules like this relationship is not equal the rules are you can't do X Y & Z because the people have spoken and through some complicated set of government processes you've created rules I think that's fine right that's that's the difference I keeps coming back to between idealism in like pragmatism like that's fine if there were like 500 competitors okay I'm just gonna take my money away look at there there's two slightly different things here then there is what FCC rules will lead to the most investment and what FCC rules will lead to a a certain minimum of Internet service and and I would argue that the new no net neutrality rules are designed to lead to the most investment which will hopefully foster space Internet and Project loon or whatever but I'm actually not competition right so right but if you have enough money to do space internet right like the the marginal cost of your lawyer applying for the waiver to the rules so you can build a new technology is like pretty low like it's not gonna stop you you're not like oh my god I've got a bill a lawyer ten thousand dollars like well you need them you need the money from what exists right now to fund your space Internet sure but I'm saying that the percentage cost of the leak it's like if you have the ability to put rockets into space you probably have the ability to pay for a lawyer because you can't do that without lawyers to begin with so like there you are but like well I you and I are talking in hypotheticals I'm just gonna read this it's from the e FF so it's obviously a biased list but here's their list more than a thousand small businesses investors and technology startups in all 50 states have publicly opposed to grow back from that neutrality more than 900 online video 900 online video creators who produce content for more than 200 million viewers oppose the FCC plan 52 social justice civil rights and human rights organizations have filed supporter of net neutrality dozens of ISPs across the country have told the FCC to leave the rules in place 120,000 libraries in total across United States want net neutrality privacy organizations want it state attorneys general from Illinois California Connecticut Hawaii Iowa Maine Maryland Massachusetts Mississippi Oregon Vermont Washington and DC support retaining that in Charlie rules 60 mayors the National Association of Realtors and then there's like a lot of argument about the comments but it's like millions of comments and support so you do have this extreme amount of public support for these rules and at some point you just have to deal with it I don't think you can just say you will have more innovation if we let companies do whatever they want people people have deep relationships with their internet service providers they understand the parameters of that relationship and they think that those relationships are unfair and they want some rules in place I think however you feel about government you have to respect that in some way and I think pie is aggressively ignoring it in fact we know he's aggressive ignore his his like Lisa's Wall Street Journal piece it seems like what he mostly paid attention to was small providers who claimed that it was burdensome on them and and you know the numbers about investment I feel like there was one other thing that he pointed out those raise two things for sure any he brought up in the again the openness talk to me he brings up rural and rural broadband access um so that's interesting right it's interesting because what small broadband providers care about is not having to do a lot of like record-keeping to say I are accountants and bookkeepers and whatever that's a cost and if you're like a two-person ISP that's a big cost but he waived those requirements so the original order and 2015 waived those requirements for like some number of subscribers and then PI came into office and waived them for an even huger number of subscribers so most of all ISPs with like two hundred thousand people two hundred thousand customers they don't have those costs anyway and Jake a Stratus actually talk we have a great story on the verge he talked to a father-daughter ISP in Colorado they were like we completely support title two like this is fine for us don't worry about it so there's again there's a lot to litigate there he's not pi is not the only person speaking for small ISPs the eyes peas are fully capable seeking for themselves and a huge number of them are saying they want title two and then on the investment piece this is I think where the arbitrary and capricious where the argument is going to be made whether or not this is arbitrary and capricious Ars Technica has an amazing series of articles about this in public the broadband companies Verizon AT&T Comcast whatever all claim title to killing us and then on their own earnings calls they say to investors title two isn't a problem our investments going up we're gonna be the best and win everything so there's a staggering disconnect between what is saying and what these companies are saying to their own investors and they they you they're not Oh I mean they're not allowed to lie to their investment on earnings call it's like those are they have if I do share a duty to those people to tell the truth and they could get sued a lot if they're lying so one presumes that they are telling the truth on those calls versus what they're saying in public so that's like that's the whole argument right like whether or not you believe broadband investment has fallen because of net neutrality whether or not you believe the internet is an information service we're just like broadband internet says oh but can I can I just say that the I said this at the very top of the podcast but he's also wants to switch wireless from being a commercial radio service to a private mobile service and a commercial radio service is anything that connects to a common carrier service basically yeah so like if you say the Internet is so like think about telephones so your copper landline telephones our common carrier cell phone voice calls over cell phones connect to that Network by definition it's a commercial radio service think we regulated this way so they switched the broadband internet service to title 2 and they said LTE is now a commercial radio service because it connects to a common carrier so we can regulate it this way then they now that now PI wants to switch probably an inter access from sorry I think this is hilarious mobile broadband no he wants to switch he wants to switch broadband internet access the internet from telecommunications to information service right so you guys and then he's allowed to say oh well this LTE network doesn't connect to a private mobile service they could do whatever they want it's like it's a shell game I mean it's and I say that in like a kind way but it's a shell game because that's what lawyers do right they like line up all the definitions and they push the Domino over and they're like see I was right and that's a hundred percent what he's doing but fundamentally the question is do you have the market power you yourself to take your money away if your eyes fee doesn't does something you don't like and just most Americans don't that's the answer and so most Americans are saying I'd prefer the government to mediate this relationship okay okay so like what's gonna happen December 14th they're gonna have this vote it's gonna pass a bunch of like organizations are gonna sue the FCC when do I have to pick my internet package the super premium plus version with HBO now Hulu Plus and Netflix what's amazing about that with a bonus extra stuff for like Reddit and Twitter so what's amazing about this amazing is it the Trump administration is such chaos they can't even get it all right right so the FCC is saying okay 18 T do whatever you want get out there go crazy in at the same time the Department of Justice is saying hold up 18 T you are not allowed to by Time Warner so I think if it was different and the DOJ was letting the Time Warner deal go through you would see in short order the Time Warner deal closed 18 he now owns HBO and CNN whatever you would immediately see eighteen T customers get free access to those services and then you would immediately see Comcast respond in next year when it's consent decree expire airs you would immediately see Comcast start to prioritize NBC services on its network and you'll immediately see Verizon start to prioritize both services from AOL and Yahoo and go 90 and you already are starting to see some of that stuff right go 90 through a complicated arrangement of payments Verizon's go 90 unit pays Verizon for sponsored data and Verizon customers get it for free yeah that is actually just a shell game that is stupid but wait that's happening right now it's happening right now how is that possible because Verizon offers sponsored data so if you're a startup remember you can pay nobody uses it but Verizon zone go 90 buys data from Verizon and gives it to his drawers and customers for free that mean they take the current regulations are toothless and aren't any doing anything for anybody it means that the Tom wheeler is FCC right before he left did an analysis of these schemes and it found that t-mobile scheme of binge on of music freedom of whatever was acceptable because it was not it was not discriminatory so like any music service could sign up for it and you just get it for free and there was no cost associated with it and 18t and Verizon schemes probably violated net neutrality because they had this price discriminatory element then Tom wheeler like flip the table left the building and no one did anything about it yeah that's where he had gotten to right he did this young investigation about it not I interviewed him right before he last and I asked him about it he was pretty clear that that's what he was gonna do yeah when t-mobile first started its binge on stuff and I like stood up in the room and asked her ledger about neutrality and he got real mad at me and then he started cursing the verge and made fun of my title actually which is really funny anyway people were like why are you mad at t-mobile for giving something to for free to his customers that doesn't seem like a problem for net neutrality and it's because we knew that the end of this story was Verizon having the legal justification to offer you know oh go ninety to its customers for free in and ATT having a legal justification to give CNN for free of a charge you more for you know something that isn't on Time Warner's networks right and Paul I think that comes down to the the real at the end of it the real problem here which is you do not want to be in a place where Comcast owns MSNBC and MSNBC streams to your phone and Fox News cost you extra money right you just don't want to be in that place as much as I hate Fox News you don't want to be in a place where your broadband provider is now making price differentiation based on points of view that it holds that promotes that so like there's a that that's why free press which is a speech a free speech organization is like after this so horn right there saying leave Ian Ayre alone this isn't about startups or whatever this is about core private regulation of speech so like there's just layers and layers and layers of this I just brought up the fact that I interviewed Tom wheeler I interviewed Tom wheeler the foreman former chair of the FCC twice I wasn't easy on him I interviewed Michael Powell who runs NCTA during the run-up to neutrality in 2014 and 15 he was the former chair of the FCC he's a Republican he now runs the largest cable company lobbying group basically Comcast's lobbying group he answered our questions with me we've mean basically we've interviewed Jessica Rosen or cell we've asked her our questions like down the lot anemia and Clybourn here's another FCC Commissioner we've interviewed her and asked her questions down the line we have interviewed these people who are public servants and asked hard questions about their policies and they've given their answers and like whatever we agree with them or don't agree with them but they're willing to take the questions pi is not and I think that if I if I want to come to one thing we've gone way over here but if I want to come back to one thing most clearly is it elected or not these people are public servants and PI is facing this huge backlash and he is not being responsive to it in any way he won't take hard questions in any forum he won't come if you think we're his opposition if you think on his opposition he won't talk to me but he won't talk to I've seen I've seen probably a dozen people who host podcast tweeted him over the past two days saying hey we come out of podcast he's not going to any of those he is just doing this without doing the Associated work of justifying his plan in the face of hard questions and I think if anything is the most dangerous piece of this it's that though he's not answering to the people through the channels that we traditionally expect our politicians to answer to the people and I think if you would just start doing that like I would actually calm down a whole lot right if you would start saying if he was so Steve Kovac who works for Business Insider FCC announced its plan Kovach gets on the press call and he says hey you keep saying this thing i broadband investment but according to numbers I'm looking at you're wrong like can you can you justify the discrepancy which is a great question to ask right like well-thought-out question from a good reporter they just said next question and moved on they just Watts used to answer his question about it yeah he and I were talking about it and a lot of other people noticed it it's there at that level right where the fundamental question that they need to answer that they will have to answer in front of the court they're just not even acknowledging they're just saying this is the right thing to do and they're moving on and I think that's the mess like it whatever policies our policy elections come in you know in four years there'll be another one maybe maybe it'll get even crazier in one direction or maybe they'll swing all the way back like that is the nature of elections but once you take the office once you're doing the job I think you have to be responsible to the people then why is stuff I'm not doing that stunned silence from Paul really would get all the podcast standing invite to come on the show yeah we should we should have asked our listeners to ask him to join just send them is Lincoln on Twitter details at a Janette IMC see a JIT Pai FCC tweet at him yep I think if you notice think today's weight have you been listening this Paul and I have known each other for a long time we obviously disagree about this but we are also friends like in I think if you've been listening the show we are very nerdy we are very willing to get into the weeds of this argument with him this is a great show for him to come on and make these arguments it's not actually a hostile space it's not an opposition space if these don't don't don't don't we know ffensive crap at him I've seen like like I made a joke about the ratio and his happy Thanksgiving tweet and I was right a bunch of people tweeted nest and it's just saying Happy Thanksgiving please be kind but like and we attend to be kind and fair to him on this show but we do want him to answer the questions that he's refused and dance fair yeah he just won't do it I think so again and he's racing this through right he put out the plan the day before Thanksgiving he's pushing a vote on December 14th like out of time the American people have to react to this is just very low and I but you gotta give him credit it's more time than there was in 2015 we at least get to read the full text and know I disagree I disagree in a serious way in 2015 what had happened was that was a five years after the FCC tried to do something in 2010 they finally did the thing that the courts told them to do so there was a huge run-up right that they FCC originally tried to put net neutrality regulations in place under title 1 and Verizon sued them in one if Verizon hadn't sued them it would be fine we would have net neutrality rules under title 1 we wouldn't have all this burdensome additional regulation but Verizon decided they didn't like it and they sued them and they won great and the court said to them if you want these regulations you have to use title two so then there was a massive run-up again and Tom wheelers first instinct was to not do title - it was to try to shoehorn them into yet another statute and go to court again and basically the public pressure was put on him to use title two so there was like that huge run-up I mean it was just an endless process for Verizon they did the rules Verizon won a case years later and then Tom wheeler was made to use title tube with a combination of like a court ruling in public pressure so like that's not the same as this like that processor so long it might not have been out out as in front and it might not have been like this document like here's what the FCC is voting on but the process that was going through like we covered the hell out of it like every month for four years so I just don't I don't see that argument like I get what he's doing like I'm more transparent you can't read these like whatever no human can read this document I will say in just an abstract sense I want it to be as easy for an agency to devolve power as it is to to grab power and I really do think of 2015 as a power grab by the FCC constitutional or not it really bugs me I'm really happy to see a Jap I trying to devolve power and I hope that he has correct legal arguments to do that and I see how they're a little little tenuous but I hope he makes it through and I'm sorry I know I know a lot of people hate open right now to disagree with net neutrality but yeah it worries me and I really do think it puts speech more in the hands of the government if you're gonna make a free speech argument I understand that it's scary for private companies to have so much control over our speech and that bugs me but it was like fundamentally like this is like the question about this regulation is do you trust the government to like do the right thing about it or do you trust these private corporations to do the right thing about it and if you no no right normally with private corporations you can say I don't have to trust them or not I could just choose not to give them my money and in this case I don't think we have that option or 51% of Americans don't have that option and yes I am like I'm with you that the idea that I would you know put more power into the government seems scary but I also like who am i more afraid of big giant you know corporations or a big giant government well in theory at least if we're talking about philosophy I can I can vote for the people the big giant government in a way that I can't and the big giant corporations right yeah I mean like I think this is why I like this is why we wanted to an emergency broadcast right like you and I disagree I think it's interesting to talk about a parameter of that disagreement but to me it's I don't I'm stuck it what power to the FCC grab I couldn't tell you right like the FCC did a thing that the people of the United States were very vocal about wanting which is restricting the ability of private Internet companies to block speech basically and if you don't have a choice like I think that's a totally acceptable function for the government like the government needs to do things otherwise reminders will not have one and I think right at the end of that again is like are you a nihilist are you pregnant it's like do you live in this world or do you want to live in like it if it doesn't he says well the I'm just not like yeah look we're home from in my parents house right like we're home for the holidays like their relationship to this technology is not and they're very smart doctor this is a model of a heart back here somewhere as an MBA like their relationship to technology is not as sophisticated is to understand what 18 t u-verse is doing to their connection they don't give a they have better things to do right and like that's the slippery slope of danger right where Netflix is buffering and they just like it and they use u-verse well they're not gonna they're not gonna file the consumer protection lawsuit they're not going to investigate whether that's a regional network management practice so the the the scope of potential harm unless like we sit around doing our job in like investigating what every company is doing and you believe the press when they find out or consumer advocacy organizations which are not like well-funded are doing the work like you've just moved the cost you've moved the cost from the company to this diffuse set of other actors and they're not gonna win is the companies get bigger and bigger and bigger and collect more profits like that that to me is the reality so we've gotten way over Deeter do we miss anything probably I could I could make more points about being afraid of like you know normal non techie Americans not seeing of the point here or not seeing the danger here but we definitely need to stop okay I'll say it real quick like I like yes last night like we were gonna watch a movie and it was like well okay I'm just gonna find something good to rent but everybody else wanted to like find something free on Netflix to save the four bucks that would cost to stream something and if it's built into the Internet service that you can get CNN for free and Fox News costs two bucks people will definitely just watch CNN and like that's the danger if the network gets to give you something against a preference content then it is the network choosing what you're watching because people have a very very like lizard brain desire to just take the cheaper thing yeah okay did anybody get anything good for Thanksgiving it's Black Friday by the way I will say okay we're gonna end the show and approach some things it's Black Friday yeah this the the verge website is full of Black Friday news so go look at that stuff your if you're listening this live on Monday Paul you're hosting gadget emotional support right on so much for this emotional tech support so any emotional problems that you have dealing with cyber monday you can call us live it's gonna be in the morning Eastern Time morning yeah so you're ready for that but it's it's you Ashley hi I'm right yeah time is our deals expert and Ashley and I will be providing the emotional support yeah so if you see a hot summer Monday deal you don't know what to do call oh and actually if I am of it on the circuit breaker show so that's happening the verge cast is I won't be on it next week I'm out of town the verge cast is back next week and then Ashley in Caitlyn or back with why'd you push that button next week you can also listen to too embarrass to ask with Lauren good who's wonderful she does that show with Kara Swisher Kara Swisher equally wonderful host recode decode and then Peter kofta host recode media and I am sure that recode media is gonna have some that neutrality and 18-feet stuff on it coming up because it two biggest stories in tech policy happening right now thank you very much everybody on the chat here for joining our renegade Black Friday net neutrality podcast I know it's the hottest thing going right now but it's important to us I'm I will just say this I think it's cool that three of us can have a conversation which we disagree about something that's fundamental and like habit P have to be cool so please take that into your heart try to have cool conversations I appreciate that too and from assuming that if I wasn't here and it's just the two of you and you all agree was your like call to action what does people supposed to do um there's a couple ways they're the thing you should do is you should call Congress right Congress can put a pressure on the FCC I saw some well-meaning let's all tweeted a GPI and Michael O'Reilly are not gonna change your mind call Congress you can about foo Netcom the e FF has a tool just make that phone call like it's easy to do you should do it if you believe in it if you don't believe it you can make the phone call too but our government needs to hear from us and maybe something will change so like make that first move it might feel like nothing but it adds up in the aggregate and we'll turn it into something and then when it's lawsuit time well-well just and I will huddle for warmth together it'll be fine yeah that's the richest renegades yeah thank you for rock and roll Paul promo promo code hey