because within a month we're going to be having a vote on the floor of the united states senate on net neutrality to uphold the rules that had been put on the books by the obama f c c or are to to move to this new trump wild west that was created beginning in december of twenty seventeen which network the opera net and it was that company that began the whole process right here within about four hundred yards of where we have seeded and that revolution all started here at am i t they were mostly mit professors mit graduate students that ultimately turned into something which we now call the internet so we have an all st cast here tonight to discuss these issues and we'll reach a point in a little while where the microphones will be down here and anyone who wishes to participate will have an opportunity to do so so we have the net neutrality dream team that is sitting right in front of you and so he is responsible as chairman foote putting the open internet order on the books in twenty fifteen so everyone in this room a debt of gratitude to tom wheeler putting those long overdue rules on the books few leaders at the federal communications commission have known better how to protect and expand the horizons by promoting competition in the telecommunications marketplace then tom but it's not just that it's pro consumer it's pro privacy he understands that ultimately we must protect consumers and we must also inject paranoia inducing darwinian competition into the marketplace on an ongoing business that is what he did next we are fortunate to be joined by the iconic soar tim berners lee he is a legendary computer scientist he is a professor here at mit and he created this little thing called the world wide web server tim serves as a director for the world wide web consortium which oversees the standards for the internet and the world wide web and here's all you need to know about certain him in the year two thousand when time magazine was looking back at the entirety of the twentieth century to pick the top twenty scientists and thinkers top twenty of the entire twentieth century albert einstein the wright brothers rachel carson sigmund freud certain him berners lee is on that list of the top twenty  d and while the web is an historic innovation certain was actually working on something else when he came up with it so the web is the most important side project ever sence einstein developed the theory of relativity in his spare time working at the u s patent office down in washington so we thank you for multitasking sort him also joining us is susan crawford the john a riley clinical professor of law at harvard law school and she brings to this role a remarkable career in public service she served as special assistant to the president for science technology and innovation policy in two thousand and nine and led the f c c transition team between the bush and obama administrations which is a little bit like managing security at a red sox yankee game but shias if i had to if i had to pick one legal expert in the whole country it would be her to be sitting here tonight so we thank you and came to the united states with his mother when he was eleven years old and thirty four dollars in their pockets since that time he has become a u s citizen graduated with dual degrees held leadership positions in technology companies and now as c e o of carbonite serves as one of the digital economy strongest advocates for net neutrality he was also my guest this year i picked one person each year to sit up in the gallery when the so this is the all star team and and our audience probably has twenty more people who could comfortably sit up here as well because i know i'm at mit and i appreciate that so  the internet is something that has evolved into something that is really all right for the twenty first century it's an indispensable tool which every citizen in our country has to have access to in a nondiscriminatory way and so what happened in december is that the f c c the f c c gave internet service providers verizon comcast shot eight hundred eighty the ability to slow down certain websites to altogether block users access to web sites and to set up internet fast and slow lanes where those with the deepest pockets can whiz by those who do not have that internet e z pass and the rest are left in internet gravel paths and if that doesn't sound right to you you all right and you join by eighty six percent of all americans who agree with you including eighty two percent of all republicans in the united states which only shows the power of the internet service providers in their control over the agenda of this administration so you just don't see that kind of bipartisan support on many issues it's like a political well halley's comet that has occurred around this issue so we're seeing an incredible group of people who have stood up and we have governors in five states have issued executive orders attorneys general in twenty three states have filed a lawsuit twenty seven state legislatures including here in massachusetts working on net neutrality legislation and we're actually joined here  tonight by two of the leaders of this movement up in the massachusetts legislature to pass our own net neutrality legislation here in the state of massachusetts the first person i'd like to introduce is state senator michael barrett he is the chairman of the telecommunications utility and energy committee he's fighting for net neutrality he is a real fighter he just got discharge and and and his father in the state senate to get this bill passed jamie eldridge state senator as well and he is the leader of the financial services committee and partnering with michael to move this legislation through and they are telling me there was a high probability that is going to happen through the massachusetts state senate so jamie alger's please stand and get your well deserved recognition so so i thought what i would do is i tried to begin just by showing you a two minute video so burger king has done a video on net neutrality now you say to yourself why would burger king have an ad on net neutrality its business model doesn't have anything to do with net neutrality not think that you do not need net neutrality to sell hamburgers but they do know that if you are a millennial if you're a young person and they want you as a millennial to think that burger king an old hamburger company not as cool as the other one hundred hamburger joints within nine blocks of where we are right now how can you get those money to buy it will help out if they come out for on net neutrality and explain it so what i would ask our great tech team up here to do is please roll the burger king  true the way the way this works is this that newt gingrich when they took over the congress the republicans in one nine hundred ninety five they put in something called the congressional review act which allowed for the congress to overturn with a majority vote any regulation that in ministration good thinking that they would start to overturn all of the clinton era regulations and so what's going to happen is within the next months we're going to have a vote on the senate floor on the marquee congressional review act vote on net neutrality rules on vote is so relevant we need fifty one but we want to lot more than fifty one because then we have to send it over to the house of representatives so that's what tonight's all about kind of kicking off this one month campaign here in cambridge to begin this national movement with eighty six percent of all americans agreeing with our side to have this first time ever overturning of a republican presidents regulation  and so it begins here in cambridge in the same way that the internet began here in cambridge beginning in one nine hundred sixty six and what i'm going to do is ask each one of our great panelists to give an opening statement  then i'm going to ask him a few questions then we're going to go to the audience and i'm going to begin with tom wheeler chairman of the federal communications commission in  so i'm here for a really simple reason i want to say thank you to you all for sending him to the united states  ok he is the man leading the charge you know that there's a lot of times in the in the senate now where you know somebody will take credit because they signed on to do something ed markey has been leading the charge on this when i was the chairman of the f c c it was ed markey who was on the phones and tell me what are you me doing about net neutrality and we go back and forth and discuss various kinds of solutions he has always been a champion for consumers and competition and and so i think all of you there are three simple reasons why this resolution has to pass and why the internet have to stay open on the internet is the most powerful and pervasive platform in the history of the planet thanks to that guy right there we use it for everything from ordering up all the world's knowledge to ordering a it has literally changed our economy and changed each of our lives but there's a problem and that's the second reason or this has to pass when we were doing the work on the open internet order we discovered that three quarters of all american homes head at most one choice for high speed connection to the internet one choice and so we're in a situation third point or in a situation where you've got a national asset that is crucially important to institutions and individuals and a gate keeper monopoly that can determine how you get to that asset fast lane slow lane blocking special deals and you look at those two realities and you say somebody has to make the rules what the trump of c c and the internet service providers are saying is don't worry the companies can make the rules you could trust them to do a good job making those rules but the fact of the matter is that history has shown that you can't and that's why we put the open internet rules in place in the first place and that's why the congressional review act led by senator markey hass to prevail so again thank you to all of you for providing the spirit to keep fighting for a fast fair and open internet a name we'll talk about that separately and not here but the whole idea of whole thing is that when the technology is completely independent all i have to do is to i had to think of a port number  didn't even have to do the web to continue using the four digit number so the and the point about this being a path phone is it is from a technical point of view but think about ok so there three hundred bits per second connection and that the web browser would have run over that thing to bits per second modem i could take the same program home now and i could get didn't have to care a top about how people were how that content was going to get to the people who looked at it that was being done by the internet and they just had to put it in an internet because the rule is that the tooth things are separate so the explosion of stuff content and explosion of connectivity both amazing and they were amazing the cars they were competing separate they were mazing because they were separate content provider is in cahoots with the rube with the i speed and you know a lot they don't really have to make very good movies anymore because they have a they have a fix or they have a captive audience and they ask me doesn't really  have to really do a very good job because they got to because people have to go to that ice because the only way they can see what's up because that's who is so if america was to go down that stage there's that direction it could that's the economic view of that but actually when you you end up forgiving it is about human right so actually we end up we end up because it's because it's not just about economics because also it's about whether i have sentry like every other one of us is saying net neutrality means i am sick of the power those five companies have over me that's what it means because after thirty years  like you splendid attacks i think and that's what's great about the momentum here we'll go through the congressional review act i it has to pass but the momentum of this enormous issue doesn't stop there it goes all the way to becoming  policy issue for the twenty twenty election it has to because this is a pocketbook issue for every single american after thirty years of attacks on the idea that the government could have anything to do with economic policy any intervention role in private markets we're at an absurd moment right now where although internet access is as we all agree something that every single american needs we are somehow counting on the private market by their own grace and sort of goodwill to provided to us at world class speeds reasonable prices available to every single american if you were standing on this stage in the one nine hundred fifty s under republican presidents and you said we can depend on the private market and under strain private market to take care of all of us and all of our  off the stage our parents and grandparents knew much better after nine hundred fourteen the chaos of two world wars and a giant depression they understood that when it comes to certain utilities the private market is not going to do this by itself eisenhower built the american highways system f d r ensured that we would have electricity reaching everybody at reasonable prices net neutrality its core is an economic policy issue we are leaving behind tens of millions of americans dumbing them down not giving them the opportunities the choices they have to have we are allowing these four or five companies to extract rents from every single american we are allowing grotesque inequality in this country to continue that has a corrosive effect on every single civic institution eroding trust making some people feel as if they live in gated communities and others feel as if they have no hope when as we all know high speed internet access is paid through by the nose for by rich people by the way no one's doing well in this particular situation rich are paying too much systematically the poor either not getting access at all or getting crappy access and we somehow manage the telephone we somehow manage but this central utility has escaped regulation entirely and tom wheeler had the bravery in two thousand and fifteen to label high speed internet access as utility and that's what these actors are actually upset about they're actually so when you're talking to people about net neutrality don't let their eyes glaze over this is really about abuse of power and they chaos and despair that comes from a completely unrestrained private market leads to unfairness leads to dragging down every american business and ultimately and this is what i'm really worried about weakens the fabric of democracy because it's not just about inclusion it's about a sense of fellow feeling across the country a sense of participating i sense of we and connection that we are being denied because we believe so much in the religion of a private market so please  urge your representatives to be active on the congressional review acts that senator markey is bringing about but don't let this issue drop now people are finding all over the place tim happens to live in a place that has a municipal fiber network so they've chosen the public option and they have escaped the clutches of these five companies and everyone in that town can get access at a reasonable price that is world class but for most americans that isn't even a choice as tom said  seventy percent of americans now have the most one choice for what in sweden north and south korea would be viewed as a second class connection so we're in the abyss on this issue it has to become something that every candidate is ask and i hope that tonight isn't the last time you will think about said to me you know he gets to think one person for the state of the union address and he's thinking you and me she went on to say but net neutrality is important so i'm ok with it so i want to just tell you a little bit about our company carbonite and other companies as an example of other companies like ours and i think pretty much every company now that uses the internet and there very few that i can thin don't is affected by this ruling on net neutrality carbonite was founded twelve years ago here in boston today we're headquartered in downtown we hire we employ about a thousand employees and we protect over a hundred thousand businesses what is this me so if these businesses get attacked by ransomware natural disaster or just any other sort of  down time to their id systems we can recover them we can recover them in hours minutes or even seconds but we need the internet to do it and we need the we need the internet  not be controlled by someone else we pay for the internet we expect to get a fair access and fair use of the internet the hundred thousand businesses rely on us over the last thirty six months have recovered over eleven thousand individuals and businesses from ransomware attacks we've recovered all of them and we've done it quickly over the internet we're not the only company that use the internet i'm so i'm standing here at mit the heart of kendall square i sit on the board of a company called i robot which was founded right here at mit thank you i robot uses the internet g e uses the internet to connect all those jet engines and to do dilemma tree on those jet engines wayfair uses the internet at carbonite we know that a one second delay on our website we use it as e commerce will cost us millions of dollars in revenue a company like wayfair ill be tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars you don't have to do a lot to the internet to negatively affect companies but it goes beyond you know the media companies that you care about like netflix and so forth this area right here i mean i'm in the hear probably the number one drug discovery place on the planet when i was at i b m i had the pleasure of working on our supercomputing project and we sold those supercomputers to drug discovery companies to do massive computations of protein models and so forth in order to develop medication for our world today it's done differently it's done in giant clouds public clouds at times that you know are hosted by amazon and microsoft and others and the and one of the key elements of the compute is the band with and if there's somebody fiddling with the band with guess what all these drug discovery companies could be impacted now i've had people tell me that this is all theoretical i'm going to give you some examples where it's not theoretical so a number of years ago in two thousand and four there is wallet and they decided that they're going to block google wallet from participating well there was one fatal flaw with their approach you guys know it was an ape the system was called isis to lose this and so forth and and so this is really not theoretical these are just some of the more blatant ones that we have seen the last thing i want to share with you is that this is not new  this discussion about fair and open access to something that is a substrate of innovation for our country in the mid one thousand nine hundred there was this thing called the railroads and the railroads connected our states we didn't have fifty states back then and and these large railroad companies started charging big agricultural producers less than small farms to move their packets over their rail roads sound familiar yeah and what started happening is the large agricultural companies  started buying out the small farms well you can imagine back in the mid eighty's hundreds there were a lot of people concerned about this and since we were heavily a farming society this race a lot of attention senator john sherman introduced a bill in in the senate and that bill was passed fifty two to one imagine that that was called the sherman antitrust act in order to make sure there was free and open access to that substrate of innovation today this is no different the internet has really only been a little around for a short period of time we're learning how to use it it's it's innovating itself is changing very fast and for us to get five companies control of our future just seems like the wrong thing to do so with that i want to thank senator markey for gathering us here today for this really incredibly important topic thank you just an incredible gathering and i would say we're joined by david rogers steve it is the state representative from cambridge in belmont and he serves in the massachusetts ho necessary to be in the rule in order to protect the small companies and the small of voices in america can you lay out what you went into it philosophically to try to accomplish it and what were the rules that you put on the books well there are there are three bright line rules oh blocking no throttling no path no fast lanes that's just clear cut but there are other aspects of internet that that continue to evolve in we don't really know what's going to happen next there's something being developed by some folks in a garage or a classroom or a laboratory here at m that's going to change things tomorrow so how do you put in place a structure that says we will keep observing to make sure that things are just what happens is just unreasonable  and we call that the general conduct rule where we take a look and you know i didn't go to mit i went to the ohio state university and and we always think of things in football analogies and so i always kept saying we want a referee on the field who can throw off a way and that's the power that we gave the f c c to do going forward but there's another issue and that is that  the net the internet actually was originally called internet networking and got shortened because the internet is nothing more than a bunch of networks all connecting with each other and so the concept of interconnection is crucial because if you can't connect to other networks there is no internet so we said works asserting jurisdiction over interconnection or you'll recall the there have been problems along the way were some of these last mile carriers the five companies that susan mentioned were saying well you know i'm not sure when you're connector if you're going to interconnect you're going to do it on my terms and pay me extra so we're sort of jurisdiction over interconnection and then lastly we also said that there's one thing that monopolies are really good at and that's raising prices and that we ought to make sure that there is in the f c c the ability to oversee what happens in terms of pricing we didn't regulate rates we said ok again we're going to watch but if it doesn't work if you start misbehaving the f c c can be there and then privacy you know last week senator markey was in a hearing with mark zuckerberg and we heard about all of this incredible amounts of data that facebook has about each and every one of us need i remind you that facebook is one website and that the networks the internet service providers that connect you to the network and connect you to all those other websites see what you're doing so one of the things we did immediately after declaring that that i a species were common carriers was we passed a privacy rule that said they have the responsibility to protect your privacy but more importantly it is your information not theirs and that you had to give them permission not some kind of a long drawn out buried in paragraph forty three b of some documents not some kind of an opt out situation but they had to get affirmative consent from you to opt in before they could get it and use your information it's the same rule that exists for telephones and has forever a promise i'll end it if if you make a telephone call from boston to air france varieties and can't turn around and sell that information to a tour operator in paris that say they're going to paris but if you use the same device your mobile phone on the same network to go to a website for air france you have no privacy and that information can be sold that's not right we passed a rule saying that your privacy need to be protected unfortunately the aforementioned congressional review act sixty seven days into the trump administration the congress passed a law on repealing it president trump signed it and it went worse than was worse than that they said not only we  al it but we this losses the f c c never again will be allowed to have a rule like this that's the kind of things that we're dealing with and so and but it depends on this common carriage employees no last year nearly half of all bencher capital in america half of all bunch couple went to software and internet specific companies startups new companies half of all but you can pull no if your child is on the books there are protections for those companies them but what happens if there is a net neutrality in terms of their ability to guarantee to their investors that they're going to be able to reach this vast internet marketplace can you talk about that impact on job creation absolutely you know first of all the small companies the start of the mid sized companies are the ones that are integrated most impacted because today the large companies and that flex in the googles and so forth they're big companies they have a lot of leverage with these five large carriers and other carriers and build they'll probably do fine but senator markey just pointed out that that a lot of that all this investment that it's going into the new companies are well they're new companies they're they're they're small companies and these companies almost all of them i mean i can't think of a company today that is being started that isn't leveraging the internet in a major way and if you're not leveraging internet in a major way it's going to be a problem right i mean even transportation you have companies like hoover you have grub i mean every sector that you can look at there and the internet it's important now if you have five big companies that can control and throttle and manipulate that internet you know they don't have to have a pariah reason for doing that today but but at some point they might have a reason and it could be a problem and so these companies that are being started i think many of you know if you hear that it's really the small and mid sized businesses that are the job creation engine of almost every economy out there and that's no different here in the united states and actually here in massachusetts it's particularly important because we have so many startups so many small and midsize businesses those businesses will not be a successful and if they're not a successful you're not going to create as many jobs that think about it the engine of job creation is being throttled here right so it goes beyond just throttling van with i mean speech implications to a repeal of net neutrality can you talk about that and what it could mean going forward in our country sure you may be surprised to hear this but these companies actually believe that they are speakers that they are media companies themselves and they want to have complete power to decide they want to retain that power to decide what speech is heard and what isn't the idea that we would put our  communications at risk of not only being slowed but blocked entirely is should be of a poor and should be appalling to every american we that's that's why we regulated the telephone system alone among developed countries you should know the u s is always relied on private carriers to take our basic communications we always have private carriers in this business but we've always subjected them to public obligations and one of the chief public obligations is to carry all speech without discrimination not to favor their own business deals in doing it not harding regime that ensures that every american can have a voice can participate can launch a business can also listen as well speak hands over to these carriers the ability to shape speech the nixon white house deeply understood this when the cable industry was first emerging between transmission and content and that cable be allowed only to be a transmission provider why because if you let them both own content and transmission they will inevitably they can choose speech and they said the nixon white house said this was too fundamental a risk to democracy and our first amendment freedoms to go forward they went up on the hill with this grand white house report and they were already lobbyist for the cable industry that killed it so  we lost that battle very early in the game but it is not too late when it comes to the internet to ensure that the public has a cop on the be justice terms said and it is essential to  democracy speech to everything we hold dear as americans to get this right great thank you is nondiscrimination just another way of saying nondiscrimination to protect smaller companies small voice right so that's really what it is it's a core principle and so i guess what i would ask you search team is when you were inventing this august principle for the internet the world wide web was it your intent that this principle of nondiscrimination accessibility transparency  built into it baked into its very core and when you and several other internet pioneers last year wrote a letter to the f c c asking them not to repeal net neutrality how did you put that letter together and what was the common feeling of you and the other internet pioneers in sending that letter to a jeep pie in the trump federal communications commission network of american networks or any way in washington you don't talk about human rights you talk about american values because human rights are just not part of the and everything goes back to go  when he thinks of nondiscrimination is the poorest child in the most isolated village anywhere in the world has access to the internet has access to this technology and that's his goal  two i passed a law that created the eighteen satellite dish and then in one nine hundred ninety three i moved over two hundred megahertz that created the third fourth fifth sixth and seventh cell phone license because the first two companies  monopolies had analog and it was the size of a brick in a cars fifty cents a minute but by one nine hundred ninety six everybody had this flip phone in their pocket under ten cents a minute revolution was on but we have to lead we have to say you can't preach temperance from a barstool you can't have the united states be preaching to the rest of the world you should be open communication systems that awhile for voices to be heard for small companies to rise up and then back here in america to be passing laws that go in just the opposite direction it doesn't work that way we have to be the leader not the laggard that's where net neutrality that's where climate science comes from you can't preach temperance from a bar a school you can't pull out of powers agreement and then tell the rest of the world that they should reduce their pollution we have to be the leader and so that you know so that's where we are and you know and i'm very proud of this you know moving over the two hundred megahertz i don't invent anything but the two hundred megahertz help to make it possible and i can even see looking out of the audience right now that is a boat fifty people looking down at the not even paying attention to me and that's our goal that no one in the world is actually looking up you know when you know but it should be democratized this access to technology tom wheeler again could i just i would just follow up on something that jim he invented the world wide web it's his he could it cashed in big time but in said he said no i'm giving it away it's o ok and incredibly selfless act for humanity that now is threatened by five companies who say that incredible gift that tim berners lee gave the world we want to monetize by choking by prioritising by slowing things down that's the contrast that you're seeing up here tonight down here and we'll try to answer as many of your questions as we  call is but one threat against a free and open internet so i'd like to ask a two part question for the panel i'd like to ask with respect to the recent sesto foster regulation which the a c l u e f f and senators wyde and paul have said can sell to five small businesses by imposing upon them stultifying liability and also create a chilling effect for open platforms how would you advise legislators to craft regulations to prevent  the spread of malicious content while also ensuring that open platforms can freely operate and to senator markey this legislation has been protested by a number of sex worker organizations because they couldn't danger them denying them the ability to vet their clients using the internet which seems to be part of a broader trend of legislators not considering how people at the margins can be affected by internet regulations so would you make a promise to meet with the sex worker platforms not be unfairly treated i think though that we are also seeing a rise in desire to have censorship in america and i think what all of us are saying here is that we need to be able to present a choice between china and america in china no line between the public and private but you know things are happening over there we have a public sector set of values here that we need to uphold and that will actually allow the private sector to do extremely well in the end so might i'm just hoping we can hang on to a firm public private line in the united states and bolster our public sector to be the best regulator possible thank you yes sir so i'm pretty confident that my senators and representatives are well educated and getting good advice on topics about the internet but watching some of the questions they were asked to last week i'm a little concerned about everybody else in the room and i am curious what the panel thinks we can do to better educate our congressmen and senators to ensure that they're making decisions fully informed well i'm an expert on that how can a congressional expert is an oxymoron you know like a jumbo shrimp or a salt lake city nightlife you know we just kind of contradict congressman not so much except for this elections where experts so all i can tell you is that congress is a stimulus response it situation and we have one month right now h neutrality is that issue on steroids it eighty six percent of americans wanting this rule overturned so all i can tell you is the power is right here just  by the way we have one hundred people in the overflow room so we we thank all of you and your patience in being here so we have five hundred people as you well know we did this on very short notice so we appreciate all of you being here and mit especially danny thank you for your sho notice ability to put all of this together so i guess what i would say to you is even in this room right now you could probably figure out how to gin up a million you know hits on congressmen and senators across the country the the capacity the algorithms are all they had to kind of put something together here and believe me they already know it's an issue because when they're home you just have to say the words net neutrality in the applause break so on so they know it's an issue they don't have to you don't have to understand nuclear power to be a nuclear physicist want to stand the people who live near one want safety in the planet you don't have to understand the internal combustion engine to know that people want bags and seat belts and cushion pads on the dashboard they want safety ok so it just has to be translated into english telescope the time frame and start the bombardment of the united states house and senate and you will get the response which you are looking for and we will win mama yeah good thing i got to tell you watching that facebook thing was so horrible i was so embarrassed but you know a little fact there are only four members of the entire house of representatives that's four and thirty five people that has an engineering degree we we are a technical society now we're a society a country that's built on technology and i have to say i think a big part of the solution is we need new leaders in congress so whether it's here in massachusetts we have you know good represent good leaders from massachusetts but from this room from you know this campus i think we can say we can use technology this helps spread the word to other states where we are where their leaders are really i'm sorry to say not fit to represent the country that we are today but you know let me just say this  climate change is a good example of where people know what the right thing yes they don't have to necessarily understand all of the all of the chemicals that are going up into the atmosphere they don't have to understand necessarily what the process is for for that leads to the warming all they have to know is pope francis said in his sermon on the hill when he came to washington two years ago is all you have to know is three things one the planet is dangerously warming to as he said he when beans of the principle contributed to it three the poorest people on the planet are going to be those that are most adversely affected and this to grow our moral responsibility of the people in this room here in congress to do something about it you know if that's understand more than that and the same thing is to with privacy  online you know you don't have to be a genius to know you have to understand the pharmaceutical industry to know that there should be a child safety cap on opioids you know to be if you don't understand the opioid you just have to know it's dangerous and you want children to be protected and the same thing is true with regard to say comments for protecting children's privacy online in a facebook era and adults as well but it should at least have rules for children right so i just think that  congress has to get educated it's a relatively simple principle that we're trying to communicate nondiscrimination you know protection for the smallest was democratic voices and the most entrepreneurial creative people in the country that want to be able to get their idea out into the marketplace ok so it's complicated on the one hand nuclear physics is but nuclear safety is not all into turn a convention is internal combustion engine is but auto safety is not and the same thing is true here in the internet ok so you just have to understand that you already know more than enough and and the truth is that the american people don't trust the experts anymore to tell them you don't know what enough you can't figure this out the american people have figured it out on net neutrality it's eighty six percent on privacy it's eighty percent in a both instances it's democrat and republican in a privacy europe already figured it out in a europe can figure it out on a technology that we invented we should be able to figure out what the safety protections are that we do every  we hear i have to ask a very uncomfortable question i like to get more at the core of what i feel is important and first of all i want to thank every single one of you for coming here and  and really helping us to try to understand what to do to maintain something that should be our right this net neutrality thank you senator markey really for putting this together greatly appreciated i just wanted and also  thank you mr wheeler for having the courage to stand up at a crucial time and give us hope you know that we do really do have a democracy when you voted in our favor and i really appreciate that my question is there's a lot of dark forces that i'm aware of you know i've been a lot on the internet trying to find out what's happening behind the scenes and it's kind of making the rest of my hair fall out actually and so my question is  probably directed more to senator markey and to mr wheeler but could be directed to anybody on the panel and that is how did you deal with the dark forces that would like to crush our ability to have net neutrality the first time around when you courageously stood up and said no i'm not going with the you know the darkness i'm going with the light and so on i'm asking both of you how we can deal with it this time because i'm aware that they will really try to and these forces or you shadowy individuals will try to rise up and defeat us again as a good question ok so there's a day kensi in quality to the internet it's the best of technologies and the worst of technologies simultaneously it can enable it can and noble it can degrade it can debase so the protections and those who profit who make money from that sinister side of cyberspace are going to fight they believe in anti consumer anti competitive anti privacy  so it's a battle we had it with every other industry in mohammed went back to the one thousand nine hundred three with the railroad industry it's not easy it's hard it's very hard but we are revolutionaries the american revolution wasn't easy the abolitionist movement wasn't easy the suffragette movement wasn't easy the gay marriage movement wasn't easy the affordable care act wasn't easy but we had resistance to rise up we saw it in the grammar school and high school and college kids on from rocks read a boston common fifty thousand of them on gun safety just two weeks ago we're seeing it on other issues we just have to be good citizens that's happened here since seventeen seventy five april nineteenth two days ago on patriots day right and they continue today and so that's the answer electricity in america and they were systematically leaving out the poor leaving our rural areas and looking for all kinds of ways to make as much money as possible rich areas and it took f d r going up against the electrical interests in the one nine hundred thirty two  presidential campaign to change that situation so you may not think of electricity as one of these revolutions but in fact it was and today high capacity ubiquitous cheap internet access is our electricity yeah  want to introduce the same thing is true for for these phones and for all the you know the issues that we're talking about it requires good citizens who are out there working hard and keeping their energy level high and i will tell you something we win every time ok it just it's not a sprint it's a marathon like we run on every year here and then you would mire that young woman going across it was the wind coming in and the rain coming in horizontally in your say oh my god and that's who we have been politically since the beginning of of the of the of the origin of this commonwealth ok and that's how we have to be no just thirty seconds yes talk about making america great  what made america great was how we dealt with these challenges in the past senator went through a laundry list but how we stepped up and dealt with the challenges is the secret of what america is it is not running away from them under some hazy gauzy image of returning to something back then or walking away from your responsibility as a regulator or as a legislator to step up and deal with the tough issues that's what made america great and that's the challenge we've got forest now and and and and so we're going to take a few more questions but certain has actually delayed his flight so he can be here tonight and i promised that we would let him out of here at eight o'clock  so what i would do is i would ask you sir tim to give us give us what you want us to remember from tonight going forward over the next month in years on this forces i think you should don't just think about the people about the actors and don't assume that the actors are all malicious realize that from particularly from things that go on a social networks you can take a bunch of really nice people put them in a in a system which which makes them end up not being constructive and that could be a social network which ends up accelerating the hatred more than the love it can be a political system where you end up with a campaign finance system which actually makes it completely makes a very very dysfunctional democracy even though set up with the best of intense so look at the systems so i say look at the systems and don't assume that you have to keep the systems that you have but the interim mentally like you are i was born in in london in london you could you couldn't i don't think you can you can't advertise as a political of counterproductive naturally because of the way it worked together much we're going to go we're going to go for thirteen more minutes until quarter past eight thirty more minutes we're going to try to give a quick answers to your question yes or a low i just wanted to say it was a great panel and as an undergraduate here i really appreciated hearing from you guys about this and i would say fighting for like start ups non discrimination along free speech on the internet is something that i think all of us here support and i was really wondering about the  this section two thirty has been enormously helpful to the american platform industry sort of a first amendment for the platforms that they're not liable for what what other people post and i've personally from my perspective any limitation on that principle is a grave risk to us  you know this battle is going to just keep going on the pendulum swings from left to right to left to right i want to hold on to basic principles of democracy decency equity fairness and push for that if you're going to use your energy i think seems to be that there's companies who want to have all the privileges that you said of being a utility the sort of monopoly aspect without the regulations that normally come with being a a monopoly  and utility and the approach to solve that is regulate them like utility why is it is it difficult to actually create a free market as you said free markets with phones can have for example can have very powerful impact what's blocking there being a free market a quick that have i mean there's a paradox to the free market ok so think of it this way there's an electricity wire there's possible for competitors to get in that's why they love the regulations so the paradox of deregulation is that you need more regulations in order to make it possible for muhammad ali and his company to get started this would have been invented forty years ago if there were rules that said other companies can come in so the trick to the free market in regulated markets is more regulation that says to  smaller players you now can get in in a nondiscriminatory way where you don't need one hundred lawyers to fend off the utility that has five thousand lawyers before you can ever get your product to market so you then rely upon the new regulations to go to the capital markets to raise the money to create a free market in those new ideas that had been by regulations that the utilities put on the books to make sure that the new smaller companies didn't and that's where tom wheeler comes in and being the hero at the f c c and passing these rules wide net neutrality good privacy rules and many of the rules which he put on the books which encourage more competitors to come into the marketplace if you want to and i'm going to go right well you know these are very high cost fixed cost industries to put the line in the first place so really only makes sense to have one communications line going into each house the way you create competition is actually to force that line to be shared by a bunch of actors that's traditionally how we've done it and how countries around the world have done it it's not that hard it's not rocket science in fact san francisco is moving towards that model right now with  municipal fiber network so that but that you know left to their own devices it does not malign it's not mean it's not evil it is so expensive to build these networks that of course you will take rich markets cream off profits leave people behind you don't fit your business model and make as much money as you can from this very expensive installed infrastructure but that's what happens without a cop on the beat and that's why it's important that there be regulatory authority in the f c c and that's what we're did come on and so i made an example google tried to build fiber and amazing thing every time google said we're coming to town and we're going to build gigabit fiber here two things happen one the incumbent said we're rebuilding our plants and to oh we're lowering our prices and then they said so you want to get  work there being a true competitor which was then leads us back to susan and this is why you have to have rules mom and yeah i want to add to this i think this free market discussion is is one of the most important aspect of this there a couple of elements to it one element is that the internet is actually a little bit different than many other technologies that we have today in that it does touch everything and it could actually if if if you know five companies control it it could actually affect the free market and we could not have a free market and you senate have risen to the moment to actually address this because it's at the heart of america's competitiveness and so that's the free market you know everybody else but the carriers and the carrier side he said what you also want to free market there and it turns out that even today we don't really have a free market there are two thirds of all america or americans only have one source of broadband they have one option there's not really free market there and thank you for mentioning the google fiber thing because what we need there is competition as well and this takes away competition on that and so our ability to actually drive down the cost that the rest of the companies would see is actually being limited by giving this advantage to these large five companies so on either direction you're actually negatively impacting the free market and i mean i have to say you know as an immigrant to this country i didn't actually come here thinking oh with what a great free market but  i'm having haven't benefited from it having lived it haven't seen so many you know i think you might know that forty percent of all fortune five hundred companies were founded by immigrants and children of immigrants and a big part of that is because of this free market platform that exists here in america and nowhere else and so you know this is actually at a major threat and a threat that we've only like private data protection a right to be forgotten things like that versus like or is there are uniquely american model that we should take it goes to the april first issue of the new york times there's a very thoughtful op ed piece by somebody in their headlined will europe lead the way on on privacy they do several things they say it's your information and it has to be all opt in they give you the ability to go in and and a race see what's there in a race things they have the ability to take your information with you so that you can turn around and say to mark zuckerberg thank you very much i want my information because i'm going to your new competitor and a whole series of things like that i introduced a privacy bill of rights last week with senator blumenthal of connecticut pretty simple number one number one you they have to give you knowledge that they're gathering that information about you to notice that there were using it for purposes other than that which you would your family had intended and three the right to say no that as you all have been saying that open internet access is a fundamental right the current nominee as a representative voted against net neutrality several times so i know that for once  for you one of the most arresting things about the reporting that happened around net neutrality for me it was the reporting specifically about the sums of money that were paid to political campaigns by telecom companies in order for the in order to secure their support those those sums of money were incredibly small and putting myself in the telecom companies shoes i have a hard time seeing why i wouldn't do that and looking back over the past ten years of political activity that i've been aware like there are so many examples of that are we missing here a golden opportunity to really address campaign finance reform because i feel like that's at the heart of a lot of things that all of us care about chairman wheeler already talked about this there's no question about it when something polls out it eighty percent of the american public supporting chairman willers regulations on privacy for internet service providers and the republicans kemo first thing last march don't jump in and they all vote in lockstep all of them all those people you say good republicans well they all voted take those privacy rules off the books and they thought they could get away with it and to a certain  cope brothers to influence the political process and you don't want to bring court justices who are going to rubber stamp anti democratic laws think it out there were can twenty eighteen ok it's an ongoing democratic revolution that goes on in our country you want campaign finance reform you've got to go out there stop their ability to nominate any more justices who will continue the citizens united c influence on the political process and then head towards twenty twenty so we have a president named supreme court justices that we can then bring a case to begin to repeal citizens united and put real campaign finance laws on the books but it's not happening until to be until the election day of twenty eighteen and twenty twenty so just get out there and vote so so let me just finish and ask each one of you to give us the one minute by tim berners lee that you  want to remember as we're leaving here today so we'll start with you susan didn't go to you tom and wind up with you always well home and with a final word so susan please tell us what they should know actually learn this line from senator markey we should be looking at rest of the world in their rearview mirror when it comes to our open internet access our allegiance to free speech our connection to our fellow citizens our concern for equity and fairness and good treatment and this principle of net neutrality isn't in body mint everything we care about as americans and the only reason that we're in this city on a hill is because we respect those principles it's our opportunity right now to be politically active to ask every candidate questions about net neutrality and the state of internet access in america and we have to undergo what is likely to be a chaotic change in order to get to the kind of country no one but unless we are extremely active it won't happen so please each one of you is now an activist thirty five years old started in one nine hundred eighty three here in for the first twenty five years it was clearly a net neutrality government network because it was on telephone lines and telephone lines were common carriers member those screechy modems that you had to plug in the wall jack right you had to be let on to that network to go wherever you wanted because that network was a common carrier and it was that heap ability that delivered a whole use or all of the kinds of things that were the beginning of what we take for granted today what happened was that as networks went digital the companies owning those networks started a p r campaign that said oh this is different this is entirely different but what's not you're delivering just like you were before  how and ones versus analog does not trump what but they convinced the f c c that that's what the case should be then they started going to court every time a republican or democratic but a republican f c c would do something they would go to court and say we can discriminate because we're not a common carrier when my and said i have been instructed by my clients that i may say that the reason we are appealing this is we intend to discriminate that's what we have to stand up against we need to have the internet worked when there was none discrimination in the internet has to continue to have the same kind of upward trajectory ahead when you have choice you know i love the fact that we're here at mit we have become a country where technology is a really really important part of everything we do including you know the grandma from louisiana and unfortunately a lot of our leadership doesn't understand technology doesn't understand how it impacts our lives and that neutrality is an interesting example  a lot of people think it's this odd and cryptic thing when in fact it's actually this one in every century threat to the free market system and i think people don't fully understand that and somehow it's been turned into a republican democrat issue and it's not you pick any state out there and they are the people of those see the brasco let's just pick nebraska there's a there's a state where the people will be negatively impacted by by the elimination of net neutrality so why is it that we can get the senators and congresspeople in those states to recognize this threat to the free market it's really a threat to what made america great i hate to talk about making america great thing is that but but there is there is a special  about the american center market says business model and and this is in fact a threat to it so i think we you know it's sort of odd we find ourselves at a time where rational thought doesn't win the day i mean there was a time when the united states senate voted fifty two to one to pass the sherman antitrust act and that's a imagine a senate that would rationally think about the threat the big business and say hey you know what we're actually going to do the right thing for the country not just for these railroads so what's happening to our country so there's actually this larger picture oddest thing that is happening in our country and net neutrality is sort of getting stuck in the almost a hostage to this larger issue in the country so while you know we're here to talk about today and it is absolutely an important topic you know this is a university their students are going to go back to every state and as susan said i think we all need to wherever whatever state we're going back to or whether you want to start a company here and that company's going to have employees like carbonite does in indianapolis and salt lake city the people in this room the people in this university are going to have  reach beyond cambridge massachusetts and i ask you to use that reach use that to technical skills you're developing here to either yourselves be the next generation of leaders for this country or your students or encourage others to do so because i think really think we're at a time where the leadership doesn't actually fit where the country i victim of this problem so thank you you we had a great night and we thank all of you for coming in so all again i'll take you back to one nine hundred sixty six when the defense department went to eighteen inches and i asked them if they wanted to build a pack network that would be an alternative to long distances them across the country in one thousand nine hundred said no we have a monopoly we really don't want the contract and then they went to i b m and they are stem would you want to help to build this packet switch computer based network and i b m said no we don't want it we have a monopoly and so they went to a very small company out here a memorial john of b b n and bolpur in a canoe and we gave the contract and a whole bunch of mit scientists began the process of inventing something that was called the op and that that in one thousand nine hundred one we in congress voted to move over to the private sector from the public sector all public money all federal research to build it and now eighty and other companies are saying oh my goodness look at all the competition which that is providing look what happens old side of our control and history once again begins to repeat itself and so it's never ending democracy is tough keeping markets open a tough our police always try to shut them down and you were right sir put big money into the political process not to influence those decisions so this is our moment i saw it in one thousand seventy nine i've been forty two years on the telecommunications committee no one has ever tried that before or will again so i have heard every single theory and the key hearing was nine hundred seventy nine there was a bill in congress to of the top unease to get into this marketplace and i was informed in the hearing that oh my goodness of the company started to make those phones in competition it could bring down the entire phone system in greater boston you just don't understand congressman it's too complicated for you this technology and i stood up left at hearing and i said we've got to break up you know you can't brag about winning ten nobel prizes in basic research and zero in applied research or in actually putting it out into the marketplace black rotary dial phones had to go we needed more long distance companies and today that fight continues and it's our job and that's why one more vote is so important you have you have though all world in your hands right here from mit you all know how to organize online it's no longer revolutionaries that like something green here online and you're creative and you're trying to figure out how to go across state lines to get more people are going to bombard congress over the next month with this message hash tag one more vote i thank you all for being here let's get one final