>>ERNESTO: Hey everyone I am Ernesto Falcon and I am the senior legislative counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and welcome to today's fireside chat. This is our conversation series commemorating 30 years of fighting for user freedom. Thank you very much for joining us, a couple of reminders. We are saving the final part of today's program for you, and you can drop your questions in the chat anytime at twitch TV/EFF live. We will pick them up and respond to as many of those as we can toward the end of the hour. Please know that we have a code of contact for public event, so please be kind you could check that out at eff.org/event-expectations.

So this series is a live discussion, looks back at some of the biggest battles in Internet history and how they are shaping our digital future. Today we are taking a closer look at the movement around creating an open web and also discussing how digital access or the lack of access are affecting many of our communities around the country and around the world. Joining me today are 2 special guests, 1st is the EFF associate director of policy and activism, Katharine Trendacosta. After getting her JD at the USC Gold school of Law, and following many years at the science fiction website I09, Katharine joined our activism team to focus on intellectual property, net neutrality, fair use, free speech online, and intermediary liability issues. She has a very wide portfolio with a lot of important issues. 
Next I am pleased to welcome net neutrality Pioneer Gigi Sohn. She is 1 of the nation's leading public interest advocates for an open affordable and Democratic communications network. She is a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Technology, Law, and Policy, a senior fellow and public advocate, and a member of our Board of Directors. As she was counselor to former chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, who gave us the 2015 open Internet order, and she is a leading telecommunications media and technology policy advocate. Where I came across her as a former Hill staffer, who joined the nonprofit center many years ago [distortion]and Executive Director of the media Access Project, a public interest law firm. So thank you both for joining us. So to get off the conversation, and Executive Director of the media Access Project, a public interest law firm. So thank you both for joining us. So to get off the conversation, a philosophy that I explained the folks in my line of work philosophy that I explained the folks in my line of work is as the Internet and technology evolves, we've always adopted the idea that our rights remain the same, and it was founded 30 years ago, we were established in the early days of the Internet when a lot of the legal questions about the privacy of computer files or freedom to express yourself on the Internet and how the digital world interacts with your civil liberties—these were just unknown. And EFF as a law firm litigated many of the major cases that addresses these questions. But now when you look today, if you look back, there was no legal field focused on these issues, and now every lawyers job involves some aspect of the Internet and now there are dozens of nonprofits that we collectively call civil society, including a whole range of consumer issues. So given that we have Gigi with us today, 1 of the founding members decades ago, I would love if you, Gigi, would take us back to the early days of consumer advocacy before we had EFF as robust as is it is today. Because I think people will be surprised to learn just how much the fights were back then for Internet freedom and how much they are reflected with the fights of today. So, Gigi, take us back specifically to the work that you went into defined public knowledge, and what was going down in Congress those days, and what was the public debate on the Internet back then.

>>GIGI: Sure, let me thank EFF for having me here today, and I have a very proud EFF board member and I want to thank all the supporters in the audience. So just before, just to give you a little preface, before the public knowledge I was in an organization called the media Access project where I was fighting, frankly hopelessly, to try to get broadcasters and cable casters to abide by their public interest duties, which they actually have under the law. This is really a precommercial Internet day. I was an experiment that was going on with government and universities, but obviously not a commercial thing. And the top-down command and control media at the time just gave for any kind of user control, any kind of discussion, democratic discussion of issues, there was a policy called the fairness doctrine which I will not get into, but again it was always trying to force the gatekeepers to do the right things. So after I worked at the Ford foundation I was asked to start public knowledge, largely because well, 1st of all the Internet was not a thing then. This was in 2001. And there was very little policy around it. But what was happening was that the copyright industries, so Hollywood, the recording industry, the book publishers, they saw this technology gave people power to control their own experience and what they want to see and listen to, and to flip them out. So I was asked to form public knowledge more in reaction to what had been going on in the years prior, so in other words the passage of the Digital millennium copyright act, I probably don't have to explain one thing to this audience—-- and then the 20 year extension of copyright law. As I was approached by a bunch of academics including Larry Lessig, and other board members, Julie Cohen, and they were saying look, the public interest community, such as it was, and it wasn't much,—it was really the libraries doing the best they could with limited resources to push back against the DMCA and the extension of copyright and they failed. We really needed an organization Washington dedicated to a free and open Internet, free copyright -- free of copyright gatekeepers and free of ISP As though it was always about the common space where you could innovate, people could have democratic discourse, so that the copyright work and eventually became patent and trade work work—this all went hand-in-hand. 

>>ERNESTO: So on the aspect of ISP gatekeepers, which often bring into issues of net neutrality, how is the issue of net neutrality in your opinion involved? Because often I think that particularly when it comes to media coverage, and I mentioned 2015 open ended order, some people think that's all when it actually started. It really goes way back further than that. I would like to get your perspective on how that began, and how you think the movement has grown and changed over the years. 

>>GIGI: Sure. So you are right, and to those whose interest is served, they treat net neutrality is very recent issue, but in fact it also really started in the late 1990s. Before we go to that history is important to say that the issue of net neutrality, which we know as we don't want the ISPs locking and throttling and engaging in paper art isolation or other eye determining who wins and loses on the Internet. That's the understanding of the principle of net neutrality, but it's always been tied up in the issue with you will recognize and regulate the on-ramp to the Internet. Not the Internet itself, but those companies that provide Internet access. It's really important to understand that this is a drama been beating for 20 years, it's not about blocking, it's not about throttling, the real issue is we going to have this highly concentrated some would say monopolistic, industry, without any government oversight? So everything really started in the late 90s when the city of Portland, there cable protection agency, cable, consumer protection agency, said ATT which was a cable company at the time, they said your cable modem service -- which was really the 1st broadband, it was DSL but it was super slow, but cable modem service was something different. This was a cable service, and they said were going to regulate a Leica cable service under title VI of the Communications Act that appear. Well needless to say AT&T went nuts, they appealed it to the Ninth Circuit, and the Ninth Circuit said no it's not a cable service, it's a telecommunications service under title II of the Communications Act of 1934 and therefore needs to be regulated like a telephone service essentially. So that was the 1st -- by the way the FCC at the time which was democratic run would not get involved. The head of the table office in Portland at the time they brought 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. Call this a ball or a strike. In the 9th circuit decision comes out, the FCC gets his opportunity under a Republican administration and the question gets raised again. What is this cable modem service? DSL was not included. In the FCC said that it is an information service, and it is an unregulated information service, that really got the ball rolling. This would 2000 too. prior to 2002 there was a very robust competitive dialogue Internet market. The average American had a choice of 13 ISPs, and the prices were really very low. I don't know if you remember this or not, but at the time it was incredibly robust competition because telecommunications act of 1996 required dominant providers to open up their networks to competitors. Once the FCC ruled that a cable modem service and then DSL on their wireless broadband was no longer a telecommunications service, but in fact was unregulated in the competitive industry dried up. Muting out a very important part—this 1 all the way to the Supreme Court in a case called Brand X. The Supreme Court said this is not really an information service, that's not the best reading act—not the best reading of that act, but is not arbitrary and capricious so we will let it go. Biggest in the center was and Anthony Scalia. I don't want to go on and on but I want to say that after that decision came down in 2005 the FCC decided to apply the same reasoning to DSL and to wireless data, and the competitive industries completely dried up. That's where you find yourself with this incredible consolidation and edge providers who at the time were people like Disney, and AOL, and Microsoft, who were starting to freak out. They wanted something which at the time was called open access, and then after Tim Wu came along and named it, it was called net neutrality. So those were the early days, started in Portland, and then accelerated by the deregulation of the FCC. 

>>ERNESTO: It is always a fascinating step of history and I think -- I'm not too old, but not too young, but I do remember you having some choice when it seemed out of access, and if you fast-forward to today I've got one apps option. That's all. You know people talk about competition in the market, but it's vanished. You know people talk about competition in the market, but it's vanished. So, Katharine, also serves post things were supposed to happen but what actually happened in the years that followed restorative Internet freedom order? 

>>KATHARINE: Yeah, because it was net neutrality that was holding the companies back from making good service, and I think we've all seen as we spent the last year relying so heavily on our Internet said it's been great too. is worked exactly as it was supposed to. 's so it's actually kind of interesting because both sides of this debate kind of accuse the other, saying either is going to be great or the sky is falling. Whereas what is actually happening is more complicated. That is, nothing got better, if anything things got slightly worse in the sense that companies were able to charge more or, in the case of things like HBO Max, AT&T was able to 0 rated and preference its own content over the contents of others because there was no net neutrality protection anymore. And at the same time because there was this limbo, because there was this FCC case challenging net neutrality and because California passed its own strong net neutrality protection, everyone was kind of waiting to see exactly what we shake out before those companies went and rated everything in the cabinets and read enough like the hamburger. So all of the deals that would have to be in place to do those particular things either you didn't see them or a lot of those companies arty had deals with those ISPs. Those bias largest companies to have those deals so that they could continue to work. What gets punished is your smaller competitor. And what we know it didn't happen is that none of those so-called monied companies that they "saved" went into building anything. No one's investment in building better enter infrastructure went up, what happened was with their massive tax cut they did stock buybacks. 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 was never about customers getting a better deal, and we are never going to get that. Net neutrality—I we say in an ideal world you have net neutrality protection and you have competition. 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 that we have right now we have neither and that is a bad place to be because most Americans cannot choose an ISP so it's not like you can go back an ISP that has a net neutrality commitment in their terms and conditions, because your choices are usually 1 of the major companies. I would say I live in San Francisco and now this is the 1st time in my life I've had a choice in my ISP. 1st time ever. It was always before like you would move into your building and they say here are your options—it is one company, please enjoy Comcast, or AT&T -- 

>>ERNESTO: The funny thing that happens with San Francisco in particular and parts of the San Francisco being -- I sit here on the East Bay as a staffer and work in the same building that we used to be in, when we used to be in buildings—-- and I have a monopoly twice and I pay 3 times as much for less than my coworkers who live closer to San Francisco and have choices between sonic, Comcast, ATT, and monkey brains. So today the contours of the debate and where do you think things stand now, and walk you through what you think happens next year? 

>>KATHARINE: I want to apologize for my cat dubbed as she learned during quantity that if I'm talking the direction of my computer she gets a lot of attention if she wanders in front of the computer—so I would say, what is fascinating to me about this debate,.net neutrality and broadband access is that it's like for the people who live their lives, is not a partisan issue. Most Americans support net neutrality, most Americans need Internet access and in fact it is rural Americans and in places that you would think of as red states who desperately need better access, in places like Chattanooga Tennessee, that have their own infrastructure, so it does not follow any of those partisan lies. But the nature of Washington DC is that everything gets turned into something like that which is really a problem. Because it is not a partisan issue. Most Americans support net neutrality most Americans need to get online I want to get online, and most Americans hate their ISP. I don't know anybody who is like ride or die for Sprint or AT&T or Comcast. That's not how it works. So I think that's sort of the unfortunate thing is that the debate removed from the underground reality that the future is in high speed Internet access. What we need. So the pandemic accelerated it in terms of showing us that we were always headed there. This is in the blood. This is sort of what the future was going to look like. And this proved that it wasn't -- to prove that low-speed Internet or mobile or any of the things that cannot handle high-capacity isn't really access. And that is an equity problem. So kids whose parents could get them online were able to have a more normal school year than parents whose kids couldn't get online. And people who can get online with good connections, get jobs and keep jobs that other people couldn't. It's a pretty severe problem. Also medical access, you see that telehealth was like a necessity only in really rural areas, or talked about only as a last resort if there was in a hospital but it is increasingly clear that that is just how people are going to be doing things in the future. I have had many telehealth appointments in San Francisco and I live close to the hospital I can walk to if I needed to. But most of them are doing telehealth for routine stuff because of the pandemic. So none of the things that used to be on the edges are on the edges anymore, so it comes down to, do we want to spend the money? Then who do we want to give the money to? I think that is a pretty big debate, which is to say that the major ISPs would say give the money to us! Already provide Internet service, we'll just keep doing that. In time has shown that when they said they would do that because they would get money that they don't do it. Because they are a monopoly, and because they are in many places monopolies, there is no incentive for them to do that. And I think that is the biggest sort of debating point, is should we do it? Which is yes. And who should we give the money to? The answer is not to the incumbent ISPs. 

>>ERNESTO: That is exactly right and what we found in our own work is that local public, local private options, kind of a community localism of broadband is where we are. We rely on these national players to do all the things that they just don't want to do. And at some point there is enough handed out to the same player, we shouldn't expect—just reminder toward the end of this program, remind you were going to take some questions in the chapter If you have any questions you can drop them in the chat. And we will get to them at the end of the hour. So this fight over competition has been happening for many years in Washington DC, long before we ever got to this infrastructure debate. I think we seen a lot of the mistakes of the pass catching up does up to us today particularly when we talk about mergers. So I have a real specific question for you, GG. Was going on in this picture right here? 

>>GIGI: [laughing] Was going on in 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 communication director at the time just happened to have 1 of these old -- and this is like a 2nd generation wireless phone—so at the time AT&T was the 2nd largest wireless and T-Mobile was the 4th. And they plan to merge, and what I was pointing out there at the birth of the wireless industry when those funds were the top, there were 7 companies. So we had already consolidated quite a bit and that this consolidation would further drive up prices and further give consumers less choice. So, yeah, look. I was a major opponent of the Sprint and T-Mobile merger for the same reason, and I am hoping and hoping against all hope that the dish network will actually be a competitor one day. Is working towards it. And I will fight to ensure that it does become 1/4 competitor because I think 4 is the minimum number of wireless partners that we need. But unfortunately it happens under both Democratic and Republican administrations, that there is this enormous consolidation. The Institute versus local self-reliance is 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. With that in air quotes because it's a little too slow to be competitive. And this gets back to how I opened up the stock, talking about authority. Restoring FCC authority over broadband allows it to promote competition, to protect consumers from fraudulent billing, and other billing issues, and allows them to close the digital divide. Right now the FCC is doing it on a wing and a prayer, really, and something I really wanted to challenge. Their payment of subsidies, for some people it's a lifeline, or their payment to world broadband providers to provide broadband service that's called the high cost fund, with a bunch of other names I won't repeat. They might win in court because the FCC is really not supposed to be giving that money telecommunication services whether they provide broadband or not. It also calls into question whether public safety can operate safely. Katharine talked a little bit about what is happened since the FCC repealed that neutrality, and said that the FCC no longer had authority over broadband. But 1 of the things that happen and this is close to home for you guys, is that the Santa Clara County fire Department was getting its broadband throttle, and this is the system by which they not only talk to others public safety providers but also to the public during the Mendocino complex fire. And you know net neutrality doubters got together and said that's not a net neutrality issue, they just didn't pay enough to get the broadband they deserve, and I said that may be the case, but the fire department had nowhere to go. It could not go to the FCC to complain about this, they could not go to the Federal Trade Commission to complain. It was funny because neither the FCC nor the FTC -- none of them came out to say wow if they'd only come to us we could've done something. So again, when we talk about net neutrality, wheels have to think about the authority question because I think that's really what the ISPs fear is that they don't want that regulatory oversight. Right now they are unregulated. That's why the former FCC Chairman had to essentially bake the companies not to cut off people service during the pandemic and not to impose data Them. They Couldn't Say You Must, the FCC Had to Say Mother May I, at Which the ISPs Did Do, to Their Credit, for 3 Months and Then They Stop Doing It. 

>>KATHARINE: I Have a Question â€... How partisan has this been during all this in Congress? In Congress and other places. The idea is that this is also complicated, we don't know what a fiber-optic cable is or what Internet is. These companies are telling us that this is the right thing to do. How partisan has this been during all this in Congress? In Congress and other places. The idea is that this is also complicated, we don't know what a fiber-optic cable is or what Internet is. These companies are telling us that this is the right thing to do. I guess there right—how much of this is that idea that you know technology is hard to understand. And so whatever these quote unquote experts hired by these cable companies tell us must be the way forward? 

>>GIGI: I think that is a small but not insignificant part of moving forward, and 1 of the reasons that I've advocated for this and another bipartisan issue. Frankly it's more technical expertise on Capitol Hill used to be something called the Office of Technology Assessment that one Anthony's, Leah used to work for believe it or not it was in the 70s. It would give technical advice to members of Congress and their staffs on these issues. There is been a sort of burgeoning movement to get more technologists into these offices, and we need more in regulatory agencies, and the Ford foundation has led this public interest technology initiative, trying to get more technologists interested in policy generally. That's a very very good movement, and we cannot get it soon enough. So I think part of it is just about power. The ISPs have been regulated entities for, some of them for 100 years. So they have obvious not only now, one for every office on Capitol Hill, but also at the states. And 1 of the things we did not talk about was that the sort of the states are the battleground for getting broadband to everybody and for net neutrality dubbed as you guys know this because you've done amazing work in California. And the broadband companies hate when the states do what they have been doing in California and they say well we cannot have a patchwork of laws, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah. But the fact of the matter is that the Communications Act kind of place with the federal interstate role in communications and regulating communications, that is why every time the ISPs have gone to court, the court say no no, the fact of the federal government has no net neutrality or no privacy regulation preempts state laws on net neutrality or privacy. In the courts, even conservative trump appointed judges alike, it doesn't work that way. So that's another battleground that is really important. As for what you're doing here in California so important. 

>>KATHARINE: Similarly when Chattanooga Tennessee built its own fiber network, the ISPs lobbied other states to pass for legislation that they wrote to make that difficult or illegal in other states because they did not want that kind of competition. 

>>GIGI: And they were very successful here 

>>KATHARINE: Yeah something like 22 or 23 states have some sort of imposition. 

>>ERNESTO: Yet we talk to people all the time, and I saw this Consumer Reports study that showed that three quarters of Americans now think broadband is as important as electricity and water in terms of its import in everyday life.) The idea that you would have an unregulated monopoly selling you water, like who wants that? No one wants that. That's insane. 

>>GIGI: Would also say in California we deregulated our power industry and the places that deregulated, that did not have municipal water and power, like we in LA, we had power, but Northern California did not, because it had deregulated.) Similarly Texas set up its power grid to avoid regulation, and they had a bad time too. So these are things that are necessities. We have concrete proof that deregulation does not work. 

>>ERNESTO: Yeah and even at EFF, you know given that this is our 3rd year anniversary, you know there was a long road where we didn't actually support this, and we would just try to promote competition right up to the bitter end, and it became to a point where it was like you lack a choice, too many merges were allowed to go through, and you can no longer discipline the company that doesn't fear consumers leaving them. We run into that in other issues, particularly the technology sector. Technology companies used to be very active in the space they got very big and the kind of became the best friends of some of the biggest players. We have to be vigilant of that. So I want to wrap up this and give people time for questions that are common, but just a broad question for both of you right now, but what should the future look like? What is a better world? And what is your opinion of how we get there? 

>>KATHARINE: I think a world in which we have hyper infrastructure and any company that wants to get on that fiber infrastructure can get on that infrastructure and sell it as a service and you get to choose from a list of options, maybe someone has a policy you like or they have some offering you like and you pay them more, or less, but the speeds that we are paying for are the speeds we are getting, where we currently pay more for worse service than many other countries. I would take parity in that realm at the very least. And we get there, quite honestly at this point, the way we got roads and freeways and all those things. That's major investment from the government. I cannot really think of a way at this point, we are so far along in this problem, that is just going to take a huge shovel to dig out. There is no piecemeal option right now. 

>>ERNESTO: Go big or go home too. 

>>GIGI: Well to start from the end, I agree with Katharine, Congress has got to make a big bet. And actually not only at the federal level, but again, they did actually just put a whole bunch of money to the states, and I think the states and localities know better where the holes are. The actually building the maps at the federal government has been built yet, that determine where you can build broadband, where it's critically important, but it's going to take a big bet. And then kind of numbers the Pres. Biden have been talking about are the kind of numbers we are going to need. So look in my perfect world everyone is connected to a future proof, fast and oh portable and open Internet. So you know what that means, we cannot make the same mistake that we made in the past 10 years, so the FCC and other agencies spend about 60 billion dollars over the last 10 years trying to build broadband everywhere and it failed miserably. Are they invested in slow technologies, they weren't careful about where they built barracks so now we have slow networks. By one account we still have 42 million Americans that don't have access to any network at all. So we need to be much smarter, it's not only about who gets the money or how much work for what, it's also how it is given out. That's why I am favorable towards getting a big chunk of the stage because again they will have a better idea of where the needed. And unfortunately the federal government in the last decade is failed miserably in that. So we've got a do a better job of that. So, robust competition, both in broadband and platforms, I think we want that as well. We don't want one social network or one microblogging platform, we need more e-commerce sites, we need more of all that. That is a whole another conversation. But either way when you get competition, you have more open Access networks and you have more communities building, and that allows communities everywhere to build and convince them that it's doable. That is not a small thing, because even though there were 26 or 27 states for you can build, that is a little disappointing. Part of that is the price tag, because they see the price tag building fiber up front and they freak out. As something that is going to be coming over the long-term, and this will work out, and this is somewhere I think that the pandemic has made a difference, is because in a lot of communities what is happened is that local philanthropic organizations and the government has cobbled together some money to pay Comcast, or AT&T, or they buy hotspots, and they know that that is not going to work. So I think you can see more and more communities say yeah, it is a big ticket item up front, but in the long run is going to help. And again the same for robust competition, we've gotta get rid of the monopolies and get rid of the bottlenecks. We have to control our own Internet experience. We have to be the creators, we have to be the innovators. We cannot have somebody else determine that for us and I say that goes both to the broadband industry and the platform providers as well. We need more choice and we need more control and we need more say. 

>>ERNESTO: Well said. So we are going to go ahead and pull some questions from our online audience here, so if I use your name or say your name wrong -- Dr. CC onto it says hey I moved from San Francisco to the Sierra foothills in 2018. The access is poor and very monopolistic. Fiber is started coming down the road in the next county, and are there any questions or suggestions about motivating my County politicians to get on building that fiber infrastructure? 

>>KATHARINE: Ernesto and I recently did a sort of local virtual town hall on this issue and someone had advice that I thought was 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, or so if you or some of your friends do, I can move the needle way more than you think you can. You can also organize into a 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, for local access, and if you are here in California, a bunch of changes in state law and a bunch of money has been sort of freed up. So you can sort of lobby for that. Another good resource almost always, be your local library, because they are almost always on the forefront of these issues are very good about it. resource almost always, be your local library, because they are almost always on the forefront of these issues are very good about it. 

>>GIGI: What I found making speeches in places where they built these, I have always found that there was always one person on the County Council or the city Council who was so passionate about this. And if you find that person, great. If that person doesn't exist you have to create that person. I was just talking to a state legislator in West Virginia and trying to build an open access network there, and he's like a dog with a bone. He's just going to get it done, and it's like trying to find those people. So now, in the aftermath of the pandemic, I think you can find more those folks that really want to build networks, they want to take the fiber assets for the community and build something that is lasting in that role and connect the unconnected. 

>>KATHARINE: 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 Lawson customer base. Like when San Francisco tried to build a municipal fiber line there was a lot of resistance to that because no one wants to lose access to selling bad Internet to people here. 

>>ERNESTO: I will add one thing, 1 of my partners works in California, and for the Californians watching right now we have actually just published today just to check out the log -- the blog—but the state of California legislature is making a decision next week on what to do with the state surplus in the federal rescue money. You have about $7 billion that are governor in the state is identified for public infrastructure. We can use this money to develop alternative models, and to enable municipalities cooperatives and nonprofits to do so. You know essentially, the Biden plan, is on the verge of being agreed to in California or shelved or postponed. It was really important to go to the blog and see, you know, what's going on in San Francisco and she was going on with that $7 billion, because I think if you give communities a budget and an accountability to access funding, if they go forth, many many will and it helps them like Gigi said, get over that price tag. So we have to get there 1st, so hopefully next week we will have some good news to report to our constituents because we are coming around the corner on that. So our next question is from zebra on twitch, -- what are the largest issues currently preventing new competitors from competing with the largest providers? 

>>GIGI: I mean basically they -- I guess everything! That is in a lot of ways a hard question to answer, because I do think the fact that competitors cannot get access to the polls, like telephone poles in the neighborhood, this is 1 of the reasons the Google fiber failed in a lot of places. As one, and a lot of cases are controlled by the city or the state, and sometimes are controlled by the incumbent provider. They cannot get into condos and apartment buildings. I think that Katharine was mentioning that. It's what we call a multitenant environment, 30% of Americans live in multitenant environments. And they are allowed exclusive sweetheart deals to be cut with the landlords. So that's another reason. So again there is no requirement that incumbents open up the networks like there was before 2002. And again, the barriers to entry for community broadband networks and again, just the price. In some cases a community you have to dig up public roads to build these networks, and a lot of cases like that the city will be like a work fine with where we are now, so there are an awful lot of barriers good policy could fix speak to 1 of the important ones that you mentioned there, we actually do campaigns around this, it’s the apartment complex monopoly dynamic. The separatist was the 1st city in the state of California to basically banded together to take a step back folks to understand that Comcast will enter an agreement with the landlord and landlord Association and say hey for every customer you can sign up in the building to us, we will give you a little extra from there Barb and Bill. And it's like what will get 100% of the customers, will get 100% of the tenants of the building, and as Susan Crawford described at the wired article -- in San Francisco issued a local ordinance, it doesn't have to have a state play or a County play or federal play, but what happened was that landlords are not allowed to prevent competitors from entering an apartment building, absolute a legitimate reason for like health and safety because of what was happening. As I mentioned earlier we have the largest competitor provider of sonic in the area. There selling $40 Internet, right? And they can't get the people in attendance because the landlord would just say hey get off my lawn you not allowed in my building. So we banned that in the city San Francisco and we are working on Oakland and Berkeley and working our way out from this area and someday you will get across the whole state. It is 1 of those simple things that people might not realize denies competition because it's easy to get an apartment building. A lot of people in a small place, not a lot of money to connect them, but if landlord says no, you're out of luck. 

>>KATHARINE: I still remember my shock when I moved here from New York, which is where I was before EFF. In the management when I moved in said here all your options for Internet. They said we like sonic, you should probably go with them, any people do. I was like I don't understand this! I've never had this way before. 

>>ERNESTO: Yeah, it's like why Gigi, you were being at the forefront in the history of this, and people younger than me have no memory of what the world was, and how law and policy actually make over the difference your. So one more question right now. But this 1 is from a Fred Flintstone on YouTube. Can we reasonably expect government to be a solution to a market failure when they are essentially the cause of the market failure? Katharine I will pose a question you. 

>>KATHARINE: So I think that that is a fair question because the longer I work at EFF the more skeptical actually get about government when it comes to technology. But at the same time, because this problem? It wasn't as much a problem of capture as it was not doing anything. Or having a policy that worked in the rolling it back. I think that is really the thing to point out is that a lot of, like you said, back when the telecommunications act required them to give access, to competitors, that worked. That's why sonic exists in San Francisco. And I swear to God we are not sponsored by sonic. [laughing] This is because it's what here and the most ready example. So we know that net neutrality was protected under the open Internet order in the sky didn't fall and it worked. And it was sustaining something that had existed before, that net neutrality had been just sort of how the Internet worked for a long time and they were just protecting that. So I think, and in the case of like the FCC, I think if you think way back to the 1st time John Oliver did his episode on net neutrality, he called out Tom Wheeler and called him a coyote that you will put in charge of your babies. He -- Tom Wheeler -- he was the chair of the FCC who passed net neutrality. You can't necessarily make bets on whether you can or can't trust what we know has worked in the past and why we should do it again. 

>>ERNESTO: Gigi you were there on the team and Tom Wheeler was called a dingo I believe, how did the former chairman take that one and that have an impact on his overall thinking about how to be head of the regulatory agency at the time? 

>>GIGI: I will tell you I did have an impact them but played into what Katharine just said. People knew there was a constant drumbeat of regular people calling, emailing, sometimes we get like these email dumps at like 11 o'clock at night, and the chief of staff will call me and say make it stop! A protest in front of the White House, they protest laying down in front of my bosses driveway -- she's like 6 foot 7 and he had a Cooper many, go figure. Anyway that pressure worked. It worked not only on my boss, it worked on the White House big time. The White House politicos were saying like why are we not supporting title to net neutrality? This is crazy. Everybody wants it. So you could talk about regulatory capture, and for some folks it's 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 this through and it worked big time in 2015, in 2015, and it was great time to be there, I know there were a lot of sleepless nights -- 

>>KATHARINE: I was a journalist at the time that I had been assigned by my boss to read through all of the comments being submitted for net neutrality, and I would pull out the best in the funniest that I distinctly remember opening a comment that was huge and somewhat and submitted the entire's script for the Lord of the rings movies. I'm just staring at his saying this can't be helpful [laughing]. 

>>ERNESTO: That's funny because that can be 1 of the drivers of what many of the comments are as we do a campaign around it, and net neutrality is definitely the one that you know through and through that people will care about from all walks of life. I remember the whole idea of common carriage and what you're entitled to and all that, and that was considered absolutely impossible politically. That was not that long ago maybe a little bit longer than 7 or 8 years. But what's the actual votes in Congress show? You know when we had to do the save the net act, Katharine ran his campaign and for EFF -- 

>>KATHARINE: That was not save the net, that was CRA say -- 

>>ERNESTO: Oh yeah, that's right—the point being, there's a bipartisan majority on one side of this debate, and had a minority on the other side. Hopefully we hope that people cannot break through at the end of the day. Okay one more question -- -- we have Kevin M on quits, and he asked from a fiber perspective, should the fiber one and data layer, too, be managed by some type of government or government regulated entity, or nonprofit with the network layer being provided by multiple ISPs similar to the utopia network weeks so utopia is this network and it is in Utah. That's a collaborative effort by a bunch of local governments to build was called an open access fiber network. That be better? 

>>ERNESTO: I will give a quick take on that, but I think the reality on this is that there are different solutions for different communities. So as long as we need more access tomorrow than the day before in terms of capacity than we need to be good for a generation or 2. Peppering what's happening in Utah is that is that Utah is a state of the union that has the most Internet fiber in the country. Represented by a very conservative legislature and very conservative federal representation. And they show that when lots of communities band together you could do these large open scale projects, but I have also seen the flipside where you are relying on these people to build their own networks and run them, where you are relying on these people to build their own networks and run them, so you're not worried about your neighbors growing, when you own your own network, you charge what you need to charge to make it run efficiently. Does anybody else have a comment on it? 

>>KATHARINE: I just wanted to say that you have utopia on one side and that as an example for the 1st 1 -- and for the 2nd 1 it's Chattanooga, sort of the example for the other, where they run everything through one municipally owned service and they serve different -- to serve different functions in terms of a problem. And I think it is important to note that some of these problems are just different, and they are different answers. So you are right Ernesto, because people might think that their options are not that expensive because they live in the part of the city that is been was called digitally redlined. Because in an affluent part of the city many ISPs are trying to get there because they want your money, but they might not get your service. So there's this problem from your rural areas where part of the problem is access,. And they needed to build that and they're all fiber because no one else's. 's are different kinds of problems you have different solutions. 

>>GIGI: I think that the reason Utah as utopia as an open access network is because you tell operative is a community from providing last mile service. So it's interesting. It's a very procompetitive way to get around the restriction and I think that's a restriction in a bunch of states. So if anybody wants to build an open access network to get around that restriction, I'm down. But again, you know I Chattanooga already had a municipal utility, that wasn't hard for them to kind of take it to the next step. But ccommunity should be empowered to make these decisions rather than have the state legislature make that Jake. 

>>ERNESTO: So with that I am going to bring this to a conclusion, thank you Katharine, thank you Gigi for joining us and want to thank all of the folks that are tuned in and contributed to this discussion. community should be empowered to make these decisions rather than have the state legislature make that Jake. 

>>ERNESTO: So with that I am going to bring this to a conclusion, thank you Katharine, thank you Gigi for joining us and want to thank all of the folks that are tuned in and contributed to this discussion. We cannot do this work without your support, so for over 30 years, EFF has stood beside you on the front lines of the movement for privacy and free expression, and we always need your help to keep up the fight. So if you haven't yet I humbly ask you to consider donating to EFF today, become a member. You can go to EFF.org/30, because your support is the reason that we do the work we do on your behalf. And that is all the time we have for today, I hope you will consider these conversations and consider how we can sure technology supports freedom justice innovation and equity for people all around the world. Thank you again for coming.