 Hey everyone, I'm Ernesto Falcone. I'm the Senior Legislative Council at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Welcome to today's EFF 30 fireside chat. This is our conversation series commemorating 30 years of EFF fighting for user freedom. Thank you very much for joining us Couple things for reminders. We are saving the final part of today's program for you Drop your questions into the chat at any time at twitch.tv slash EFF live We'll pick them up and respond to as many as we can towards the end of the an end of the hour And also know that EFF has a code of conduct for our public events. So please be kind You can check that out at EFF org slash event dash expectations So this series is a live discussion that looks back at some of the biggest battles of internet history and how they're shaving our digital future Today, we're taking a closer look at the movement but around creating an open web and also Discuss how digital access or the lack of access are affecting many of our communities across the country and around the world Joining me today are two special guests First guest is the EFF Associate Director of Policy and Activism Catherine Tren de Costa after getting her JD at USC Gold School of Law And following many years as a writer and editor at the science fictions and science website IO 9 Catherine joined EFF's activism team to focus on intellectual property net neutrality fair use Free speech online and intermediate liability issues a very wide portfolio and lots of very important issues to the internet Next I'm pleased to welcome net neutrality pioneer Gigi So she is one of the nation's leading public interest advocates for an open affordable and democratic communications network Gigi is a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for technology law and policy Benton senior fellow and public advocates and a member of the EFF's board of directors She was a counselor to the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Tom Wheeler Who gave us the 2015 open-intern order that many EFF membership are huge fans of and she has served as the co-founder and CEO of public knowledge a leading telecommunications media and technology policy advocacy organization where I Came across her as a former hillstaff or ink and joined the nonprofit sector there many years ago She is also a project specialist at the she was also a project specialist at the Ford Foundation's media arts and culture units an Executive director of the media access project a public interest law firm. So thank you both for joining us now to kick off the conversation here a Common philosophy that I explained to folks in my work and I do a lot of work in the policy space But why EFF cares about a certain issue is You know as the internet And technology evolves who we have always adopted the idea of our rights to remain the same or expand At its founding 30 years ago EFF was established You know at the early days of the internet when a lot of the legal questions about the privacy of the computer files Your freedom to express yourself on the internet And and how the digital world interacts with your civil liberties. These were just unknown We were unsettled on the questions and answers here and EFF as a law firm You know litigated many of the kind of the major cases that address these questions But now you know you looked at a you know if you look back then there was no legal field That focused on these issues whereas today practically every lawyer job involves some aspect of the internet and Now there are dozens of nonprofits that we collectively call civil society Including EFF a tackle a whole range of consumer issues So given that we have Gigi here with us today who really is one of the founding members of the public interest community decades ago You know, I would love that you Gigi to take us back to like the early days of consumer advocacy before we had You know EFF as robust as it is nowadays though. We are so tiny compared to who we can fight in between the government and the companies Because I think people will be surprised to learn just how much the fights were back then for internet freedom And how much they were reflected with the fights of today So Gigi take us back to specifically, you know, the work that you went into to find public knowledge And what was going on in Congress of those days and what what was the public debate of the internet back then? Sure, and just let me thank EFF for having me here today And I'm I am a very very proud EFF board member and want to thank all the supporters out in the audience Yeah, so just before just to give you a little preface Before was a public knowledge. I was at an organization Ernie. You mentioned media access project where I was fighting frankly hopelessly To try to get broadcasters and cablecasters to Abide by their public interest duties, which they actually have under the law. This was really It was pre-commercial internet, you know, the internet was you know an experiment that was going on in you know In government and in research universities, but obviously it was not a commercial thing and the top-down command and control Media at the time just did really gave no space for any kind of user control any kind of You know discussion democratic discussion of issues There was a policy called the fairness doctrine, which I won't get into but again It was always trying to force the gatekeepers to do the right thing So after I went to the Ford Foundation, I was asked to start public knowledge Largely because well first of all the internet was a thing then so this was 2001 and there's very little policy around it But what was happening was that the copyright industry so Hollywood recording industry the book publishers Saw this technology that gave people Power to control their you know own experience and what they wanted to see and what they wanted to listen to it It flipped them out So I was asked to form public knowledge more in reaction to what had been going on in the years In the years prior so in other words the passage of the digital Millennium Copyright Act I probably don't have to explain what this audience The membership were very familiar with that and problems that involved that law and then the 20-year extension of copyright law So I was approached by a bunch of academics including Larry Lessig Pam Samuelson another EFF board member Julie Cohen, Yochai Bankler They say look we the public interest community just got such as it was and it wasn't much right It was really the libraries did the best they could with limited resources To you know to push back against the DMCA and the extension of copyright and they failed We really need an organization in Washington that's dedicated to a free, you know a free and open Internet free of copyright gatekeepers and Free of ISP gatekeepers So, you know it was always about the commons and having the space where you know Where people could create people can innovate people can have democratic discourse So that the copyright work and then eventually became patent and trademark work as well And the and the and the internet work the open internet work one hand-in-hand So on the on the aspect of you know ISP gatekeepers, which we often you know ring into When we talk about issues of net neutrality How has the issue of net neutrality in your opinion evolved because often I think Particularly when it comes to media coverage and as I mentioned the 2015 open Internet order Some people think that's when it all started and and it actually goes back way way way further than that And I'd love to get your perspective from kind of the early days of what what was net neutrality is the bait and you know And how you think it the the movement has grown and changed over the years Sure, so You know, you're right To those to those whose interest it serves they treat that neutrality is a very recent issue But in fact it actually started in the late 1990s and But before I go through that history, I think it's really important to say That the issue of net neutrality right which we know as we don't want the ISPs blocking throttling Engaging in pay part is Asian or otherwise determining who wins and loses on the internet, right? That's the that's the understanding of the principle of net neutrality But it's always been tied up in the issue of who will regulate the on ramps to the internet not the internet itself But those companies that provide, you know internet access, so I think it's really really important to understand that This is a drum. I've been beating like for 20 years, right? It's not about blocking not about throttling. I mean it is but the real issue is are we going to have this, you know Highly concentrated some would say monopolistic industry without any government oversight so everything really started in the late 90s when the city of Portland's cable consumer protection agency Said to AT&T which was a which was a cable company at the time, okay? He's gone through a lot of different iterations Said your cable modem service, right? Which was the really DSL was the first broadband, but it was super slow and then but cable modem service was something different Your cable modem service is a cable service and we're going to regulate it like a cable service under title 6 of the Communications Act well needless to say AT&T went nuts They appealed it to the Ninth Circuit the Ninth Circuit said no, it's not a cable service It's a telecommunications service under title 2 of the of the communications act of 1934 and therefore needs to be regulated like a telephone service essentially, okay? So that was the first and by the way the FCC at the time which was Democratic run they would not get involved and it's funny I used to talk to this guy the guy who I forget his name Who was the head of the of the cable office in Portland at the time and bought this whole case? He begged the FCC to get involved and put his finger on the scale and said yes This is either a cable service or telecommunications service. They refused right call the ball or strike. Yeah, right? The Ninth Circuit decision comes out The administration changes and the FCC gets its opportunity under a public administration and the question gets raised again What is this cable modem service? Right DSL? They didn't include it and the FCC said It's an information service. It's an unregulated information service and that really got the ball rolling because and this was 2002 now prior to 2002 there was a very robust In robust competitive dial-up Internet Market the average American had a choice of 13 dial-up ISPs and prices were very very low I remember this Ernie, maybe you don't Catherine Maybe you don't but it was it was a time of incredibly robust competition because the Telecommunications Act of 1996 required dominant telecommunications providers to open up their networks to Competitors well once the FCC ruled that that cable modem service and then DSL and then wireless broadband was no longer a Telecommunications service, but in fact was Unregulated the competitive industry dried up. Okay, I'm leaving out a very important part that 2002 decision went all the way to Supreme Court In a case called brand X and the Supreme Court said, you know what? That's not really Calling cable modem service and the information service is not the best reading of the telecommunication of the communications act But it's not arbitrary and capricious. So we'll let it go the biggest dissenter Antonin Scalia, right? 2005 Liberal judge Liberal but a guy actually had a lot of background in Telecommunications issues and media issues. So anyway, I will go on and I don't want to go on and on and on Just to say that after that decision came down in 2005 the FCC decided to Apply the same reasoning to DSL apply the same reasoning to wireless data and The competitive industries as I said before completely dried up and that's where you found yourself with this incredible consolidation and Edge providers who at the time were people like Disney and AOL and Microsoft Were start to freak out And wanted something which at the time was called open access and then after Tim Wu came along and named it was called net neutrality So those were the early days, but it started in Portland then was accelerated by the deregulation of the FCC No, I it's I mean, it's always a fascinating step of history and I think the You know, I'm not I'm not too old but not too young But I do remember, you know having some choice when it comes down to access and you know, I fast forward to today I've got one option. That's all I don't even have to People you know talk about competition this market and it's it's a it's vanish It's it's disappear, but you know Catherine I mean, I thought folks told me that when net neutrality was going to be repealed All sorts of good things are supposed to happen from that, right? What actually happened, you know in the years that followed the restoring internet freedom order? Yeah order repealed net neutrality Yeah, because it was net neutrality that was holding the company's back for making good service And I think we've all seen as we spent the last year Relying so heavily on our internet access that it's been great. It's worked exactly as it was supposed to Yeah, so it's it's actually kind of interesting because both sides of this debate kind of accused the other one of saying either it's going to be great or the sky is falling whereas What's actually happened is more complicated. That is that nothing got better if anything things got slightly worse in the sense that companies were able to charge you more or in the case of things like HBO Max AT&T was able to zero rate it and preference its own content over Over the content of others because there wasn't net neutrality protections anymore at the same time Because there was this limbo because there was the Mozilla VFCC case challenging the net neutrality repeal and because California passed its own strong net neutrality protection in SBA 22 Everyone was kind of waiting to see exactly what would shake out before those companies went and like Rated everything in the cabinets and ran off like the Hamburglar so And all the deals that would have to be in place to do those quicker things Either you didn't see them or a lot of those companies already have deals with those ISPs The largest companies have those deals with the ISPs so that they can continue to work what what gets punished is Your smaller competitors and what we know didn't happen is none of the so-called money Those companies saved went into building anything No one's Investment in building better infrastructure went up if what happened with their massive tax cut and and out and net neutrality Is that they did stock buybacks to the which is when companies buy their own stock to make them look good for their investors so What ended up happening was basically nothing it didn't get better It wasn't it was never about customers getting a better deal and we're never going to get that net neutrality I always put it like in an ideal world. You have net neutrality protections and you have competition Right you have net neutrality protection so that no one can discriminate and you have options so that you can pick the System that works best for you or the company that has ideals you want to support in the world We have right now you have neither and that's a that's a bad place to be because most Americans can't choose an ISP so it's not like You can go pick an ISP that has a net neutrality commitment in their terms and conditions because your choices are Usually one of the major companies. I always say I live in San Francisco now. This is the first time in my life I've had a choice in my ISP The first time ever before it was always just like you would move into your building and and when you moved in they'd be like and here Are your options? It is one company. Please enjoy Comcast or AT&T but it's a funny it's a funny dynamic with With with San Francisco in particular and parts of San Francisco being You know I sit here on the East Bay as an EFF staffer for the sex team and work at the same building is Oh, and we're you know used to be in buildings, right? and I have I have a monopoly choice and I pay three times as much for less Than my co-workers who live closer into San Francisco and have choices between Sonic Comcast AT&T and monkey brains and monkey brains is a Wisp but also does some fiber Sonic is a creature of the 96 act but Gigi talked about about a competitive company I was created from an act of Congress The run by a gentleman by named Jane Jasper Jane Jasper who has a phenomenal story of when the internet and the network was more open Under under title to under 96 law as a college kid He started his internet company his internet service provider company and then eventually from a dial-up company became a DSL company too What it is today, which is a I think the largest competitive fiber entity in the country, which is right here in EFF's backyard, so It is it is one of those things where You are advocacy in in the infrastructure space and get there. I'm gonna follow up with you on this You know a handful of years ago EFF concluded that the lack of fiber infrastructure and fiber connectivity is a serious problem because When people needed more access and higher speeds you started losing choice And if we like if we look at internet access is what's like the slow mediocre speed? Oh, we have lots of those so there must be competition That's just not true and the pandemic I think is eviscerated that that argument wholesale But you know Catholic today, you know Congress is debating infrastructure You know, what do you see today is being the contours of the debate and what are the you know? Where do you think things stand now and and and you'll walk us through what you think happens next year? Yeah, I I think I also want to apologize for my cat She learned during quarantine that if I'm talking in the direction of my computer She gets a lot of attention if she wanders in front of the computer so she does it constantly So I would say what's fascinating to me about this debate about net neutrality and broadband access is that it's like For the people who live their lives. It's not a partisan issue, right? Most Americans support net neutrality Most Americans need internet access and in fact, it's it's rural Americans and it's Americans in places you would think of as red states Who desperately need better access who need the infrastructure and it's places like? Chattanooga, Tennessee that built their own fiber infrastructure So it doesn't follow any of those partisan lines But the nature of DC is that everything gets turned into something like that Which is really a problem because it's not a partisan issue Most Americans as I said most Americans support net neutrality and most Americans need to get online and want to get online And most Americans hate their ISP like I don't I don't know many people who are just like ride or die for sprint or AT&T or Comcast like That's not how it works So I think that that's sort of the unfortunate thing is That the debate gets really removed from the on the ground reality that The future is in a high-speed internet access. It's what we need The pandemic accelerated it in terms of showing us that but we were always headed there. This isn't a blip this is sort of what the future was going to look like and proved that it wasn't that that low-speed internet or Mobile or any of the things that can't handle high capacity isn't really Access and that is an equity problem that kids whose parents could get them online We're able to have a more normal school year than kids whose parents couldn't and People whose cool of places where they could get online with a good connection We're able to get jobs and keep jobs that other people couldn't like it's it is a pretty severe problem I also medical access it used to be that telehealth was like a necessity only in really rural areas or It was talked about only as a like last resort for if there wasn't a hospital nearby But it's becoming increasingly clear that that's it's just how people are going to be doing things in the future I've had several many telehealth Appointments in San Francisco and I live close to UCSF. I could walk to a hospital if I needed to But most of them were doing telehealth for routine stuff because of the pandemic So none of the things that used to be on the edges or on the edges anymore So it comes down to do we want to spend the money and Then who do we want to give the money to and I think that's a pretty big debate Which is to say that the major ISPs would say give the money to us We already provide internet service. We'll just keep doing that When time is shown as as the when they said they would do that because they would get money without neutrality That they don't do it because they're a monopoly. They have not enough because they are in many places Monopolies there's no incentive for them to do that. And so I think that's sort of the biggest sort of debating point is Should we do it which is yes, and who should we give the money to and the answer is not the major incumbent ISPs No, it's I mean, it's exactly right and I think you know We we've found in our own work is local public and local private options kind of a community localism of broadband is where it's at And we rely on these national players to do all the things that they just don't want to and at some point There's enough care. It's handed off to the same player. We shouldn't expect we can't expect a different result Just as a reminder, you know towards the end of this program We're going to take some questions in the chat if you have any questions you can drop them at twitch.tv slash EFF live And we'll respond to them towards the end of the hour We're going back to this conversation about the fight over competition, you know It's been happening for for many many years in DC, you know long before we ever got to this infrastructure debate And I think we've seen a lot of the mistakes of the past catching up to us today Particularly when it comes to mergers the telecom market used to be thousands of companies now It's like, you know, very very few. So I have a real specific question for you, Gigi. What's going on in this picture right here? What's going on that picture is a really bad haircut So that was 2011 and I was testifying against the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile And public knowledge is communications director at the time just happened to have one of these old This is like a first or second generation Wireless phones so at the time AT&T was the second largest wireless carrier T-Mobile was the fourth and they plan to merge and What I was pointing out there was at the At the birth of the wireless industry when those phones were, you know, the top There were seven companies and so we'd already Consolidated quite a bit and that this consolidation would further drive up prices And and further give consumers less choice. So, yeah, I mean look It's no secret I was major opponent of the sprint T-Mobile merger for the same reason. I'm hoping and Hoping against all hope that the dish network will actually be a competitor one day. It's working towards it And I will fight to ensure that it does become a fourth competitor because I think four is the minimum number of wireless providers We need but you know, it's happened. Unfortunately both under, you know, democratic and Republican Administrations just the enormous consolidation. I think it's the Institute for local self-reliance has found that something like 80 million Americans Operate under a cable monopoly for their broadband and another 40 or so Have DSL as their competitive choice and I put that in the air quotes because It's a little too slow to be, you know, to be competitive. So Look and this gets back to how I opened up this talk talking about authority, you know Restoring FCC authority over broadband allows it to promote competition to protect consumers from fraudulent billing and You know in other billing issues Allows them to close the digital divide right now the FCC is doing it on a wing in a prayer really and if somebody really wanted to challenge Their payment of subsidies for portable. It's a program called lifeline or their payment to Rural telco rural broadband providers to provide a broadband service. That's called the high-cost fund. It has a bunch of other names I won't repeat They might win in court because the FCC is really Not supposed to be supposed to be giving that money telecommunication services, which broadband providers are not It also calls in the question, you know, whether public safety can operate safely, you know Catherine talked a little bit about, you know, what's happened in the interregnum since the FCC repealed net neutrality and You know said that the FCC no longer had authority over broadband Well, one of the things that happened and this is close to home for you guys is that the Santa Clara County Fire Department Was getting its Getting its broadband throttled and this is the the system by which they not only talk to other public safety providers but also to the public during the Mendocino complex fire and You know net neutrality doubters or so well, that wasn't a net neutrality issue You know, they they just didn't pay enough to get the broadband that they deserved and I and I said that may be the case But the fire department had nowhere to go It couldn't go to the FCC to complain that about this It couldn't go to the Federal Trade Commission to complain It was funny because neither the FCC nor the FTC when this was become such a big issue It was I carried on all the network stations, right? None of them came out with a statement saying if they'd only come to us we could have done something about it So again, you know, when we talk about net neutrality We always have to think about, you know, the authority question because I think that's really what the ISPs fear is they don't want that regulatory oversight and right now they're unregulated and that's why You know, the former FCC chairman had to essentially beg the companies not to cut off people's service during the pandemic and not to, you know impose data caps on them They couldn't the FCC couldn't say you must The FCC had to say mother may I which the ISPs did do to their credit for three months and then they stopped doing it Can I ask a question Ernesto? I was thinking about those how much GDD you think because I've been wondering how much part of this has been in in Congress and other places the the idea that This is also complicated. We don't know what a Fiberoptic cable is or what an internet is and and these companies are telling us that this is the right thing to do So I guess they're they're right How much of that is this idea that it's you know technology is Hard to understand and so whatever that these quote-unquote experts hired by these cable companies tell us Must be the way forward. I Think that's a small part of it But not insignificant and that's why one of the things I've advocated for and this is another bipartisan issue, frankly Is more technical expertise on Capitol Hill? Yeah Used to be something called the office of technology assessment that one Antonin Scalia used to work for in the Yeah, I believe it was in the 70s that would give technical advice To to members of Congress and their staffs on these issues now. There is a sort of a burgeoning movement To get more technologists into those offices There's a group called tech Congress that places technologists in congressional offices and offices in regulatory agencies The Ford Foundation has led this public interest technology Initiative trying to get again more technologists interest in policy generally. So that's a very very good movement And we can't get it soon enough. I look I think part of it is you know, it's just about power You know that the ISPs have been you know, I've been regulated entities for in some of them a hundred years So they have lobbyists not only they not only have lobbyists and consultants One for every office on Capitol Hill and Ernie knows this better than anybody else because he was there But also the states right and and one of the things we didn't talk about was sort of the states as a battle ground For you know getting broadband to everybody and for net neutrality and for privacy. You guys know this you've done amazing work in California You know The broadband companies they they hate when the states do what they've they've been doing in California And they say well, we can't have a patchwork of laws blah blah blah blah blah Well, the fact of the matter is is the communications act contemplates both a federal and a state role in Communications and regulating communications and that's why every time the ISPs have gone to the courts to say No, no the fact that the federal government has no net neutrality regulation or no privacy regulation preempts State laws on net neutrality and privacy the courts even those conservative Trump appointed judges are like it doesn't work that way So another battleground that I think is really important. That's why the work the work you're doing in California is so important Similarly when Chattanooga Tennessee built its own fiber network the ISPs lobbied other states to pass form legislation that they wrote to make that Difficult or illegal in other states because they didn't want that kind of competition and they were very successful Yeah, I think it's only like 22 to 23 states have some sort of imposition It's a lot and it was wild about it now We think about the the massive disconnect in the legislatures with the public, you know, we're we're a membership organization We talked to people all the time You know, I saw this consumer reports study that showed you know I think three-quarters of Americans now think a broadband is the same as electricity and water in terms of its importance in everyday life And the idea that you would have an you know a unregulated monopoly selling you water Like who wants that no one wants that that's insane In California we Deregulated our power industry and the places that deregulated by which the places that didn't have municipal water and power I lived in LA. We had power northern California did not because because it had deregulated and similarly Texas set up its power grid to avoid regulation And we're not over there, right? No, I think it's things that are necessities We have we have concrete proof that deregulation does not work Yeah, and even EFF, you know, you know given this is our third year anniversary You know, there was a long road for EFF where we didn't actually support the government to be involved in this But the realities was you know, because we just had this You know, we we try to promote competition to wrap it to the bitter end and then it became to a point where like you you lack choice Too many mergers were allowed to go through and and you know, you can no longer discipline a company that doesn't fear Consumers leaving them We run into that other areas too and particularly in the technology sector, you know when people talk about big tech There's there was a different world of Technology companies who used to be very active in this space and then they got really big and then they kind of became the best friends of some of the bigger players in the market and so We always have to be vigilant of that so I want to wrap up just on this and give people time for the questions that have come in but just a Broad question both Catherine and Gigi and we'll start with Catherine and the Gigi to wrap us up But what should the future look like then? You know, what is what is what is a better world and and and what is your opinion of how we get there? I? I think a world in which we have fiber infrastructure and Any company that wants to get on that infrastructure can get on that infrastructure and sell it service and You get to choose from a from a list of options Maybe something has just a policy you like or they have some offering you like and you pay them more or less But that the speeds That we are paying for The speeds we are getting rather than the current situation where Americans pay more for worse service than than many other countries I would I would take parody in that realm at the very least And and we get there quite honestly at this point the same way we get wrote We got roads and freeways and all those things and that's major investment from from the government I Can't really think of a way at this point We're so far along in this problem that it's just gonna take a huge shovel to dig out. There's no piecemeal option right now Go go big or go home Gg, what do you think? Well, I absolutely to start from the from the end. I agree with Catherine Congress has got to make a big bet And I've actually not only in the federal level, but again, they did actually just give up a whole bunch of money the states I do think the states and localities know better where the holes are They're actually building the maps that the federal government hasn't built yet that determine Where you can build broadband and who has it? You know critically critically important But it's gonna take a big bet and the kind of numbers that President Biden's been talking about I think are the kind of numbers that we're gonna need So look in my perfect world everyone's connected to a future-proof fast and affordable and open internet Right. So, you know, you know what that means We have to we cannot make the same mistake that we made the past ten years So the FCC and other agencies have spent about 50 billion dollars over the last the last 10 years trying to Build broadband everywhere and they failed miserably. They invested in slow technologies They, you know, weren't weren't careful about where they built. So what do we have? We have slow networks We have still by one account 42 million Americans that don't have access to any network at all So we need to be much much smarter. It's not only about who gets the money Or how much or for what it's also how it's given out and that's one of the reasons why I'm favorable towards giving a big chunk to the states because again, they'll they'll they'll have a better idea of Where the need is and the federal government unfortunately last decade has failed miserably in that So we've got to do a better job of that Robust competition both in broadband and platforms We haven't talked much about the platforms today because this is about net neutrality But I think we all want that as well We don't want one social network or one micro blogging platform and you know, you know one e-commerce site We need more of that and that's a whole another conversation But the way you get competition in broadband is you know, you have more open access networks and you have communities building I mean, that's again allowing communities everywhere to build and Convincing them that it's doable. That's not a small thing because even in 26 or 27 states where you can't build there's not it's a little disappointing and Part of that is the price tag people see the price tag of building fiber up front and they freak out Okay, now now somebody's got to be telling them over the long term That's going to work out and by the way, this is where I think the pandemic has made a difference because in a lot of communities what's happened is You know local found philanthropic organizations and the government like, you know cobble together some money and they pay Comcasts or they pay AT&T and you know or they buy hot spots and they know that that is not going to work So I think you're going to see more and more communities say, you know, yeah It's a big ticket item up front but in the long term in the long run It's going to help and then you know again, this is you know, the same as as robust competition We've got to get rid of the monopolies and got to get rid of the bottlenecks I mean, that's you know, we have to control our own internet experience We have to be the creators. We have to be the innovators We can't have somebody else, you know, determining that for us and I say that goes both to the broadband Industry and the platform of providers as well. We need more choice and we need more say we need more control Well, well said so we're going to go ahead and pull some questions from from our online audience here I apologize if I get your username If I stayed it wrong because obviously these are user names are meant to be kind of fun So dr. CC on twitch here says I moved from San Francisco to the Sierra foothills in 2018 The axis is poor and very monopolistic fiber has started coming down the highway in the next county Any suggestions about motivating my county politicians to get on building that fiber infrastructure? And I'll ask that to Catherine because we deal a lot of this little activism work um, I think I Ernesto and I recently did a sort of local Virtual town hall on this issue and someone had advised that I think is is really important Which is don't underestimate how far one phone call to your local representative can go Very few people take the time to reach out. So if you do or you and some of your friends do That can move the needle way more than you think it can it you can also, you know Organize and do a whole bunch of other things look up a local organization There are quite a few especially now But even just one phone call will move the needle more than you think it will In in local access and if you are here in California a bunch of Changes in state law and and a bunch of money has sort of freed up so you can sort of lobby for that another good resource Almost always are your local libraries. They are almost always on the forefront of these issues and Are very good about it and and are really good Resources and places to sort of start Yeah, no Just what I what I found when I was at the FCC I Used to you know go around the country, you know making speeches in places where they built these and I've always found That there was always one person in on the county council or the city council Who was just so passionate about this right now if you could find that person, that's great If that person doesn't exist you have to create that person You know, I was just talking to a state legislator in West Virginia is trying to build an open access network there And he's like a dog with a bone I mean he is just gonna he's just gonna get it done and it's trying to find those people particularly now again In the aftermath of the pandemic I think you're gonna find more of those folks that really really you know want to build networks want to take the fiber assets in the community and Build something that's lasting and that will you know connect the unconnected? also ironically the further you are from a major Market you might actually find it slightly easier because if they aren't connecting you They won't see it as a loss in customer base the way that when when San Francisco tried to build a Municipal fiber line There's a there was a lot of resistance to that because no one wants to lose access to Selling bad internet to people here Well, and I go I'll add one thing so part of my work since California You know for the Californians watching right now We actually have we just published today just to check out the EFF blog But the state of California and the legislature is making a decision next week on what to do with the state surplus and the federal rescue money We have about seven billion dollars that our governor in this day is identified for public infrastructure We're talking about you know the state building up middle mile open access fiber networks to bring in much everyone And enabling municipalities cooperatives nonprofits all of that the alternative models That have been underutilized as solutions and and giving them a whole ton of money to give them a chance You know essentially the Biden plan You know is on the verge of being agreed to a California or or shelled or postponed And so, you know, it's really important go to the EFF dot org You know, it's our most recent published blog about Sacramento and seven billion dollars Because I think if you give communities a a budget and an account and an ability to access funding If they go forth many many will and it helps them Oh, you know as Gigi you said kind of get over that price tag if they know their support You know if they know the the fifth largest economy state government is back in your play That gives an awful lot of confidence, but we have to we have to get there first So hopefully next week EFF will have some good news To report to our constituents because we're we're coming around the corner on that. So there are next questions from Zeep free on Twitch Question post to you Gigi What what are the largest issues currently preventing new competitors from competing from the largest providers? I mean the Basically, they can't get at I mean everything like here's here's here's why I mean That is a in a lot of ways a hard question to answer. I do think the fact that Competitors can't get access to polls Right. So those telephone polls in your neighborhood. This is one of the reasons why Google fiber failed in a lot of places That's one and a lot in in some cases those polls are controlled by a city or state in some cases They're controlled by the incumbent provider They can't get into condos and an apartment buildings I think I think Katherine was mentioning that right this we call them multi-tenant environments 30% of Americans live in multi-tenant environments and They're allowed exclusive so they cut sweetheart deals the landlords cut sweetheart deals with the incumbents So that's another reason and then again, there's no requirement that That There's no requirement that incumbents open up their networks like there was pre 2002 as I've discussed before and then again the barriers to To entry for community broadband networks and also just again the price Right. I mean and in some cases a community Look, you need to dig up public roads in order to build these networks And you know in a lot of cases the city is like that we're fine with our one or two So they're an awful lot of barriers That good policy could fix So one of the really interesting ones you mentioned there that we have a personal experience with a ZFF We actually do local campaigns around this is that apartment complex monopoly dynamic So San Francisco is the first city in the state of California that basically banned To take a step back for folks to understand Comcasts will enter an agreement with the landlord and landlord association and say hey For every customer you could sign up in that building to us We'll give you a little extra from their broadband bill and and you could see the incentive of like okay Well, if I could do 100 of the customers, I'll get a hundred percent of the benefit from the you know the cable Payola as Susan Crawford described in a wired article and You know San Francisco issued a local ordinance, so you know regulation doesn't have to happen only from the FCC There's actually a local play in a state play in a county play and all this But they basically the competition policy was landlords are not allowed to prevent Competitors from entering apartment buildings absent like a legitimate reason for like health and safety because what was happening As I mentioned earlier, we have the largest competitive fiber provider of Sonic in the area They couldn't you know, they're selling gigabit $40 internet, right? And they can't get the people in attendance because the landlord would say just get off my lawn You're not allowed in my building and so they're exerting this property, right? You know as a way to maintain a hundred percent cap captivity with with their agreement with their cable company, so You know we've banned that in the state in the city of San Francisco And we are working on Oakland and Berkeley and all the we're kind of working our way out from this area And someday we will get across the whole state But it's one of those simple things that people may not realize denies you know competition because It's easy to get an apartment building lots of people in a very small place not a lot of money to connect them But if the landlord says no, then you're out of luck and Go for a cover. Yeah, I just like I still remember my shock when I moved here from New York, which is where I was before I worked for EFF and the management when I moved in was like Here are all of your options for internet and like we like Sonic You should probably go with them many people in the building do I was like I don't understand this I didn't have this choice before Yeah, I know it's like a you know, and this is why you know GG You're you're you're you know being at the forefront in the in the history of this you know people You know younger than me have no memory You know no memory of of what the world was and how law and policy actually make a world the difference here All right, so let's grab it one another question I think we had time for probably two more before the wrap-up, but this one is from a Fred Flintstone on YouTube Can we reasonably expect Government to be a solution to a market failure when regulatory or unregulatory capture of that government is essentially the cause of the market failure? Catherine, I'll pose that question to you So I think I think that that's a fair question because the longer I work at EFF the more skeptical I actually get about about government When it comes to technology But at the same time what caused this problem wasn't even as much of capture as it was Not doing anything or having a policy that worked and then rolling it back I think that's really the thing to point out is that a lot of like as you do said back when the Telecommunications Act required them to give acts the large companies to give access to competitors that worked That's why Sonic exists in San Francisco, and I swear to God. We're not sponsored by Sonic It's just because it's what's here. It's the most ready example Like we know that net neutrality was protected under the open internet order and the sky didn't fall and it worked and And it was sustaining something that had existed before net neutrality had been Just sort of how the internet worked for a long time. They were just protecting that So I think and and in the case of like the FCC that wasn't regulatory capture I think if you think way back when to the first time John Oliver did his episode on net neutrality he Called out Tom Wheeler and called him a a coyote that you've put in charge of your Dingo, yeah, that's right your babies like he and Tom Wheeler was the was the Chair of the FCC who passed that neutrality you can't necessarily make bets on Whether you can or can't Trust it, but you can make bets on what we know has worked in the past and why we should do it again GG you were there on the on the team when Tom Wheeler was called a dingo I believe what what out of the former chairman take that one and and You did did that have an impact on his overall thinking about how to be a you know the head of the regulatory agency at the time I will tell you what did have an impact and it plays into what Catherine just said people there was a constant drumbeat of regular people calling Emailing sometimes we get these like email dumps like 2000 emails at 11 o'clock at night And my chief of staff would call me they GG make it stop You know protest in front of the White House Protest laying down in front of my my boss's you know driveway, so he couldn't use he's like six foot seven And he had a Cooper mini go figure That should be a car for me not for him That pressure worked it worked not only on my boss It worked on the White House big time right the White House Politicles are like Why are we not supporting title to net neutrality? This is crazy, you know, everybody wants it, you know, so You know, you can talk about regular regulatory capture, you know In some but some folks is true with some agencies is true, but nothing beats industry I would say also in the halls of Congress more than ordinary people saying we want this That's how you get through and it worked big time You know in in 2015 and it was a great time to be there, but boy, there were a lot of sleepless nights I was I was a journalist and I had been assigned by by my boss To read through all of the comments being submitted For net neutrality and pull out the best and the funniest and I distinctly remember opening up a comment That was huge and someone had submitted all the entire script for the Lord of the Rings movies It's just staring at it like this can't be helpful Well, and and what's what's funny is you know if as one of the drivers of many that the comments because we do a campaign around it and your net neutrality is definitely the one that You know through and through people people of all walks of life care a whole ton about it And I remember You know the the idea of common carriage and title to and all that you know There was a time when that was considered absolutely impossible politically and you fast forward That was only not that long. I mean, I think it's like seven or eight years ago feels at this point Maybe maybe a little longer than that But you know what what's the actual votes in Congress show and you know to Gigi's point You know when we had to do the Save the net act, you know Catherine ran this campaign for EFF We got we as a bipartisan vote in the United States Senate, you know, we had three Republican senators joining with all the Democrats So that wasn't save the net that was the CRA saved the net was the house Oh, right, right, right, right. That's right because it was that's right because it was that and then the sequence that followed But you know the point being like there's a there's a bipartisan majority on one side of this debate and not a you know In a minority on the other vet Generally, it hopes that the people cannot you know break through at the end of the day I know we'll take one more question here from the audience before we have to conclude but We got Kevin M on Twitch From a fiber perspective should the fiber one and data layer two Be managed by some type of government or government regular entity or nonprofit with the network layer Being provided by multiple ISP similar to the utopia network. So utopia is this network in Utah That is a collaborative effort by a bunch of local governments to build at what's called an open access fiber network Or would it be better for government or government regular entities or not for us to manage the entire network from fiber through the network layer you know, I'll give a Quick take on that and I love to you know, feel free to chime in but You know, I think the reality is there are going to be different solutions for different communities and really you just want to empower all the local options so long as they're building you know with the future and So long as we need more access tomorrow than than the day before in terms of capacity you want to build some of its mental last for not just a jet you know a few years before a generation or two and What's happening in Utah? And this is just one of the most fascinating things about this debate is Utah is a state of the Union has the most municipal fiber in the country You know represented by a very conservative legislature and a very conservative, you know federal representation And you know, I think they show like when when lots of communities band together You can do these kind of large open-scale projects But I also say on the flip side, you know small townships and in areas we have rural cooperatives You know, you probably are relying on them to build their own and run their own network And that's fine because they own it, you know, so, you know, you're not worried about your neighbor screwing you When you own part of the own your own network You charge what you need to charge to make it run efficiently. I love anyone else. I'm gonna go for it Say like it's I think that you've got utopia on one side And then that's an example for the first one and for the second one It's Chattanooga is sort of the example of the other one where they run everything through one municipally owned Service and they serve different There they serve different functions in terms of a problem And I think it's important to note that that some of these problems are just different and there are different answers I think you're right Ernesto in cities You know, many people might think that they have options or that their internet isn't expensive because they live in the part of the city That hasn't been what's called digitally redlined Because in an affluent part of the city many ISPs are trying to get there because they want your your money But they might not get service. So there's like a that's a different problem From in rural areas where part of the problem is access pure Brigade And that they just need to build it and they're building fiber because they have to because no one else is and so different kinds of problems are gonna have different solutions I Think actually the reason that utopia is an open access network is because Utah law Rehibits the community from providing last mile service. So it's interesting It's a very pro competitive way to get around a restriction and I think that's a restriction in a bunch of states So if they would just want to build open access networks to get around that restriction, I'm down But again, you know like Chattanooga already had a municipal utility, so it wasn't that hard for them to kind of take it to the next step I'm with you Ernie. It's like different strokes and different and different business models for different communities But communities should be empowered to make that decision rather than have you know, the state legislature tie their hands So with that I'm gonna bring us to a conclusion. We're at the top of the hour first. Thank you Katherine Thank you Gigi for joining us today. I also want to thank all the folks that have tuned in and have contributed to this discussion You know everyone around the world here watching We can't do this work without your support. And so for over 30 years EFF has stood alongside you on the front lines of the movement for privacy free expression Innovation online and we need we always need your help to keep up the fight So if you haven't yet, I ask you humbly to consider be donating the EFF today becoming a member You can go to EFF.org slash 30 Because your support is the reason why Katherine and I could do the work we do on your behalf We we do work for you in that sense And so that's all the time we have for today. I hope you know I hope you'll continue these conversations and consider how we can assure technology supports freedom justice Innovation and equity for all people around the world and thank you again for for coming and see you at our next live stream. Have a great night