So im with the American Consumer institute. Its a pleasure to be here today and thank you all for coming. Of importance is on thursday the federal Communications Commission holds one of its December Open meeting and deals with one of several very important topics and the issue today is the order to restore the Internet Freedom which includes a number of important provisions, one is classifying Broadband Access services as an Information Service as it was once before, removing the ambiguous internet conduct standard and the bright line rules, reestablishing the private mobile Service Classification for mobile broadband and promoting Internet Service provider transparency among other things and the transparency issue is very important to us because it helps give consumers better information to make better decisions. But theres a lot of noise out there, confusion, misinformation on what will mean for consumers and today we have a panel of experts that will address the issues but first id like to introduce a special guest to give remarks and were so glad you were able to make it and join us today. The fcc commissioner was unanimously confirmed to the senate and took office. This commissioner brandon carr. Before he became commissioner he served as General Council for the fcc and prior to this he was the lead adviser to the fcc commissioner on wireless Public Safety and International Issues and before that he worked as an attorney for the fccs office of general counsel. Prior to joining this commission in 2012, commissioner carr was an attorney for wiley ryan who dealt way lot of issues including telecommunications and Communications Regulatory law. A foul bio for all of our speakers today are available on your chairs. I wont go any further with this. I think this is a wonderful event. Theres a lot to be learned on this issue and let me just say, you know, here to talk about and give remarks on what this will mean to the public in general, its my great pleasure to introduce commissioner brandon carr. [ applause ] thanks, stiefeve, for that k introduction. Before turning it over to the panel, ill make brief opening remarks. Happy to talk about the fccs restoring internet proceeding. This is a really great moment for consumers, for innovation and for freedom. In two days the fcc is going to vote to reverse an obama era fccs unprecedented decision to apply title 2 regulations to Internet Access services. This two year experiment has failed. Weve seen investment in broadband decline, weve seen isps pull back on deployments and weve seen Innovative New services kept on the shelf. All of this has harmed consumers. Before the fccs 2015 decision consumers enjoyed a free and open internet. This wasnt because the fcc had title 2 in place. It didnt. It was because the fcc had this longstanding approach for 20 years we abided by congresss direction, a bipartisan decision that the internet should be allowed to flourish free from heavy handed government regulation. This was not a complete no holds bar. If you think back to 2015 thats the framework that were going back to. Consumers were protected, noeflers were allowed to innovate and we saw the internet in the u. S. Become the greatest Success Story that weve seen. 1. 5 trillion in investment, businesses of all sizes from startups to large corporations launched and succeeded. Im really excited that after this, again, two year detour were going back to that same Regulatory Framework that tried and true approach. Now, if you step back im sure youve seen, ive seen, theres a lot of colorful rhetoric that surrounds the fccs decision. The fake news stories about what the fcc is doing or trending faster than the real ones. So i want to dispel some of that. The passion thats out there is really understandable. This is the interception of the government in the internet. Americans cherish the free and open swint, they cherish their experiences but we have to bust some of the myths out there. A lot of what im seeing is what i call the great title 2 head bake which is attributing to title 2 things that title 2 simply does not do. One of the ones ive seen a lot of and maybe youve seen it as well is this portuguese internet meme or the cablization of the internet. This claim by repealing title 2, isps will be free for the first time to charge you for bundled access to the internet or make you pay per website or for packages of websites similar according to the allegations as what goes on in the cable space. This is not true. The fccs title 2 decision specifically determined that if isps want to offered bundled or curated internet packages theyre allowed to do so. The fccs decision repealing title 2 does not change the law on legality of those curated services. Another claim that you may have seen is the fccs vote is going to raise rates for consumers. That isps will be free to start charging consumers a lot more. Again, this isnt true. The 2015 fcc decision, the majority went to great pains to state that their approach was not going to result in rate regulation or government control of the rates that are charged to consumers. So again were not opening the door to isps having different ability to charge consumers than what is currently the place with title 2 in place. Another claim that ive seen is that isps are now going to be free to block websites or throttle or create fast lanes and slow lanes on the internet. Again, title 2 is not the thin line between where we are and that conduct taking place. If you look at the d. C. Circuit decision that reviewed the fccs 2015 decision, it expressly said that isps can block, they can throttle and do fast lanes under title 2 provided they disclose to consumers that theyre engaging in that conduct. The court even said theres no dispute that thats the casement repealing title 2 is not going to change the law with respect to that sort of conduct. Ive also heard claims that the fccs decision is going to be legally unsustainable or unlawful. Its not the case. The Supreme Court in 2005, the only time the Supreme Court has spoken to the regulatory classification of the internet upheld the fccs 2002 decision that found that broadband Internet Access service is a title 1 Information Service. So again that claim doesnt withhold scrutiny. I also want to take a second to again emphasize that we arent experimenting with some new or radical approach that is going to give isps free reign to do whatever they want on the internet. The title 1 framework that we are voting to put back in place includes robust Consumer Protections. One that ill start with is one of the d. C. Circuit found persuasive which is Market Forces. When they observed that isps were entitled to, theres a reasons why isps arent doing. Its free of subscriber losses, Market Forces. I know theres many people that wont except Market Forces as a solution either in the broadband market or otherwise, so the fcc and our title 1 approach were not relying purely on Market Forces. I want to highlight Consumer Protections staying in place. First, consumers are actually getting back strong Consumer Protection provisions. The federal trade commission is our nations premier Consumer Protection agency. In 2015 when the fcc voted to move to title 2 that decision as a legal matter stripped the ftc of 100 of its authority to protect consumers with respect to isps. That was a loss for consumers that theyre getting back as a result of this decision. Second, the federal trade commission has been the nations premier privacy enforcement agency. It brought over 500 enforcement cases including against isps, again, when the fcc voted in 2015 it created a donut hole where consumers had immediately fewer online protections they did before that decision. That donut hole is where we are today. After the vote on thursday, consumers are going to get back strong, Online Privacy protections that can be enforced by the ftc. Third theres federal antitrust laws. Section 1 of the sherman act makes clear that if an isp enters an agreement that involves anticompetitively blocking or throttling websites thats going to be per se unlawful. Section 2 applies to vertically isp. When its verse i cannily integrated to discriminate against another provider unaffiliated in terms of its content, thats subject to being found unlawful under section 2 of the sherman act and fourth we have state attorney generals and state Consumer Protection laws that are going to continue to apply. This is one where theres been some confusion. The fccs order which is public, you can read it makes clear that state level Net Neutrality laws are preempted as a matter of law because they would conflict with the fccs decision in its title 1 decision. At the same time its clear that general state level Consumer Protection laws as they would apply to isps are not preempted so consumers get to continue to benefit from those protections. Finally theres a transparency rule. The fccs adopting a rule that is likely more robust than what you would see purely from an ftc based regime so it ensures that consumers have full disclosure about the services theyre getting, if providers dont live up to those, the ftc is empowered to take enforcement action. This is also this claim that somehow the ftcs regime is going to be more difficult to enforce because theres this claim that it doesnt have rules under like the fccs approach. At this point misses the mark. The fcc we have a law which right now are the fccs title 2 rules but those rules are not selfenforcing. The same is going to be true after our vote with respect to the ftc. The ftc has legal standards, has precedence out there. Ive walked through some of what they are. Just like the fcc would, the ftc can take enforcement action. I think that this is really a great moment for consumers. Were getting back to the same regime that governed for 20 years, a regime that had robust Consumer Protections, it saw consumers launch and thrive. This is not some sort of new experiment with an entirely radical new free market approach. Theres robust Consumer Protections in place. Im really excited about it. This is a two with year detour that the fcc was ultimately pushed into as the Senate Committee found through political pressure from the white house. It was not a place the Senate Committee found in terms of full title 2 that the fcc was going to go based on its own independent judgment. With that im happy to take a couple questions putting back my old formal General Council hat on. We are in the sunshine period of the fcc which prohibits lobbying of Decision Makers during this period. So to speak in legalese a little bit. You cannot make a presentation to me that goes against the merits. If you have a question that falls within that, feel free to ask it. If you are not certain probably best not to say anything and we can transition ultimately to the panel. Thanks. Do we have any questions . I think that it may think its difficult to ask a question that is completely devoid of a presentation, so i think youre caution was probably perhaps well taken, but. Any one have a question thats not a presentation i think probably would have some would be presenters but that wouldnt be appropriate as you noted. Thanks very much. Everyone, it commissioner carr. [ applause ] thank you, commissioner carr. So it sounds to me that to some extent we have some regulations that were put in place to fix something that was not a problem and without any evidence of market failure to justify a remedy and all in the name of benefiting consumers. With that it seems like theres no surprise that weve how do we get there . You know, what are the various aspects of the provisions of the order, what does the fcc need to do, how will restoring Internet Freedom effect consumers, investors, innovators . Does Congress Need to have a role in all of this . Theres a number of issues that, you know, teed up to be considered and with that today we have an expert panel to clear up some of these and other important questions on restoring Internet Freedom. Moderating on the panel today is randolph may. Randolph is a founder and president of the free state foundation. Earlier he worked in policy research for think tank and Practice Communications and regulatory law at major law firms and prior to this he served as associate general counsel and general counsel. The full bios have been distributed so randy is always its an honor to have you join us today. Steve, first of all thanks very much for organizing this program. Obviously it couldnt be more timely and thanks to the American Consumer institute for all the work that you do. So were going to jump right in and what im going to do is just introduce the panelists just by their affiliation then im going to ask them to speak initially no more than five minutes and less than five minutes will be fine, maybe even preferred because were going to make sure we have time for questions and unlike with regard to commissioner carr, you can absolutely i dont want to put it that way but you dont have to be quite as careful as asking your question to these noted panelists because theyre not covered by the sunshine act. We do want to have time for questions. I want to say one thing briefly before i introduce the panelists and get started just on my own behalf. I was associate general counsel at the fcc from 1978 to 81. It started doing communication even before that. Its been a long time that ive been watching the fcc. I want to tell you that ive got a concern really about the way that in a proceeding like this the comment process in my view really has been subject to some distortion. Public participation is obviously welcome. Its important everyone can follow a comment that wants to and should but when you get into arguments about, you know, in this case with 20 million comments filed, when you argue about whether 50,000 or valid or not, ultimately whats happening now disturbs me because i think at bottom it diminishes the notion ultimately of the expertise of the fcc and the fccs institutional integrity and the role of expertise, so, you know, i hope we dont, you know, go too far down that road because ultimately whats going to occur thursday shouldnt be based and is not going to be based on the vote, how many comments are for or against a particular proposal. That shouldnt be the way the process works and i think thats important to understand. If that were the way the process worked then we really wouldnt we wouldnt need the fcc really to make that decision, would we . I think thats important. So with that, im going to tell you whos on the panel. We have katie mcauliffe, executive director of digital liberty. Barn soak who is the president of tech freedom. And of course steve posciak whos the president of American Consumer institute whos putting on this program today. I think what i want to do is ask remember the speakers only going to speak at most for five minutes. I want to ask barron if hell lead off, hes been a leader exploring the legal ramifications of the fcc. I think hell probably agree with me, maybe not, but if the fcc doesnt have the Legal Authority to do to maintain these rules then that goes a long way to answering the question as to what the fcc should do. So im going to ask barron whether hell speak first. Thanks. In fact, thats the first question to be asked and if the answer is no, the fcc doesnt determine it does have authority. Thats it. Game over. This is how agencies are supposed to work. You dont start with policy questions, you dont start by looking at comments, you start by asking what authority you have. You can validly claim and if you have authority then using that to the extent that you can and thats exactly what the agencys done here. The draft order, the one thats going to be voted on this week includes the two major claims of the authority made by the Barack Obama Era fcc were mistaken. 2010 claiming that section 706 was an independent grant of authority to let the agency have free range to regulate Communication Services and in 2015 that broadband was a title 2 service. The fcc is reversing both of those claims, tesktively at that point says there is no longer any basis for the Net Neutrality rules except for with the important exception the transparency rule. Judge soberman back in 2014 in the verizon decision noted that the fcc had always argued that there was another simplier basis for upholding that transparency rule and its on that basis that the fcc is maintaining that rule. We are reverting back to the status quo and this is really at heart as a legal issue really should not be controversial and if anything, people who across the political spectrum who are worried about the government claiming too much power over the internet and in particular who might be afraid of what this administration might do over the internet should be applauding this decision for the same reasons that the Frontier Foundation back in 2008, 2010 was warning that the previous claim of authority over the internet