 That's great. I'm going to turn things over to Livia who joins us from Fordham Law School to talk about the subject of an article he has coming out in the Hastings Law Journal. And take it away. Thanks so much, Livia. Thanks very much, Chris. It's a real treat for me to be here, to meet all of you. I very much look forward to responses, questions, critiques, et cetera. It's a thrill for me to be here, also because I have been in the audience from afar for a bunch of these extreme events, as I think many people have. So I think it's kind of cool that I'm now on this side. I also am a big fan of the Berkman Centers. I think the work that the Center does is fantastic. And I'm particularly impressed with, and I haven't yet read, but from what I understand, the Holyoke Report kind of is a count of what's happening in this country and what people need to, I think, attend to in the development of community broadband projects and which cities are actively involved. It's actually something very interesting and nice to see coming out of here, but it's consistent with the sort of things that I imagine the Berkman Center has been doing. So let me start by just asserting that I assume that some of you are vaguely familiar with the paper that I've written, but that most of you will not have read at all comprehensively. Some of you have, but it is the middle of July, and some of you have other things to do, so I appreciate that. So what I'm going to do is, I'm not going to talk about all the details of the paper, but I'm going to kind of describe the general argument and then invite comments. I will not, however, spend a lot of time, in spite of my background, talking about the legal development of the open internet proceeding, although I'm happy to talk more about it. That is, I'm not here to talk about whether Title II is the right place for the open internet, although it's certainly relevant for, I think, the sorts of things we can talk about. But I will say a couple of things about it, and that is, I will say a couple of things about the open internet proceeding, which really instigates this project. And what I will say is basically what the Federal Communications Commission has announced, and that is after over a decade of hand-wringing about what public law ought to look like, which is to say what the agency ought to do when it interprets provisions of the Communications Act in regards to broadband management, doing this for about over a decade, certainly over a decade, the FCC, after some litigation, has finally produced a set of rules. Essentially in a nutshell, and I think most of you are familiar with it, the rule asserts that there will be no blocking of internet communications transmissions. There will be no throttling, which is to say user-focused limits on access to content and transmission, and no paid prioritization, which is most recent addition to what the FCC has been thinking about in this context. All of this might fall under an umbrella of non-discrimination, but we can talk, we'll talk a little bit more about this, but this is non-discrimination in the economic sense, in the sense of what monopolies or large gatekeepers are allowed to do. I'm happy to talk more about the substance of the rule, I think we should, maybe in Q&A, but that's not where I'm going to go. I will say a couple legal things. I didn't hear that many lawyers in the room. I know that they're handful, and you're probably happier that I won't say that much about the law. The one thing I will observe is that the FCC in pursuit of this rule has advanced a theory, and their theory is what I call the trickle-down theory of innovation. That is that if you build it will come, right? No, it's not quite that. It's that if the applications, if people can innovate freely, the internet becomes a more attractive place, and if the internet becomes a more attractive place, providers will invest more in it, and providers will invest more in it, more people will have access to the internet. This is the trickle-down theory. This is the legal argument on which the DC Circuit based its conclusion, finding that, or holding that, the reasoning on which the FCC relied is sufficient for review, judicial review purposes. This isn't to say that it isn't convoluted or it isn't attenuated. It's rational, and not arbitrary and capricious. This really, for me, triggered a question. How on earth has the FCC gotten away with making this argument when there is surely a more direct way of addressing the problem of deployment and access, right? The FCC knows it, Congress knows it, right? They see it in fiscal policy. We see it in all manner of intervention, including preemption to allow municipalities to develop in spite of state laws that restrict access, restrict municipal broadband. There are ways of ensuring that all devices irrespective of whether mobile, wireless, or fixed are treated similarly under the law. There are ways that the FCC and Congress can do this, but with regards to the open internet proceeding, the FCC has advanced this trickle-down theory. For me, it raises a question, why? As a legal matter, I think it was a very convenient argument that's premised in our based on section 706 of the Communications Act, which authorizes the FCC to ensure that there are no barriers to access, and investment infrastructure is one of these things that they hold out, that the Congress held out, holds out as important. The innovation rationale gets the FCC there. Trouble is not the right word because I'm happy with the open internet order. I'm glad that there is an open internet order, but it's troubling because it's a symptom, I think, of what we've seen in the past 10 years in communications policy, and that is a preoccupation with innovation or consequentialist views of what the resource, the internet, is supposed to be about. For me, this works at least inconsistently, or is intention with, not intention with, but is not quite, does not jibe with the thrust of communications policy, which is addressed to universality and equality. I direct you to language and the statute in particular. It's mostly precatory. It's about ensuring that there's no discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender, national origin, in the delivery of service. That's actually the driving provision. It's written without this absolute language in the 1920s and 1930s in the Communications Act, but is amended in 1996 to include this language. Then you've got the other stuff in the statute that I say is addressed to competition, privacy, law enforcement. Then I say in the paper that there is a third order preoccupation with innovation, but innovation does not make an appearance. Yet here it is as the bedrock principle on which network neutrality rests. There are two pieces of this article. The first basically takes on this kind of legal positive point, the legal contortion on which the open internet rule is premised. I can say more about this, but I'll wait for discussion because it is, I guess, law and statutory. Corollary question is, and related to the second problem that I think I take up in the paper that I take up in the paper. That is the idea that innovation is actually an indeterminate concept. People can disagree and certainly people have disagreed about whether network neutrality furthers innovation or not, whether it's the kind of innovation we want to see. Do you want to see innovation in the center by Comcast or do you want to see innovation at the edge of the network by the Craig Newmarks and Sergey Brins of the world? That debate rages on, but the FCC's decided we're going to go with the edges of the network. Yet it is an indeterminate concept. It's something that we can disagree on. I will add, and this is where the rest of the other piece of the article goes, that the internet is not merely an innovation machine, and that's really just a kind of pithy way of saying what is far more complicated, that it's a resource for social integration, and it creates opportunities for engagement for communities that have otherwise been excluded from a range of resources. I don't need to evangelize to this group about the affordances, as they call them, of network communications. All manner of application and service can be delivered to a range of people in isolated communities, in relatively poor communities, that would otherwise not be possible. Why people don't get connected is where I go next. I identify three possibilities. One is defiance, and we know people who are adamantly opposed to joining. I'm sure some of you here may not even be on Facebook because of this same sort of idea, and that's okay. That doesn't concern me. There's ignorance. Pew has done research on this. The people are not quite sure about what access affords them or delivers them, and then there is the pure consequence of disadvantage. Geography is certainly important, but socioeconomic status as well. This paper takes a shot at defining disparity in this context, and there is much more to say about it, but I'll identify some of the variables that are relevant, and I'm sure most of you will be familiar with them. Education and literacy levels are related to engagement, but apart from that, that's not something that's addressed to FCC policy making. That's something for Congress and the Department of Education to be worried about, in part, although the FCC truly is involved. Access and availability, and this varies also as a matter of geography. There are gaps between rural areas, cities, as you know. One of the most interesting gaps or disparities that I've noted is something that Phil Napoli and his co-author Obar have written about, and that is disparities between mobile and fixed. That is to say, for whatever reason, and we can speculate about that, poor people, black people, Latinos, people in rural areas are likely to access the internet through a wireless mobile device than a fixed device. The way that Phil Napoli describes, and these are contested terms, this is research, what is fixed, what isn't, a laptop for his conception is a PC. It is not a handheld device, it is not even a tablet, also does not fall into that category. In any event, these are variables that we can play with that tell us an interesting story. Larry Irving, who headed the National Telecommunication Information Administration two decades ago, a little lesson two decades ago, coined the phrase digital divide. About two decades ago, there was a real divide in a very significant way between access as to different communities. People of color, low income people had less access to the internet. That has changed substantially. Deployment has actually been occurring, and so the gap has been closing, and that's a happy story. The way in which the gap has closed, however, has been interesting. The gap has been closing because of mobile, and like I said, that's a good thing. What happens, however, when the affordances of mobile engagement, the internet, are not as immersive and broad and functional as fixed lines are. This is another sort of variable that I posit. Something that perhaps an institution devoted to ensuring that there is no discrimination on the basis of race, geography, sex, national origin, et cetera, should attend to. I guess I can say more about that. I recommend the Napoli piece on this, and I'll identify the three, and I'm just parroting what he said, the three sort of things that distinguish mobile access from fixed, and that is, on the one hand, storage and processing capacity. Although, as I understand, IBM has come up with some new chip that may change things substantially. This past week, this was announced. In any case, storage and processing capacity is pretty different. Content availability, no matter what your Instagram account tells you, right? I mean, there are a wider range of possibilities through fixed PC access, and network architecture. I think we might think of zero rating. I don't know if you are all familiar with this, but walled gardens on your phone, right, where they're limited access to a range of services that, if you're in Sub-Saharan Africa and Facebook, right, there are only a limited range of sorts of things you can do with your Facebook account in order to deliver service Facebook to certain communities. I can say more about that. So this, with this background, I think this means that there are a set of variables that make the innovation argument a little more complicated. Innovation for whom? Innovation when? So I invoke this, the Moore's Law principle, right, that we are, that storage capacity is increasing exponentially over time. This is good for everyone. In fact, however, the people who are benefiting from these improvements are what I call networked elites. Certainly the developers at the edges of the network, but really not people on the street. But there are sociological metrics for that sort of thing, and many of you may know something about the diffusion process, right? Article written by Biel and Bolen in 1981 that talks about the ways in which service is developed from beta to obsolescence, right? This varies by technology. The innovation argument, the trickle-down theory of innovation, does not account for that variance as a matter of distribution, right? So different people have access to different kinds of applications and services and technologies, depending on the state of the technology. That's also an interesting and worthwhile point, I think, for federal policymakers to think about. So why not address disparity head-on? The SEC, to be sure, knows this, and they've been pursuing, especially in this past with this new chairman, has been pursuing policies in this regard. And I think it's uncovered a conception of network neutrality that is addressed to equality more than this commitment to innovation. And I think that's for the better. The best way to think, for me to explain this, I think, is to just remind you of what the open internet proceeding looked like last year. Some of you may have been following this, right? So the FCC finally promulgated this rule earlier this year. This new rule earlier this year, after the Verizon, the DC circuit, entered a ruling with regards to the FCC's original attempt. The FCC was thinking about how to, or whether to implement a network neutrality rule under Title I or Title II. And there was a view that chairman Wheeler, at least, conveyed the view that they would be careful about imposing something as robust as the current open internet border. But there was a severe backlash, right? And I think Don Oliver's piece in September on HBO is probably the most well-known instigator for, or at least articulation of what that backlash was. But the way in which people talked about network neutrality was not about innovation. They talked about it as a matter of equality. Fast lanes versus slow lanes. We don't want fast, we don't want slow lanes for some people and fast lanes for other people. This is the language of equality. And this is the sort of thing that I, that I think we're, we're headed towards far more consistent with the mandates of, of the Communications Act. So I make more pointed arguments about, about this in the paper. One is that neutrality, without more, could just worsen disparities if we don't address the fact that there are different kinds of access in different kinds of areas. And I also invoke the example of high frequency trading. I briefly talked about that. I mean, people are already hip to the fact that it's unfair when some people have access to some information and quicker than other people do. This is a structural disadvantage. It creates what sociologists in political science call the cumulative disadvantage. And this perpetuates the sorts of things that I think the Communications Act is also addressed to. But I, like I said, I think we're headed in the right direction. So I'll, I'll stop here on the substance of the piece. But I do want to acknowledge that this is a piece that is part of a conversation, right? I'm not, this is not out of nowhere. As I said, Larry Irving coined this phrase, digital divide 1999, John Horrigan, Phil Napoli, Jonathan Obar have been writing about disparity as, as between devices and as between communities, as between regional areas. A conceptually, Jerry Kang has written about the difference between what he calls a deontological view of discrimination or network neutrality and the welfareist view. And I'm, I'm tapping into that as well. I can say more about this. These are just me signaling these things for you guys if you want to ask about this. I understand that this is an interesting planetary group. And so what I'm especially interested in, in hearing more about is social science and network theory and the ways in which people have, to the extent they have, talked about disparities in the administration of networks. So I think I'll, I'll stop there. Basically, this is, this, this project is part of my general research interest in the interaction between technology, technological change and public lawmaking and communications. And I'm interested in actually developing a project related to the question of innovation in this area. So that's all I'll say right now. Chris, I mean, open the questions. So I have a question to start off. So I accept, accepting all of your premises, what is communications policy supposed to do about the problem? If the problem of inequality of access, let's say, let's take the assumption that, okay, disadvantaged communities have mobile access and that's second class or different in some ways from pixel and access. That's part, so part of it is geographical certainly. But a lot of it's just structural economics, right? Poor households can't afford faster computers or to pay $60 a month for, you know, terrible Comcat service. So how do we separate this from the larger conversation about inequality in any sort of meaningful way and use communications policy as a tool for improving this because it seems to be that countries that are just more equal, like the Netherlands, right, have very high internet penetration and broadband is broadly enjoyed because it's an equal society. I'll keep the Dutch example. I'll hold that in the bands. People always hold out Finland and Holland as examples of this or that. And I have my own view about whether that's a useful comparison. But I won't talk about that right now. I think you're right. I mean, that's a good question, right? So why is this a problem for communications policy? And as a lawyer, as a legal positivist lawyer, I think it's clearly a question for communications policy because the Communications Act speaks directly to these things. I mentioned a moment ago the notion of preemption. The FCC has preemption authority to, or there's an argument that the FCC has preemption authority to bar states from limiting their, limiting cities, their resident cities from providing service to their communities. That's a problem that is born from or rises from communications policy. Okay? There's also the point I made a moment ago in that we treat all devices similarly. You may remember that before this iteration, the open internet rules, mobile devices were to be treated differently than fixed devices. That's in light of the data that blacks, Latinos, poor people are likely to gain access through the internet on through a mobile device. That notion is important, right? That we treat devices equally is important. So that's addressed to communications policy. The FCC has also recently increased the speed threshold of the definition of broadband. What does that mean? That means actually if, to benefit from forbearance now under this new open internet rule, providers have to provide a minimum level of speed or service to their subscribers, which I think will have, although 25 megabits per second these days doesn't seem fast enough for download speeds, it's much better than four. So these are why this, these are communications problems. Let's raise the floor of what the telcos are available or can provide as a minimum level of service. But we can't really address the device divide through communications policy because that's a different kind of market gallery. It's a different kind of problem, absolutely different kind of problem. I think it's an empirical, it's a good empirical question that I can't answer about what would happen if, what will happen when we treat devices similarly, right? Or equally, but I think that's an empirical question. I'm positing that it does speak to inequity, right? And that it's born from communications policy authority on the communications act. I completely agree with you, however, that so much of this is not about communications law, co-op communications law. Some of this is just about extent structural disparities. The point I make in the paper, however, is that there are range of affordances available, range of content services that are available to communities that would not otherwise have them, right? Never mind whether our, our houses are smart, you know, kind of healthcare, right? Educational service, improved broadband transmission speeds are, are for that reason, redistributive. Does that answer your question? Could you tie back to that then? Can you talk a little more about zero rating because that does seem like a piece that gets at the mobile divide and may be directly impacted by the direction the FCC is going. Do you think that zero rating is potentially a good thing that's being outlawed by the new policies? Right. So, I mean, we have technologists in the room. I want to, I wonder if someone else can, I can give you my version of what zero rating is. Well, so the, the reason this is roped into the open internet order is because there has been a concern that wireless and mobile service providers would privilege their content or affiliated content. The way they would do that, they could do that is by charging more for other services or charging nothing for their affiliated service. So this is what I understand zero rating to be. That clearly contravenes the prior rule against prioritization in the open internet order. Now, Chris, you're asking the question because maybe this is one way of remedying disparity and I, I completely agree. On the other hand, there are, you know, this is a, this is a problem that more than folks in the United States experience, right? There are people around the world who have benefited from telecommunication services that are prepackaged and walled out and walled so that, you know, Sub-Saharan Africa and Philippines part of Asia, people now have access to something like the internet. They really have access to Facebook with their phones. I have to say, I think that's nice. I'm not sure. I'm making an argument about having access to social media. I'm kind of indifferent about that part. The city of Cambridge has spent a lot of time in the last decade trying fairly ineffectively to do things about the digital divide. But one of the things that it has sort of succeeded in doing is thinking about the problem as wider than simple network access. And it's come to think of it as a combination of access, device, and education. I mean, you know, it doesn't, you know, if you've got, you know, fixed line access, it doesn't help unless you've got a device that can use it and unless you know how to use it. And it's tried to do things about it. And, you know, Cambridge is a wealthy city, so it can afford the social welfare programs that help with the latter two parts. And there are computer trading centers and, you know, computer labs and public housing, et cetera. But the one thing it hasn't been able to crack is the access problem because we're a Comcast monopoly. And that's, you know, that's the stuff that requires $100 million worth of investment, something Cambridge can do that many cities cannot. And it comes down to a municipal problem because it's our streets, you have to dig up for the cables and our telephone poles that you'd have to run fiber on. So I completely agree. And if that's what Cambridge is thinking, that's great. I mean, it has turned out that many, you know, well-to-do communities are hip to the possibilities of community broadband. I talk about preemption because there are cities all over the country that cannot build out their own competitor service. That is a service that competes with a large ISP because states forbid them from doing it. As a matter of a legal doctrine that might be permitted, at least there's an argument, and this is something that's been teed up by the FCC and has been challenged, will be challenged in court. But I completely agree that's a piece of the puzzle. I talk about this. I've actually written another piece called Broadband Localism that makes the argument. So access is also part of the question is, is this a competitive environment? Are there firms that can compete and have an effect on price, cost, and deployment? Susan Crawford, who's associated with the Berkman Center, has written a lot about this. And I'm a big proponent of the argument she's made. So I completely agree. It's part of the competition law and what the requirements of the Communications Act are. I don't know if you also saw very recently, I think it was announced today or yesterday, on a coalition of non-cable ISPs are collaborating, I forget the name of the organization is, maybe someone can look it up, to be a counterweight, to argue for competition, more competition. So I certainly think that's a piece of the puzzle. It also redresses disparity, however, by indirection. I think it's part of what is required, but there are fiscal policy mechanisms that can empower communities to do, to develop community broadband projects, which we've seen. We saw this as a result of the stimulus bill. And the preemption stuff I talked about speaks to this as well. So I completely agree that competition is part of the problem, or making sure there's more competition is part of the problem. But that, again, by indirection addressing disparity. We have a range of social service programs that operate on the assumption that the market is imperfect, and through grant making a whole other range of activities, redress disparity on its face directly. And that's what I'm speaking more to. In other words, I don't think competition is enough. I'm talking specifically about municipal competition, where it's where isn't so much competition, but a municipally funded service like water or sewer or whatever. And I mean, I make the argument that in a high cost of living city like Cambridge, it's as much, it's a distributional in the sense that broadband would be a cost that people in poverty would have to assume to be part of the modern age. If you could just provide that, that sort of lowers the pressure on the cost of living. Absolutely, I agree. Distributional equality is sort of part of the FCC mandate, and it's in the statute. Why do you think we've come about done this in this roundabout way and focus on it? Yeah. So that's what that's, Chris, it's a great question. It's the thing I want to work on more on. I mean, I work, I think it's a historical story, right? Why does innovation catch the way it does? I mean, some of it might have something to do with this preoccupation with empiricism in in legal academia, and consequentialism generally. The economic modeling is kind of a very dominant sort of way of resolving public policy problems, and so that's, I mean, that's surely a piece of it. But why the myth, well, that's a myth. I mean, I think innovation is a real thing. It's just, I'm not sure we know which directing it goes unless we direct it in a certain way. So I don't know. It's a, I have just preliminary thoughts about it. I do think of the empiricism, preoccupation of empiricism has something to do with it. Right. I mean, advocates of network neutrality, Tim Wu and others who've been arguing for this have been making the innovation argument for a long time because they know it has currency, for lack of a better word, I guess, with policymakers in spite of what the Communications Act itself asserts. Blies this. But I mean, I think the other thing about the innovation argument is that it's a very pragmatic one when it comes to engaging the network elites. I mean, it's sort of specifically an argument I'm using in Cambridge in the sense of, you know, a municipal broadband system, you know, that regardless of the ability to pay help, you know, unites social justice people with, you know, the Kendall Square economy in a way no other issue does. I think it also works in a broader sense where if you're saying this is about innovation, you know, how can the apples, the movements, you know, the, you know, the Facebooks, etc. be against it? Well, let me put this a little differently. So Jerry Kang has written about, he wrote about this in 2007. He said that there are different ways to think about discrimination. And we know this because of the history of civil rights laws. There's a deontological argument for why we don't allow discrimination. That's because we're all supposed to be treated equally. That is not a welfare as consequentialist argument. Right? Why doesn't that argument work in the context of the network neutrality debate? I think that's the question Chris asks is a good question. Is it because the audience for this stuff, the actual audience for this stuff are network deletes? And they are far more convinced and interested in these consequentialist arguments. That might be true, but it isn't true in the context of civil rights, right? I mean, and I think that's why it's worth probing the question. We care about equality. We care about universality. We care about the fact that we want everyone to be, well, most of us at least, are integrated in our culture. And that people can lift themselves out of the circumstances in which they find themselves. These are non-consequentialist arguments for network neutrality. And why those haven't caught is an interesting question, but I mean, it's worth thinking more about. Just in thinking about the parallel with other areas of civil rights law, I mean, sort of interesting because actually I think a lot of the work in the civil rights sort of community recently has been pushing towards an effect-based understanding of discrimination, right? Moving away from sort of evil acts to what are the effects on the ground. And so, you know, maybe that those cross currents are shifting in a lot of contexts. So it's a great, great point. And we know this because of the recent Supreme Court decision involving fair housing, which I want to integrate into this piece. I don't think that the argument, so I can't, I'm not against consequentialism. Innovation is just a version of this. The pursuit of innovation is one of these consequentialist arguments. I think that there's a way to think about consequentialist approach that accounts for disparity on the ground in the way that fair housing law does. So we can think about a fair, firmly furthering fair broadband access in the way we think about firmly furthering fair housing, in which case we look at effects, right? So I'm not, I'm not opposed to thinking about consequences. I should be clear about that. So when we, when the innovation argument is a narrow version of what, of what I'm, I'm, I'm focused on, yeah. I'm trying to study on public housing and kind of quite figure out what that study would be. I really could be an example of where a city somewhere is, I know there's one in Austin that's doing fiber, gigabit fiber due units. I grew up in Austin, but there's very few places in the country that do it that is there one in Massachusetts or the region where they are doing something where there can be some things to point to in terms of effects and positive. Right. And, and with that, you know, to your point about, you know, most people already have a smartphone and they may not have a, you know, computer plugged into a wall when they're, when they're getting fiber, then, well, I guess they can have a Wi-Fi in their, in their house. But what would the response be? Would it be fiber in premises or would it be just a better wireless or a better, you know, subsidized plan? So what they get on the device they have is more affordable. There's sort of a lot going on in there, but I've got to think back to how this would be documented. Well, so the, I think the department of HUD, Housing and Urban Development, has actually promulgated a notice of inquiry or a notice of public rulemaking on this question, which is, which is interesting. Well, a version of one of the questions. So public housing and affordable housing and how that's those sorts of things integrated in the stuff that it does. I mean, there are a range of interventions that I think of when I hear you, hear what you described. Have you heard about the build once movement, right? So cities, when they build their own buildings or they tear open roads for in furtherance of, you know, transportation objectives or city objectives, that they also start thinking about building in conduits. And, yeah, well, that's the thing to do. Well, so not just housing authorities, so the range of public agencies would now, the mandate would be to think about that. I mean, that's, that's certainly helpful, right? So that would be consistent with ensuring deployment. Finding the problem that needs to be solved and sort of the earlier point, you know, is the problem that four people or people in public housing aren't getting the same speeds as it that they are, but it's through their smartphone and they're paying $100 a month instead of 60 a month that somebody else is paying. So I would like at some point to get at that in a very concrete way, you know, defining that problem. What is that disparity? So. Right. Well, I'm with you and maybe we can talk more about that. It would also be nice. I mean, for the consequentialist room is to know what happens when they are connected. Because there is this nagging statistic that says that many people, even when they have access, or when there's a pass, the pass rate is pretty good. That is, that they have some kind of service otherwise available to them that they choose not to do it. That's a, that's a nagging problem also. So, so there are a couple pieces of this. What would happen if everybody had fiber to the home? I can't help but think it's only going in the right direction. And there they're actually, and there is data on this other piece I did on broadband localism is data on the joblessness rate and productivity of communities when the when the rate of connection goes up. So I've got to think that there's a positive relationship, but there's no reason to know that for sure without the data. So I completely agree. Some of the divide we're talking about is a rural urban divide. I know at Massachusetts, like about a month ago, there was an article about how Massachusetts was going to facilitate a whole bunch of municipal systems being created in Franklin County and western mass. How are they going to do that? Be top money. Be top money built the sort of so the stimulus bill was coming from like the FCC access taxes and the like. I'm not sure. You're talking about the NBI network in western mass? Yes. A lot of money got spent wiring up 123 towns with a note or two in each town. And now the struggle is how to make use of that network. Right. So you can make the argument that a lot of money was spent. Right. Well, this is the other piece. A whole set of municipal systems there or maybe a one regional municipal system, but it'll be a publicly owned broadband system. If you know they could race ahead of us, if they do it right. So the context there is that these are officially underserved areas that get therefore qualified for the money. So to me, it loops back on maybe this different question there. What's the underserved issue that we're talking about in these other inner city contexts that are different than it is for somebody three blocks from here? That makes sense. Well, I mean, you're right. Underserved is a regulatory category that triggers a set of treatments under the under the statute, which I think is what you're talking about. Right. And the B top money, this is stimulus fiscal funding from Congress to address to addressing that. So I don't know anything about what's happened in Massachusetts, but that's one way it's done. It's been pegged to underserved and unserved communities. But that I mean, that's different from the questions disparity and use, which is something you hinted at. And I've actually thought about this with all these Google Fiber projects that are popping up and people have asked the question, what happens when you have one gig per second service? How many applications actually need that kind of speed? I mean, I'm hopeful that there will be a nice thing. That's what's so nice about it. But you know, we're still asking the question, right? I mean, what sorts of advantages come with use of the whole volume in my mind? Do you have examples of people having access to service and then choosing not to use it and that being a disparity? So right. So I pulled this out the outset in a different way. Some people do it out of defiance, right? And I, a grandmother. So they're apparently, I mean, the easy case is that there are elderly communities that who don't, we don't want to deal with the technology. Don't think there's anything to be gained from it. Is that answer your questions? And answer, yeah. Well, maybe you're saying that there are some people who otherwise know that they have access and choose not to. And why is that a problem for me? Or why is that the problem for the communications? That's a fair question. I think I'm going to rest on the theory that most people who don't access the internet do it out of, if not out of defiance, do it out of ignorance. And maybe that's too speculative for you, but that's my theory. I only thought of this now, so I haven't thought it through. The question is why the FCC chose the innovation argument as the rationale for this policy. The counterargument is that the companies who own the infrastructure say, we want to be encouraged to invest in this. And by the ability to make money on it, that'll encourage us to invest. They need another argument that would encourage investment. I'm not sure that follows. So Verizon made this argument. Verizon actually poo poo the FCC argument calling it a triple cushion shot because it was attenuated. And there's a disagreement about how innovation can occur. And Verizon says, we can invest in our infrastructure if you let us do it. It will deliver higher speeds. And people will do many more interesting things if we can control those sorts of issues. Don't want to come in. So I don't know about that. Well, that's right. York is a classic example. I mean, Verizon has claimed that they're going to build Fios and they haven't done it. Yeah, I mean, we can argue about whether these companies are disingenuous or not. I think the facts speak for themselves. I mean, you're right. I think there's disagreement about as a matter of policy. So the FCC has finally decided the question. So now it's settled for now. But it's an indeterminate concept. And I'm not sure why. When I say indeterminate, it doesn't arise from some publicly articulated mandate, right? It's what I call a third order public law priority. And I think rightly so. Why it's, I mean, Chris asked a question, why is innovation one the day? Maybe strategic. But it isn't certainly normatively coherent for me or sufficient. I'm hearing as we talk about this is the concern also that by focusing on innovation, you're going to therefore create this service. And it will be designed to serve innovative communities that in a sense already, yeah, they would be affected by paid prioritization and throttling and that sort of thing. But they're already involved on the Internet, have some sort of access, have some sort of know how. And I just wanted to see. Yeah, so I associate myself with people who have made this argument in other settings. Talk about cumulative advantage. People have talked about, I mean, to be provocative, but to make the point clear that there are cumulative advantages in wealth and whiteness, for example. That every generation benefits in ways that disadvantage other communities in a relative sense, right? That's why I also use the example of high-frequency trading, right? I mean, people get it when you talk about high-frequency trading. But it's a little different for whatever reason in this setting. So you're exactly right. There are networked elites who are the beneficiaries of the exponential increase in storage capacity and that other communities only benefit in fits and starts and later. Is there a way to redress that? I think there probably are ways to do it. I'm not arguing against innovation. I'm not arguing that people shouldn't invest money in interesting ways of transmitting service or developing new applications, but the matter of public law, I'm not sure it is the sort of thing that Communications Act is addressed to. Yeah? That's sort of a trivial example. Through the beneficence of Harvard giving me the day off before July 4th, I was listening to the radio and they were interviewing the head of the security services for the state I don't remember the name of the agency talking about what you could and couldn't bring to the Esplanade for the 4th of July fireworks and he rattled off two or three things and then said if you want to know the whole list go to our Facebook page. And I'm wondering if the states are going to insist that that's the way they're going to communicate if we can somehow use this as a wedge to get in to the question of public access and more access. I mean I was just floored frankly because he had like another five minutes of the radio interview it wasn't like they were cutting him right off. Right. He could have rattled off the ten things instead of the two things go see our Facebook page. Yeah, I mean I don't think there's anything wrong with directing people to Facebook page but there you are in radio in a pretty accessible format. Exactly and I'm wondering you know something some kind of hook we can be driving whether it's Facebook page or a web page the point is that more and more state the state is communicating via the internet with no other they're not publishing you know notices in the dying newspapers or broadcasting it on the radio or you know on the TV stations. Right well I mean what you're saying reminds me of a piece in the in part of the article that I didn't mention and that is that there are costs associated with universal access right and those sorts of things that are actually could perpetuate the kind of disparities I talk about in the paper. So I mean this is kind of the flip side of the point you make. Let's say that everybody's got fiber to the home what kind of surveillance techniques are going to be used which kind of communities will be targeted what kind of data will be collected. There's a lot of empirical data and information on how racial and gender discrimination NSS themselves online. I'm not just talking about mean chat rooms but you know a whole range of ways in which for example you know I have this little piece in there where Airbnb on Airbnb people are likelier to access or get a white client than another. So I mean they're just I mean so certainly there are advantages or disadvantages I just want to make plain I'm not I'm not a problem with defiance actually but for the purposes of thinking about what it means the consequences are actually they present problems as much as they create opportunities. I personally participated in the FCC's February open meeting where the discussion open network rules were discussed and there were actually two things one is community broadband so the municipal improvement which is mainly focused on the universality and the other is of course the protecting the promoting the open that which tomorrilla wheeler said mainly it is important for the American economy so economy or competition is important. It was his argument and there are two different things for me but do you think these two things are same issue and only the different side of the coin or something? Yes I agree with you I think with the same issue I forgot what your name is so I'll talk about local broadband as a piece of the competition story because as you know most communities are really have one or most two providers not talking about places like Cambridge or New York City well there we go Cambridge has one and so community broadband in force pursuant to preemption orders like the one at issue in the February order and the February decision would further competition that's right that's the argument so I think they're of a piece I mean but wheeler has spent a lot of time talking about the open internet rules as and as furthering competition for sure. I noticed that tomorrilla said only focus on the American economy. Right yeah yeah he does focus on this problem innovation economy. The problem is very complicated. Well no so it's no there's no doubt the competition encouraging competition is an important feature of what the what a healthy and vibrant communications policy looks like but the point of the piece is that it is not sufficient for thinking about what the objectives of communications policy ought to be and so we might want to encourage innovation we might want to encourage competition but there are other public law priorities namely I mean others include privacy under section 222 or law enforcement or national security but the driving thrust of the Communications Act is universality. This is a historical story from the development of telephony to broadcasting to cable even there's been a commitment to making service universally available to everyone and this is written in almost absolute terms in the throughout the statute so that's why I say that that story that account is missing I'm hopeful however because of the ways in which the FCC has turned the corner in the past year that they are now addressing or redressing some of these issues they're just doing it on the banner of innovation and the like. I'm not a student of this field but I'm wondering if there's been a study done on the link between education which in the internet and for in that field and because education is a bedrock of equality and innovation as a nation in particular. Yeah so the Communications Act the versions I've been talking about section 151 157 they actually talk about schools section 706 talks about primary and secondary education as ways of getting at disparity and then there are the programs that are actually in the agriculture department and in the national the commerce department national telecommunications information administration addressed to grant making to schools and the FCC itself is also developing programs for subsidies to to schools so schools are definitely a piece of this sort of libraries by the way and other anchor institutions. Ellen Goodman and and has written about libraries in particular I live in Harlem in New York City and I'm always thrilled when I walk in there because I actually see people using getting access and using the computers and there's always a line there's always people there are always people I mean they want to go on Facebook to be sure but there are other things that they're doing maybe they're doing Netflix you know what's that if you want to talk about innovation right right is where it comes from you know bubbling up from being able to access right sources. Well for me it's an argument that isn't just about innovation I mean I'm sure that there's an in that there's a potential innovator in my neighborhood is this 14-year-old right or something but it's that we believe and I think this is what the thrust of the statute is we don't just believe that people should have access so that they can innovate we believe that there's something about their engagement of participation in a social cultural fabric that is in and of itself valuable that is redistributive right that's why I don't think we need the innovation argument that's that's my yeah it could be sure it could be byproduct I mean you might take my argument as purely rhetorical right this is just a semantic sort of debate I don't think so I think that the FCCs turn the corner because it recognizes that there I mean that there are priorities unrelated to whether or not you have a faster news feed or not on your Facebook account right with respect to education that's one of the arguments against mobile devices I mean at not being equal kids can't really do their homework on smartphones but I mean I think competition the competition argument is at least as much of a Trojan horse as the innovation argument I mean who can be against competition I spent some time this summer talking to folks for coalition for local internet choice you know which is the group that's lobbying against you know the state preemption statues etc and you know that's made up of a whole bunch of municipal broadband advocates so they're not really you know yes they're for competition and they won't be upset if you know some private group comes into a city and provides better you know service at a lower cost but really this is you know clearing their way in their minds for letting cities do what need to need to be done communities well communities right right yeah yeah absolutely so this is consistent with this idea of democratic promoting a democratic culture yeah thank you