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[00:36.190 --> 00:44.990]  And you are listening to radio station WBAI 99.5 FM here in New York, wbai.org everywhere.
[00:45.890 --> 00:47.830]  And the time is just about 8 p.m.
[00:47.830 --> 00:51.450]  It's time for an exciting edition of Off the Hook.
[01:05.880 --> 01:19.860]  Now I can't make a call We couldn't get much worse Bum-dilly-bump But the best is paid for worst I hope that's understood Bum-dilly-bump
[01:47.810 --> 01:50.370]  A very good evening indeed to you.
[01:54.000 --> 01:56.400]  This program is Off the Hook.
[01:57.360 --> 01:58.160]  Rob T.
[01:58.280 --> 01:59.240]  Firefly here with you.
[01:59.580 --> 02:03.300]  I am joined in the studio by Voltaire.
[02:03.600 --> 02:04.080]  Hello.
[02:04.800 --> 02:05.840]  And by Alex.
[02:06.100 --> 02:06.680]  Good evening.
[02:07.340 --> 02:10.960]  And we're joined on the telephone by Emmanuel and Kyle from Parts Unknown.
[02:12.140 --> 02:13.920]  Oh, well, that won't last long.
[02:14.040 --> 02:14.860]  We'll tell you where we are.
[02:15.000 --> 02:17.020]  We're on the west coast of Florida.
[02:17.200 --> 02:18.320]  The Gulf Coast, I think they call it.
[02:18.640 --> 02:19.060]  Yes.
[02:20.560 --> 02:21.500]  The Gulf Coast.
[02:21.540 --> 02:23.180]  So are you going in search of gasoline?
[02:23.180 --> 02:24.780]  Or what are you guys up to down there?
[02:25.260 --> 02:26.680]  Oh, well, we found that right away.
[02:26.800 --> 02:30.860]  No, we basically are visiting some good friends down here.
[02:30.860 --> 02:34.320]  And believe it or not, they celebrate Thanksgiving as well in Florida.
[02:34.320 --> 02:35.220]  I did not know that.
[02:35.580 --> 02:36.900]  They have Thanksgiving down there.
[02:37.580 --> 02:39.180]  They have a lot of things that we have.
[02:39.380 --> 02:42.900]  I always thought it was just this completely alien environment.
[02:43.080 --> 02:44.760]  But you'd be surprised.
[02:45.660 --> 02:49.340]  A lot of it is very familiar and almost recognizable.
[02:49.860 --> 02:51.560]  So where are you guys specifically?
[02:51.800 --> 02:54.580]  Are you near Tampa by any chance?
[02:54.680 --> 02:55.680]  You want an address, Alex?
[02:56.000 --> 02:58.860]  Because we can send you the GPS coordinates if you really need that.
[02:58.860 --> 02:59.800]  I would prefer that.
[02:59.880 --> 03:01.880]  And I think our listeners would love to know.
[03:02.340 --> 03:06.520]  At this resort, it's got this kind of tropical name.
[03:07.440 --> 03:08.040]  What's it?
[03:08.260 --> 03:08.920]  Del L?
[03:09.700 --> 03:10.520]  Mar A?
[03:10.740 --> 03:11.940]  It's like a ranch or something.
[03:12.180 --> 03:13.480]  Yeah, it's kind of tacky.
[03:14.020 --> 03:17.380]  I don't really want to advertise it too much.
[03:17.440 --> 03:19.220]  Because I don't think it deserves it, to be honest.
[03:19.580 --> 03:22.800]  Yeah, you sound like you might be a fish out of water over there, perhaps.
[03:23.640 --> 03:26.060]  Yeah, there are some fish out of water.
[03:26.380 --> 03:28.580]  You know there's alligators that stroll down the street.
[03:28.840 --> 03:31.440]  And there's even wildcats occasionally.
[03:32.260 --> 03:33.080]  I'm not surprised.
[03:33.080 --> 03:36.140]  There's also lots of Scientologists over on the West Coast.
[03:36.800 --> 03:38.460]  Oh, we haven't encountered any of those.
[03:38.620 --> 03:41.480]  There are no signs saying not to hit them.
[03:41.600 --> 03:43.100]  Yeah, you're not supposed to feed them either.
[03:43.100 --> 03:46.720]  So I think that wildlife is at bay, at least for the time being.
[03:47.160 --> 03:47.500]  That's true.
[03:48.060 --> 03:48.920]  That's clear water.
[03:49.080 --> 03:50.780]  We're just down here for a little while.
[03:51.000 --> 03:52.460]  We'll be driving back up, actually.
[03:52.720 --> 03:53.620]  This is kind of an interesting story.
[03:53.680 --> 03:54.600]  I'll make it very quick.
[03:56.280 --> 03:58.440]  We're bringing back a bunch of items.
[03:58.620 --> 04:00.800]  I won't get into the details as to what the items actually are.
[04:00.900 --> 04:03.220]  There's no need to complicate our lives even further.
[04:03.400 --> 04:05.560]  But we needed a big truck for these items.
[04:05.560 --> 04:13.000]  And we reserved a big truck with a budget truck rental because we thought they sounded like a good place to rent trucks.
[04:13.120 --> 04:14.600]  And we had a reservation and everything.
[04:14.740 --> 04:18.460]  And then they contacted us today and said, oh, by the way, we have no trucks.
[04:18.940 --> 04:21.100]  And, you know, everybody... I tweeted about this.
[04:21.240 --> 04:26.020]  Everybody sent me that Seinfeld sketch, you know, where, yeah, you can take the reservation.
[04:26.020 --> 04:27.920]  You just don't know how to keep the reservation.
[04:27.920 --> 04:31.020]  They don't seem to know what the definition of the word reservation is.
[04:31.340 --> 04:32.560]  Whole big thing with them.
[04:33.260 --> 04:38.660]  And we basically, for a while, were stranded in Florida with no way to get back and no way to bring all these items back with us.
[04:39.980 --> 04:48.540]  So after tweeting about it for a while, we got all kinds of offers and responses and emails even from other carriers.
[04:48.540 --> 04:50.340]  And we eventually settled on one.
[04:50.500 --> 04:54.520]  And then it's funny because budget actually reached out to us and tried to make amends.
[04:54.580 --> 04:55.300]  And they found a truck.
[04:55.840 --> 04:58.680]  They said there wasn't one for 200 miles and they magically found one.
[04:59.120 --> 05:01.340]  But by that time, we figured it was...
[05:01.340 --> 05:04.200]  We weren't going to do the same thing and cancel with people we had signed on with.
[05:04.520 --> 05:09.560]  But it just goes to show if you complain a lot, sometimes things can change.
[05:10.120 --> 05:13.280]  Well, it's incredible that they get away with this kind of nonsense constantly.
[05:13.280 --> 05:15.160]  You know, they just take reservations.
[05:15.420 --> 05:16.140]  You're exactly right.
[05:16.220 --> 05:16.960]  They don't keep them.
[05:17.920 --> 05:19.580]  And it's just sort of random.
[05:19.920 --> 05:21.120]  You know, you show up.
[05:21.280 --> 05:26.320]  It's as if, you know, you should just show up early in the morning, despite having a 3 or 4 o'clock p.m.
[05:26.460 --> 05:28.380]  reservation, to make sure that you get a car.
[05:28.600 --> 05:33.980]  Because they will just give away the cars or the trucks to whoever shows up first.
[05:34.780 --> 05:36.120]  It's complete chaos.
[05:36.860 --> 05:39.540]  What we discovered was that there are two kinds...
[05:39.540 --> 05:42.660]  There's a reservation, which doesn't really mean reservation.
[05:43.800 --> 05:46.800]  But you have to get what's known as a guaranteed reservation.
[05:47.140 --> 05:49.580]  And then it's guaranteed to be a reservation.
[05:49.800 --> 05:52.360]  But if it's not guaranteed, then it's not really a reservation.
[05:52.680 --> 05:53.880]  Someone actually explain this to me.
[05:54.340 --> 05:55.080]  That's interesting.
[05:55.240 --> 05:57.360]  And does a guaranteed reservation cost money?
[05:57.360 --> 06:01.560]  Because very often you can make a reservation online without paying anything.
[06:02.500 --> 06:03.880]  That's the gold guarantee.
[06:04.220 --> 06:06.040]  I don't know if that's available...
[06:06.040 --> 06:06.440]  That's right.
[06:06.520 --> 06:06.940]  Is that right?
[06:08.060 --> 06:12.600]  Needless to say, the budget system really isn't...
[06:13.260 --> 06:17.080]  They don't have their system up to that level.
[06:17.600 --> 06:20.560]  And really, there's more confusion there, it seems.
[06:20.760 --> 06:30.340]  And boy, us asking to have our reservation honored, that really put their system in a tailspin.
[06:30.340 --> 06:37.820]  Well, it was frustrating to us because, you know, here we are in the middle of a place that we're unfamiliar with, being told that, yeah, there's nothing we can do for you.
[06:38.460 --> 06:39.400]  Call us in a week.
[06:40.400 --> 06:42.960]  Okay, we can just hang out for a week and call you back.
[06:43.000 --> 06:45.260]  And hopefully, maybe then, you'll have something for us.
[06:45.260 --> 06:53.380]  I think once we're filtered up, sorry, there's an airplane flying over us, there are a lot of planes landing and taking off where we are.
[06:53.540 --> 06:54.860]  So they have planes as well.
[06:55.300 --> 06:56.840]  Well, it's very busy.
[06:57.140 --> 06:59.180]  People need things for the holidays.
[06:59.960 --> 07:08.680]  But basically, you know, just assume people have the ability to just stay put and, you know, call them at their convenience.
[07:08.680 --> 07:19.900]  And, yeah, once they started realizing that we didn't find that to be very nice or funny or anything like that, they started to take it more seriously.
[07:19.920 --> 07:22.860]  And I think that's what people as consumers need to do more.
[07:23.180 --> 07:26.180]  There's a lot of accepting of corporate lines.
[07:26.240 --> 07:34.940]  And you have to remind them that you have the power, in some scenarios, to go to another provider.
[07:35.380 --> 07:38.540]  Now, that's not the case with some of the other things we're going to be talking about tonight.
[07:40.080 --> 07:45.040]  But in the rental world, it does still have a little bit of currency.
[07:45.620 --> 07:46.300]  Yes, yes.
[07:46.820 --> 07:51.660]  So we will be driving a big truck through the Deep South on our way back.
[07:52.460 --> 07:55.480]  So if anyone is in one of the Deep South states, let us know.
[07:55.580 --> 07:57.000]  TH at 2600.com.
[07:57.000 --> 08:00.200]  Maybe we can stop by your town and have an adventure or two.
[08:00.600 --> 08:04.760]  But tonight, you know, we have something much more important to discuss.
[08:04.760 --> 08:07.220]  And that is the looming...
[08:08.080 --> 08:13.840]  Well, I don't want to say the looming death of net neutrality, but the threatened looming death of net neutrality.
[08:13.860 --> 08:17.220]  Because the vote is actually scheduled for December 14th.
[08:17.280 --> 08:28.560]  The FCC is expected to vote 3-2 along party lines to rescind the Obama-era net neutrality, I guess, lack of regulations.
[08:29.260 --> 08:29.880]  That's what I say.
[08:29.960 --> 08:30.060]  That's what I say.
[08:30.060 --> 08:32.000]  Yeah, it's referred to as Title II, I believe.
[08:32.820 --> 08:33.300]  That's right.
[08:35.720 --> 08:41.280]  So, I guess, you know, one of the things that we really have to focus on today is why this is important.
[08:41.280 --> 08:48.380]  Because I think we haven't done a very good job outlining it to people, you know, why exactly should they care about this.
[08:48.400 --> 08:57.660]  I've seen a lot of comparisons, and we need to come up with comparisons that really kind of fit, and that people say, oh, now I get it.
[08:57.660 --> 09:09.300]  I've seen comparisons, people saying, yeah, this is what it's going to mean, you'll be able to divide up your internet use from video to social media to gaming.
[09:09.900 --> 09:13.980]  And I can see people saying, hey, that works for me because I only use one, I'll pay less.
[09:14.180 --> 09:18.440]  And no, that's not why this is a threat, obviously.
[09:18.440 --> 09:28.760]  It's a threat because of the control that we are handing over to either corporations and or governments, most likely a little bit of each.
[09:29.760 --> 09:33.320]  Alex, I know, you know, you've studied this quite a bit as well as a lawyer.
[09:34.380 --> 09:40.680]  Is there some maybe way to explain it to the layperson that we might not have hit upon yet?
[09:41.540 --> 09:44.680]  You know, frankly, I think I struggle with this as well.
[09:44.680 --> 09:49.700]  And it's a topic that sort of defies, I think, really great analogies here.
[09:50.060 --> 10:03.600]  But, you know, what this would be essentially doing is, you know, changing the classification of ISPs and allowing them to pick and choose which traffic they want to prioritize and which traffic they want to deprioritize.
[10:03.780 --> 10:23.380]  So that means that, you know, every single ISP, whether it's Spectrum, Comcast, Cablevision, now known as Altice, they can strike their own deals with particular companies like Google and Facebook to prioritize traffic that goes to and from their servers to the detriment of other types of traffic.
[10:23.600 --> 10:37.660]  And what that means is it would seem to create a very unlevel playing field for smaller entrepreneurs, smaller companies, free speech advocates, and anybody who wanted to have equal access to the web.
[10:37.660 --> 10:39.800]  So it's really, it's a question of access.
[10:39.800 --> 10:52.760]  I think it's very tricky to explain this because you get into, as Kyle had mentioned, things like Title II, classifications of whether or not you're, you know, an ISP is known as a common carrier or not, and a declassification and an FCC rulemaking.
[10:52.960 --> 10:56.880]  And all of that is extremely unsexy and uninteresting.
[10:57.260 --> 10:59.480]  And, you know, my own eyes are starting to glaze over.
[10:59.560 --> 11:04.180]  And so I think a lot of people, frankly, find this topic extremely boring.
[11:04.180 --> 11:06.660]  But at the same time, it's really important.
[11:07.880 --> 11:09.360]  Let's try to liven it up a little bit.
[11:09.480 --> 11:16.500]  Now, you mentioned a couple of examples of companies and things like that.
[11:16.620 --> 11:20.160]  What's the company called in New York City now, the cable company, what they call it?
[11:20.240 --> 11:20.400]  Spectrum.
[11:20.960 --> 11:21.560]  Spectrum, right.
[11:21.800 --> 11:22.040]  Okay.
[11:22.360 --> 11:31.900]  So Spectrum has some kind of communications or some kind of phone package, right, where you can use a phone and pay Spectrum for your phone, correct?
[11:31.900 --> 11:32.800]  That's right.
[11:33.160 --> 11:35.340]  Unfortunately, I get calls about it constantly.
[11:36.180 --> 11:42.900]  Let's say that you want to use FaceTime over the net, right, on your computer.
[11:42.960 --> 11:43.460]  You can do that?
[11:44.300 --> 11:45.100]  Is that something that...
[11:45.100 --> 11:46.180]  Yeah, say you were...
[11:46.180 --> 11:46.820]  It's still allowed.
[11:47.320 --> 11:53.520]  ...by calling feature or some other service that lets you use the calls over your web connection.
[11:53.680 --> 11:53.820]  Sure.
[11:53.960 --> 11:58.880]  Would they be able to restrict something like that because they offer a competing service and they want you to use that instead?
[11:59.860 --> 12:01.200]  Yes, they probably would.
[12:01.440 --> 12:02.360]  They probably would.
[12:02.480 --> 12:21.240]  In fact, one of our astute, off-the-hook researchers has actually sent around to our list a case about Vonage, where that was done in the past as well, where an ISP did not want Vonage, which was one of the early-stage voice-over IP providers, to be able to offer phone service over its own network.
[12:21.240 --> 12:26.920]  And that's where these sort of net neutrality rules really originated, and now they're being repealed or rolled back.
[12:27.180 --> 12:31.080]  So, yes, that kind of prioritization could possibly happen in the future.
[12:31.820 --> 12:39.800]  What's interesting, though, is what's still part of this particular proposal is that ISPs can do that, but they're going to have to say that they're doing that.
[12:40.940 --> 12:54.440]  And, you know, the flip side of this as well is if the status quo remains, how are we going to know one way or the other that they are not prioritizing traffic?
[12:54.600 --> 12:56.780]  ISPs, that is, are not prioritizing traffic.
[12:57.600 --> 13:07.360]  My concern with net neutrality from a contrary standpoint is if we have these types of rules in place that require net neutrality, how do we audit this?
[13:07.420 --> 13:08.360]  How do we enforce it?
[13:08.560 --> 13:15.080]  If it's a government rule, are we going to be asking then that the government should come in and monitor our traffic?
[13:15.280 --> 13:25.000]  So I think there's some privacy concerns that stem from net neutrality rules as they stand right now and possibly with respect to the compliance of them.
[13:25.000 --> 13:31.840]  But then there's, on the other hand, major, major concerns when it comes to the freedom of speech and access to information.
[13:32.280 --> 13:33.780]  Yeah, that alone is a huge concern.
[13:33.960 --> 13:46.840]  I mean, the infrastructure that you would need to start prioritizing content if you're an ISP, that's monitoring your users, that's monitoring what they're looking at, what, you know, possibly for how long they're looking at it, how much data they're using over certain sites.
[13:47.000 --> 13:50.680]  And that's a pretty massive privacy implication right there.
[13:50.680 --> 13:58.160]  Can I bring up something that our friend Corey Doctorow wrote in Blowing Blowing on this issue?
[13:58.620 --> 14:00.580]  It concerns Breitbart News, actually.
[14:00.720 --> 14:06.640]  Breitbart News seems to think that they're going to win if net neutrality goes down in flames.
[14:06.820 --> 14:11.380]  And he had the following to say about it, and I think this makes a good point.
[14:11.380 --> 14:18.000]  The only reason Breitbart was able to be economically viable and politically influential is because of net neutrality.
[14:18.160 --> 14:26.780]  If their ability to contact their constituencies was contingent on approval from the establishment they decry, they'd have been strangled in their cradle.
[14:27.060 --> 14:29.920]  This is true of many things I love and many things I hate.
[14:30.400 --> 14:37.100]  Insurgencies rely on free, fair, open infrastructure and suffer under systems of control and incumbency.
[14:37.100 --> 14:42.400]  Boing Boing thrives because of the same free, fair and open network that led Breitbart to rise.
[14:42.580 --> 14:50.800]  What Breitbart doesn't realize is that the weapon they fashioned for Trump and his FCC will remain locked and loaded for the administrations that come next.
[14:50.960 --> 14:58.860]  Once you erode the principle of net neutrality, then a 2018 Democratic Congress or 2020 Democratic President could simply turn Breitbart off.
[14:59.180 --> 15:01.320]  Breitbart can bet on a thousand-year Trump-Rike.
[15:01.420 --> 15:06.900]  I hope that the day will never come when they are staring down the barrel of the gun they're slobbering to use today.
[15:07.100 --> 15:08.780]  But it's a stupid bet.
[15:09.260 --> 15:13.640]  Now, you might say that we're not handing it over to the government.
[15:13.760 --> 15:14.680]  We're handing it over to the corporations.
[15:14.680 --> 15:25.420]  But do we really believe that there isn't an agreement between corporations and governments to allow for ease of access and all kinds of backdoor deals?
[15:25.860 --> 15:31.120]  This is something that the Trump administration is pushing, something that the Obama administration was against.
[15:31.620 --> 15:37.840]  It's definitely related to politics, related to big companies in many, many ways.
[15:38.480 --> 15:41.320]  Well, you know, I think you're absolutely right about that.
[15:41.440 --> 15:48.900]  It's something to be, you know, I think, very fearful of, especially since cable companies, broadband providers are very, very powerful players.
[15:48.900 --> 15:58.620]  They have lobbyists working for them, you know, both at the state and the federal level, and the FCC and Congress, you know, these are very, very powerful players.
[15:58.780 --> 16:04.720]  And so, you know, any kind of regulation that comes out is always going to be born out of this sort of lobbying process.
[16:05.360 --> 16:21.080]  And then, when you allow them to continue to just make more and more money, you know, there's a vested interest in having these types of things in place, and then that bleeds over into the world of political donations and those kinds of machinations.
[16:21.340 --> 16:25.380]  And so, those ties become closer and closer and closer, and that becomes dangerous.
[16:26.460 --> 16:36.620]  I think, also, what we should consider here is these cable companies, they could exercise an undue amount of market-related power.
[16:37.260 --> 16:41.180]  And you alluded to this, Emmanuel, earlier when it came to promoting their own services.
[16:41.380 --> 16:53.060]  This could have to deal with promoting their own channels as opposed to, you know, allowing traffic for Netflix, so to speak, to flow freely over their particular, over their channels, frankly.
[16:53.060 --> 17:07.060]  But what we have on the books already, and what the Trump administration and what the FCC is saying is that, well, we already have laws on the books that prevent this kind of abuse of market power, and these are what's known as antitrust laws, and they've been around a long time,
[17:07.160 --> 17:08.000]  and they work really well.
[17:08.080 --> 17:14.440]  So, why do we have to have another agency regulating an industry that the market can regulate itself?
[17:15.000 --> 17:21.640]  And I think the answer to that sort of specious argument is that these antitrust laws are very, very rarely enforced.
[17:21.640 --> 17:32.300]  And we don't have the resources in the judiciary or in the Department of Justice to bring these kinds of antitrust actions against all these regional and national ISPs.
[17:32.980 --> 17:35.040]  So, we can't rely on that.
[17:35.180 --> 17:38.420]  And there could very well be market abuses that will happen.
[17:38.960 --> 17:40.260]  It's a scary thought.
[17:40.520 --> 17:44.720]  But, you know, can I play the devil's advocate here on the other side?
[17:44.720 --> 17:47.560]  Because, you know, I think we should present both sides of the argument.
[17:48.260 --> 17:53.380]  You could, but we all have things close to us here in the studio that we can throw at you, so you better make this good.
[17:53.440 --> 17:53.820]  That's true.
[17:53.860 --> 17:54.640]  And these are...
[17:54.640 --> 17:58.960]  There's a lot of heavy objects in here as well, and some hot ones, too, in front of me.
[17:59.760 --> 18:14.300]  In any event, if we do allow net neutrality to go by the wayside, then we're going to allow the market to dictate with whom we do business or with which companies we do business.
[18:14.680 --> 18:24.420]  And if there are market abuses, perhaps this will then allow some sort of innovation free from regulation to rise from the ashes.
[18:24.680 --> 18:28.120]  I mean, this is sort of the kind of deregulation that may kill the Internet.
[18:28.120 --> 18:36.320]  But while it's being, you know, destroyed and murdered, something else will have to rise up from its ashes.
[18:36.320 --> 18:51.880]  And maybe, if this does pass, we have to think about developing new technologies, developing new networks that aren't throttled, and maybe something will rise from the ashes of the Internet that is greater than we could ever even imagine right now.
[18:52.720 --> 18:53.280]  Alex?
[18:53.640 --> 18:54.060]  Yes.
[18:54.880 --> 18:57.400]  I just want to point out something that you said.
[18:57.400 --> 19:04.440]  These are among the most profitable companies in our country, both historically and currently.
[19:05.220 --> 19:16.360]  And another thing, and what this ruling would do is shift the prioritizations of these companies from routing people's traffic to monetizing their traffic.
[19:16.770 --> 19:18.680]  And that's an important distinction.
[19:18.680 --> 19:34.580]  What this is doing is creating another form of revenue for the ISPs, who already, as much as it's a free market, have an incredible monopoly over the service that is available to most Americans.
[19:34.580 --> 19:45.040]  And that's really key, especially, so that's seemingly a wide market, but it's somewhat narrow in practice.
[19:45.040 --> 19:59.200]  And a big factor I'll maybe get into later, I think also, is that a lot of these telecommunications companies diversified or have subsidiaries that are involved in wireless.
[19:59.500 --> 20:05.840]  And wireless has been doing very, very well for several years, if anyone has noticed.
[20:05.840 --> 20:06.760]  Yeah.
[20:07.120 --> 20:13.740]  Smartphones are ubiquitous, and most people use the Internet over wireless providers.
[20:14.080 --> 20:23.900]  Those companies, as I've said many times before, and no one's challenged me, are private and are not regulated in the same way that traditional telephone companies were way back when.
[20:23.900 --> 20:31.700]  So that's a factor insofar as people using broadband or broadband use languishing.
[20:31.900 --> 20:38.240]  And a big excuse in this fight is that infrastructure investment will suffer.
[20:38.480 --> 20:45.160]  We won't be able to provide the kinds of service and innovation that is required.
[20:45.160 --> 20:47.680]  I would say under this, we've had more innovation.
[20:47.680 --> 20:53.580]  And what they want is us to believe that, but it doesn't necessarily mean...
[20:53.580 --> 20:58.800]  I mean, you create a revenue stream and you give them money, they get to control whether that goes to their shareholders.
[20:59.000 --> 21:18.200]  And I'm going to say, if they've been paying dividends and they want to keep their boards happy, they'll continue to get that money to those individuals and not invest in their networks any more than they can add more people on channels and further economize their... or streamline their existing business model.
[21:18.380 --> 21:32.120]  But the big projects, they spend more time lobbying cities and public utility commissions that are trying to create their own infrastructure to keep them from being able to even enter the market.
[21:32.120 --> 21:39.620]  So they have a lot of money, they want a lot more money, and they're not really going to do with it what they want you to think they will.
[21:40.780 --> 21:43.740]  Kyle, you struck on, I think, a couple of really good points there.
[21:43.860 --> 21:46.780]  And, you know, the first one is the fact that this is a new revenue stream.
[21:47.000 --> 21:54.520]  And there seems to have been a deliberate choice to open up several new revenue streams at the outset of the Trump administration.
[21:55.360 --> 22:01.580]  Recall back, God, it's nearly a year now, almost a year.
[22:01.720 --> 22:11.840]  But one of the first things the Trump administration did was roll back the rules of the Obama administration that prohibited ISPs from monetizing customer-related browsing habits.
[22:12.180 --> 22:18.860]  And when they did that, they opened up a brand-new revenue stream already for cable companies, for broadband providers.
[22:20.080 --> 22:26.880]  And we don't really have a lot of visibility into whether or not they are making money from monetizing our browsing habits, et cetera.
[22:27.300 --> 22:31.700]  And I've always said since that day, it's a great time to be in the VPN business.
[22:32.780 --> 22:44.440]  And then, separately, you know, I think you're absolutely right about this being, you know, sort of endemic and the wireless industry being, you know, implicated here as well.
[22:44.600 --> 22:52.200]  I think this is going to be a much larger and sort of longer-lasting problem that we're going to have to face.
[22:53.060 --> 23:02.460]  But I do think that, you know, there may be an opportunity to sort of turn lemons into lemonade here because we're going to have to start thinking about ways around this.
[23:02.540 --> 23:05.320]  We need to keep our hacker hat on.
[23:05.480 --> 23:11.660]  We need to think about new technologies, new networks, things that are going to avoid these types of problems.
[23:13.180 --> 23:22.800]  Well, before you guys start passing out glasses for lemonade, can I just read something as maybe, you know, a little bit of equal time here so that we can get a different perspective?
[23:23.640 --> 23:24.080]  Sure.
[23:24.160 --> 23:24.380]  Go ahead.
[23:25.200 --> 23:25.560]  All right.
[23:25.740 --> 23:26.700]  This is what I have to say.
[23:26.980 --> 23:36.780]  The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama administration imposed on the Internet is smothering innovation, damaging the American economy, and obstructing job creation.
[23:37.000 --> 23:50.360]  I urge the Federal Communications Commission to end the bureaucratic regulatory overreach of the Internet, known as Title II, and restore the bipartisan, light-touch regulatory consensus that enabled the Internet to flourish for more than 20 years.
[23:50.540 --> 24:00.540]  The plan currently under consideration at the FCC to repeal Obama's Title II power grab is a positive step forward and will help to promote a truly free and open Internet for everyone.
[24:00.660 --> 24:01.640]  Thank you very much.
[24:02.820 --> 24:04.160]  Well, who said that?
[24:04.720 --> 24:06.200]  Was that your own statement?
[24:06.200 --> 24:13.100]  Well, 128,000 people said that on the Internet as part of the FCC comment period.
[24:13.340 --> 24:22.960]  And it's led to a bunch of interesting allegations and investigations that there might be a bot faking widespread net neutrality opposition.
[24:22.960 --> 24:26.940]  In fact, our own Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, is looking into this.
[24:27.120 --> 24:28.640]  This was revealed actually back in May.
[24:29.220 --> 24:38.320]  But it shows how easily perception can be swayed and falsified when you have something like this.
[24:38.600 --> 24:42.060]  Those comments, by the way, are signed by Donald Trump.
[24:42.320 --> 24:47.520]  But they're signed by Donald Trump a whole bunch of different times, and they're signed by other people in other places.
[24:47.720 --> 24:49.100]  They're signed by real people.
[24:49.300 --> 24:53.260]  Alex, you might look it up and see if maybe you said that on the FCC website.
[24:53.260 --> 24:54.960]  There are all kinds of...
[24:54.960 --> 24:59.080]  Kyle, I believe there's a place you can look to see if you said that, right?
[24:59.300 --> 24:59.740]  Yeah.
[25:00.040 --> 25:04.620]  I just wanted quickly to talk about this site, comcastroturf.com.
[25:05.180 --> 25:05.500]  Wow.
[25:06.040 --> 25:07.940]  It's a pretty cool site name.
[25:08.340 --> 25:17.400]  It's a play on astroturfing, which is fake grassroots efforts, you know, paid protesters, that kind of thing.
[25:17.480 --> 25:18.560]  It's also a play on Comcast.
[25:18.740 --> 25:21.000]  Yes, also a play on Comcast.
[25:21.000 --> 25:24.840]  Okay, I guess it could be Xfinity Troturf.
[25:24.860 --> 25:26.020]  No, that doesn't work.
[25:26.180 --> 25:26.440]  No, no.
[25:26.580 --> 25:27.200]  Okay, forget that.
[25:27.460 --> 25:33.900]  But yeah, comcastroturf.com was started by an organization called Fight for the Future.
[25:33.900 --> 25:45.100]  I'm not sure if everybody knows about them, but they've been really active in outing this investigation, outing what was going on over the comment period.
[25:45.100 --> 25:50.920]  And their investigation led them to create this site where people could check.
[25:51.000 --> 25:54.100]  So you could enter in a name at that site I just mentioned.
[25:54.400 --> 25:59.180]  And I tried a couple names, and one of them was...
[25:59.180 --> 25:59.820]  Donald Trump.
[26:00.040 --> 26:01.120]  Donald Trump, indeed.
[26:01.380 --> 26:01.780]  But you know what?
[26:01.900 --> 26:04.540]  Comcast does not like this site at all.
[26:04.640 --> 26:10.140]  In fact, what they did was they tried to threaten the people running it to give the site to them.
[26:10.140 --> 26:13.520]  And, I mean, doesn't that sort of prove the point?
[26:14.240 --> 26:15.160]  Yeah, yeah.
[26:15.400 --> 26:18.160]  Their response is absolutely priceless.
[26:18.340 --> 26:20.600]  I'll read this one statement real quick.
[26:21.000 --> 26:21.940]  Fight for the Future report.
[26:22.120 --> 26:35.940]  They had received a cease and desist order from Comcast lawyers, and they were arguing that Comcast's valuable intellectual property was grounds to have them stop their site.
[26:35.940 --> 26:46.560]  And Freem, Fight for the Future, responded, saying, this is exactly why we need Title II net neutrality protections that ban blocking, throttling, and censorship.
[26:47.500 --> 26:48.860]  This is Evan Greer.
[26:48.980 --> 27:00.220]  If Ajit Pai's plan is enacted, there would be nothing preventing Comcast from simply blocking sites like ComcastroTurf that are critical of their corporate policies.
[27:00.400 --> 27:03.620]  And again, that was Evan Greer from Fight for the Future.
[27:03.620 --> 27:06.980]  So it absolutely illustrates the reason.
[27:06.980 --> 27:30.520]  If you want to make a site that is dissent and you're not necessarily using any of their brand image, you simply reword their corporate name to critique them and to show the fraudulence in this public opinion period, it absolutely would be something that would suffer in the face of removing this legislation.
[27:30.520 --> 27:43.040]  And just as an update, our Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has reached out for assistance to all kinds of FCC officials, including Chairman Pai, at three successive acting FCC general counsels.
[27:43.040 --> 27:47.540]  The FCC's Inspector General hasn't received any response to his request.
[27:47.700 --> 27:54.760]  He says hundreds of thousands of Americans likely were victimized during the FCC's public comment process on net neutrality.
[27:54.760 --> 27:58.120]  And that's akin to identity theft, and it happened on a massive scale.
[27:58.120 --> 28:13.720]  Well, Schneiderman says, I encourage the FCC to reconsider its refusal to assist in my office's law enforcement investigation to identify and hold accountable those who illegally misuse so many New Yorkers' identities to corrupt the public comment process.
[28:13.940 --> 28:15.320]  And not just New Yorkers, obviously.
[28:15.320 --> 28:17.100]  We're talking about that because we're in New York.
[28:17.320 --> 28:21.060]  This happened to people throughout the country, probably throughout the world.
[28:21.060 --> 28:26.280]  All kinds of names were used, and fake numbers probably calculated as a result.
[28:26.280 --> 28:39.380]  Another odd thing about this story with the public comment period is that the FCC, their website to have public comments be submitted went down for a period of time, and then the FCC claimed that they were hacked.
[28:39.540 --> 28:41.800]  But they never submitted any evidence to this.
[28:41.900 --> 28:49.980]  And even the Attorney General of New York, Eric Schneiderman, asked them to provide evidence of being hacked, and they refused to provide anything.
[28:50.160 --> 28:57.380]  So it sounds like just a case of them not having the server resources for it, but claiming that, like, oh, it's hackers that caused their site to go down.
[28:57.540 --> 28:59.520]  Without variety, evidence is really problematic.
[29:00.800 --> 29:02.020]  I agree with that.
[29:02.340 --> 29:05.700]  And to sort of build on that, Emmanuel, I think you're absolutely right.
[29:05.780 --> 29:08.720]  I mean, this seems like a massive crime of a major scale.
[29:09.020 --> 29:16.160]  And you know if these types of forces were mobilized, let's say, against the president, there would, of course, be an investigation.
[29:16.160 --> 29:24.280]  I mean, we had an investigation into absurd wiretapping allegations against the prior president, but yet we won't have an investigation here.
[29:24.400 --> 29:34.740]  And the other thing that's mysteriously absent from the deliberations of the FCC right now, and in the past, in a very recent past, are any sort of public hearings on these issues.
[29:34.920 --> 29:46.500]  You know, far from the essentially spamming the comment period, you know, you cannot impersonate an actual human being, you know, and their voice in a public hearing.
[29:46.500 --> 29:48.040]  And none of that has happened.
[29:48.640 --> 29:53.300]  And we all know the reason why, because the public does not want this particular thing to happen.
[29:54.040 --> 30:01.070]  And further cementing this, and this is something that Kyle had mentioned a little bit earlier, was that, you know, there are not going to be...
[30:01.760 --> 30:08.220]  or rather, there is not going to be any allowance for state rules that would affect net neutrality.
[30:08.360 --> 30:14.780]  So if you would think that, you know, your state constitution could help you in terms of privacy and free speech rights, well, absolutely not.
[30:14.780 --> 30:24.640]  And your state legislature can't help either, because these federal rules will preempt, specifically, any kind of state or local legislation that would otherwise affect net neutrality.
[30:24.760 --> 30:35.140]  So it's designed from the top down to be a very airtight process, through which, you know, we have to endure.
[30:35.140 --> 30:46.100]  It's funny how conservatives like to pretend to be for state rights and local rights, and then when it challenges corporate profits, they're all for changing the power of the federal government.
[30:46.580 --> 30:54.700]  Yeah, but you know, Voltaire, this isn't necessarily a right versus left issue, because there are lots of conservatives who see the value of net neutrality.
[30:54.700 --> 31:09.900]  I know that the current administration does not, but I do know that this is something that many people, once you explain it to them, and that's the hardest part, is explaining how this benefits them having net neutrality, they get it, you know.
[31:10.100 --> 31:21.040]  And I think that should be our goal, is to explain this to our parents, explain this to our grandparents, so that they understand it, because this is something that benefits individuals, no matter what their political background.
[31:21.560 --> 31:21.720]  Absolutely.
[31:22.680 --> 31:29.780]  Pardon me, with regard to the ruling being something national, I'd liken it to, say, the Federal Aviation Administration.
[31:30.240 --> 31:38.060]  You can't have states superseding flight rules or standards that are set for that industry.
[31:38.060 --> 31:41.320]  It's a nationwide thing, and it's very important to have consistency.
[31:42.540 --> 31:53.580]  And the other thing about informing people and telling them why, I think there were a lot of parallels when we were talking about cryptography being broken.
[31:54.500 --> 32:10.400]  You know, when we were realizing through PRISM and a lot of the Snowden revelations in the last year or two, it came up that, yeah, certain cryptographic protocols or schemes were, in one way or the other, broken.
[32:10.580 --> 32:25.580]  And what people realized is that, you know, people who run banks and people who are involved in the financial industry have every bit of interest in the cryptographic schemes that secure transactions.
[32:25.860 --> 32:33.200]  And I would argue this is the same type of situation, especially with the dawn of high-frequency trading.
[32:33.200 --> 32:51.940]  What happens if your particular firm has an undue amount of latency and you can't transact on the stock market fast enough and your competitors are winning because they have a relationship or an ownership scheme with some ISP that they're routing through,
[32:51.940 --> 32:56.100]  basically, this non-neutral scheme.
[32:56.100 --> 33:04.040]  That would affect a lot of, I would say, well-to-do and industrial tycoon types.
[33:04.500 --> 33:06.520]  That's really fascinating, Kyle.
[33:06.520 --> 33:18.160]  I hadn't actually thought of that, because, you know, that basically engendered a race to, you know, get closest to the stock exchange back in the 80s and 90s.
[33:18.160 --> 33:24.780]  That would, you know, create essentially the least, or rather the smallest possible ping back and forth to those servers.
[33:25.020 --> 33:39.460]  So, you know, that's a really fascinating point, because if there are going to be alternative channels for commercial purposes like that, that would be a gigantic revenue stream for which head funds and any kind of trader would like to pay.
[33:40.060 --> 33:40.560]  Exactly.
[33:40.560 --> 33:48.080]  And these are the kinds of things I think we need to share with people, so they understand that this is not for the fringe, tiny, little website.
[33:48.200 --> 33:53.800]  This affects the structure of switching and the structure of routing information.
[33:54.000 --> 33:57.340]  And just a side note about financial tech and high-frequency trading.
[33:57.580 --> 34:02.980]  Literally, that industry has been driving the physics of switching technology.
[34:02.980 --> 34:07.500]  They want such fast trading and such low latency.
[34:08.120 --> 34:15.940]  It is pushing the innovation, the actual physics of the technologies that are then sold in IT.
[34:16.220 --> 34:27.680]  It has been, maybe I'm wrong, but you can only imagine that these kinds of very special use cases, or maybe it's science, like the Large Hadron Collider.
[34:27.680 --> 34:32.660]  There's a lot of that technology, but finance has had a huge hand in it, and they still do.
[34:32.800 --> 34:41.500]  And those analogies are absolutely something that someone who maybe doesn't understand this from a home user or a rural user perspective.
[34:42.500 --> 35:03.940]  And I think if we're going for analogies, to explain this to people who might not understand the specifics and the technological issues behind it, there was a really good comment on the site Reddit, which had many subreddits pointing toward the net neutrality protests that are happening.
[35:03.940 --> 35:05.180]  We'll talk about that in a moment.
[35:05.320 --> 35:10.140]  But there was one comment on there that made the best of Reddit, actually, by a user called ProbablySoviet.
[35:10.240 --> 35:11.080]  And I'm just going to read this.
[35:12.360 --> 35:15.300]  So remember that time you were like, F yeah, I'm going to the library.
[35:15.420 --> 35:16.660]  And we got in the car and we got there.
[35:17.220 --> 35:20.480]  The librarian was super helpful in helping you navigate the Dewey Decimal System.
[35:20.640 --> 35:27.000]  But when you wanted to check out some books, she started charging you more for certain books, like for no reason other than because she wanted to.
[35:27.260 --> 35:29.000]  You were like, whoa, dude, this is a library.
[35:29.180 --> 35:31.120]  These books shouldn't be priced differently based on their content.
[35:31.280 --> 35:33.220]  To which she said, tough, nothing's stopping me.
[35:33.380 --> 35:37.460]  You can read these books that align with my ideological and political leanings for $5.
[35:37.880 --> 35:39.920]  Or you can read this book that I authored for free.
[35:39.920 --> 35:42.060]  But these books that I don't want you reading, $20.
[35:43.180 --> 35:45.120]  Sadly, your broke ass didn't have $20.
[35:45.500 --> 35:47.920]  So you didn't get the books you wanted and you took the books you were offered for free.
[35:48.200 --> 35:52.060]  The entire drive home, you were mad that you had to pay more for access to something that you didn't have to before.
[35:52.320 --> 35:55.100]  You then said, why don't we just go to that other library across town?
[35:55.200 --> 35:59.020]  To which I had to remind you, dude, we only have one library that services our area.
[35:59.140 --> 36:00.120]  There's another library, sure.
[36:00.320 --> 36:02.820]  And that library may even have a better selection.
[36:03.060 --> 36:07.100]  But the problem is that you don't live in the right area, so that librarian won't even let you check out books.
[36:07.100 --> 36:10.440]  And even then, there's no guarantee that she won't charge you whatever she wants as well.
[36:10.620 --> 36:11.900]  Then you pouted for a bit.
[36:14.080 --> 36:15.640]  Those damn librarians.
[36:16.060 --> 36:16.480]  Right?
[36:16.960 --> 36:17.380]  Yes.
[36:17.380 --> 36:19.340]  Well, you know my history with libraries.
[36:22.380 --> 36:22.800]  Yeah.
[36:23.020 --> 36:25.040]  More to be said about that at a later date.
[36:25.160 --> 36:26.840]  Maybe at Hope or something.
[36:27.800 --> 36:30.380]  Guys, we're going to bail in just a second.
[36:30.500 --> 36:32.480]  But can I just share one more website with you?
[36:32.480 --> 36:33.600]  I think it might be very helpful.
[36:33.880 --> 36:34.320]  Please do.
[36:35.380 --> 36:35.880]  Okay.
[36:36.000 --> 36:38.860]  There's this website called battleforthenet.com.
[36:38.860 --> 36:41.020]  You can access it on your phone, on your computer.
[36:41.420 --> 36:46.540]  And what it'll do, it'll actually make a phone call for you and connect you.
[36:47.040 --> 36:51.320]  It's basically, they say this is your last chance to stop ISPs from messing up your internet.
[36:51.920 --> 37:01.700]  FTC has announced its plan to slash net neutrality rules, allowing ISPs like Verizon to block apps, slow websites, and charge fees to control what you see and do online.
[37:01.740 --> 37:03.900]  They vote on December 14th.
[37:03.960 --> 37:08.960]  But if Congress gets enough calls, they can stop the FCC.
[37:09.360 --> 37:11.460]  In other words, guys, we still have power.
[37:11.620 --> 37:13.340]  We still can stop this thing.
[37:13.480 --> 37:17.100]  We've seen the effect that lots and lots of calls had on saving health care.
[37:17.680 --> 37:20.840]  We've seen this over and over again in many, many arenas.
[37:20.960 --> 37:30.360]  And I think what you're seeing now is basically a lot of people waking up and realizing that they've got to step forward now or we lose this forever.
[37:30.680 --> 37:48.240]  Now, what you do on this site, battleforthenet.com, you enter your phone number, and basically they will connect you to, I imagine, your local rep and office of some sort where you can register your feelings on this.
[37:48.360 --> 37:49.300]  There's a call button.
[37:49.300 --> 37:51.840]  You can actually hit it, and it'll call right then and there.
[37:52.220 --> 37:58.700]  They even provide you with a suggested script of what to say, and your phone number is not logged.
[37:58.720 --> 38:02.380]  It's basically just so they can route you to the right office.
[38:02.960 --> 38:08.020]  But that's a great way to get your voice out there if you're thinking, okay, what is it I can do to help?
[38:09.560 --> 38:10.360]  Battleforthenet.com.
[38:10.960 --> 38:11.360]  Absolutely.
[38:12.100 --> 38:16.820]  So that's one of the many projects by, I think, Fight for the Future is behind that.
[38:16.920 --> 38:20.660]  Yes, Fight for the Future, which is an amazing organization.
[38:20.660 --> 38:22.220]  They do a lot of good work.
[38:22.580 --> 38:30.300]  And, yeah, so you guys enjoy your continued trip, and we look forward to hearing more about your adventures.
[38:31.340 --> 38:31.660]  Voltaire.
[38:31.660 --> 38:32.440]  All right, thank you.
[38:33.080 --> 38:33.760]  Take care.
[38:35.540 --> 38:47.720]  If you'd like to do an action locally, on December 7th, there'll be protests at Verizon stores across the country, and then people will be walking from the Verizon store to their local representative's office.
[38:47.920 --> 38:52.680]  You can find more about that at verizonprotests.com.
[38:53.660 --> 38:54.620]  verizonprotests.com.
[38:54.960 --> 38:55.440]  Yes.
[38:55.700 --> 38:58.960]  That'll be the next website receiving a cease and desist letter.
[38:58.960 --> 38:59.560]  Right.
[39:00.100 --> 39:00.500]  Right.
[39:00.720 --> 39:04.540]  But, yeah, comcastroturf.com, also by Fight for the Future.
[39:04.780 --> 39:13.660]  The funny thing about that is when the, quote-unquote, other side is complaining about that one, it's mainly a front end for you to search the FCC's own site.
[39:13.800 --> 39:16.600]  So that's where the functionality is happening that they don't seem to like.
[39:17.260 --> 39:25.120]  But it searches the FCC's site for comments made in your name with your info, and then a link to submit a real comment if you choose to do so.
[39:25.640 --> 39:27.140]  So it's really interesting.
[39:27.300 --> 39:35.760]  I mean, we've seen, and we've covered on this program, so many of the recurring net neutrality and related movements that have to happen.
[39:35.760 --> 39:37.440]  And there was SOPA and PIPA back in 2012.
[39:37.460 --> 39:41.800]  There was other stuff in 2014 surrounding the Title II designation and stuff before that.
[39:41.900 --> 39:44.300]  And it seems like every so often something pops up.
[39:44.400 --> 39:48.320]  We have to, you know, do what we can to bang the drum and spread awareness about it.
[39:48.420 --> 39:54.400]  And then we seem to win something, and then things quiet down for a bit, and then just the same crap comes back at us again.
[39:54.400 --> 39:55.280]  Well, you're right.
[39:55.400 --> 40:05.820]  And, you know, SOPA and PIPA were a really great example of when the tech companies really rallied together with the citizenry and fought against what was going to be horrible legislation.
[40:06.160 --> 40:13.540]  I mean, I think we get that to an extent here, but it doesn't feel like we have quite the same level of enthusiasm from the tech companies.
[40:13.560 --> 40:32.240]  And I have to say, from that perspective, this is going to be a gigantic pain, and not just a drain on resources, because if you think, you know, Google, Facebook, Netflix, any of the big content providers, they're going to have to negotiate contracts with every single ISP about the priority of their particular traffic.
[40:32.460 --> 40:44.180]  You know, maybe part of this will be standardized, and certain terms will be standardized, but undoubtedly there will be certain ISPs who will try to monetize this more than others, and the terms are going to differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
[40:44.380 --> 40:46.100]  And that's a gigantic pain.
[40:46.360 --> 40:58.340]  It's not only expensive, but it's really difficult to administer from a compliance perspective, because you're going to have various contracts with all these entities, all different terms, and how are you going to audit that?
[40:58.480 --> 40:59.820]  You're going to have to have a staff.
[40:59.820 --> 41:02.740]  It's going to be renegotiated periodically.
[41:03.240 --> 41:04.840]  And what if there's a breach?
[41:05.000 --> 41:05.780]  Then what are you going to do?
[41:05.860 --> 41:14.480]  Then you're going to have, you know, ISP and Google-related litigation coming into the federal court system.
[41:15.520 --> 41:20.520]  And that's going to be very interesting to watch if this actually does come down the pipeline.
[41:20.780 --> 41:38.360]  But for the service providers like Netflix, who actually charge customers for services, well, all of these extra costs, both in terms of administration, legal costs, negotiation, and paying for access to networks, it's all going to be passed back to the consumer.
[41:38.560 --> 41:44.300]  That's another argument against net neutrality, that it's going to hit us eventually in the pocketbook.
[41:44.300 --> 41:49.220]  And the example of Netflix is really important right now because so many people have Netflix.
[41:49.380 --> 41:51.820]  I think it's actually the majority of internet traffic now.
[41:52.660 --> 41:56.120]  But Netflix is also a service to which a couple of competitors have popped up.
[41:56.340 --> 41:57.700]  There are different services.
[41:57.700 --> 41:59.860]  You can pay for television content if you want.
[41:59.920 --> 42:00.360]  There's Netflix.
[42:00.520 --> 42:01.080]  There's Amazon.
[42:01.620 --> 42:04.840]  There's, you know, channels that are coming up with their own things.
[42:04.840 --> 42:07.160]  So you have to subscribe to something else if you want to watch Star Trek.
[42:07.300 --> 42:13.640]  And what this all boils down to is, what if your ISP decides to do a deal with Netflix?
[42:13.640 --> 42:16.060]  Then you can't use Netflix's competitors.
[42:16.060 --> 42:17.920]  Or if you can, you can't use them as well.
[42:18.160 --> 42:18.940]  Maybe they're slower.
[42:19.120 --> 42:21.120]  Maybe they're lower definition signals that you're going to get.
[42:22.580 --> 42:24.000]  And it goes on and on.
[42:24.160 --> 42:34.320]  And Netflix and the like and other service providers that charge you fees to access what they're doing, they're already paying a lot for their internet access to get their content to you.
[42:34.500 --> 42:41.280]  And so this is just a huge case of double dipping and charging multiple people for the same content being delivered in the same direction.
[42:42.080 --> 42:52.740]  And also, it's worth noting that even if these big tech companies like Google and Netflix can't afford to pay for prioritization, the smaller upstarts won't be able to compete.
[42:53.160 --> 42:58.840]  Like here at 2600, we self-host our MP3s of our episodes.
[42:59.080 --> 43:03.500]  But like, we won't be able to compete with to pay for prioritization.
[43:03.900 --> 43:04.660]  Yeah, exactly.
[43:04.660 --> 43:22.500]  What if you listen to your podcasts and your ISP decides that rather than paying too much attention to our own server with our own podcast on it, maybe they're prioritizing MP3s that come from, say, like, you know, some podcast network somewhere that produces competing content or content even nothing like ours.
[43:22.860 --> 43:33.260]  Or say, perhaps there was some kind of, you know, offshore leaks database that was just released and they wanted to throttle traffic to it because perhaps it implicated their own dealings.
[43:34.320 --> 43:39.200]  Anyway, it's all a big mess, but we will be keeping an eye on this and you should be keeping an eye on this.
[43:39.820 --> 43:43.580]  And again, those sites are battleforthenet.com.
[43:43.680 --> 43:49.900]  That's a one-stop portal to everything that's going on right now, why it's important, what you can do to help.
[43:50.640 --> 43:52.700]  There's also verizonprotests.com.
[43:53.440 --> 43:54.940]  Singular, Verizon Protests.
[43:55.060 --> 43:57.340]  I'm looking at it and it's the plural.
[43:57.540 --> 43:57.860]  Oh, okay.
[43:57.860 --> 43:59.960]  Um, verizonprotests.com.
[44:00.100 --> 44:08.680]  And, uh, you can join protests that are popping up everywhere December 7th, where people will be marching from their local Verizon stores to, uh, to their local representative's office.
[44:08.760 --> 44:10.640]  Let me ask you a very serious question here.
[44:10.840 --> 44:13.780]  You know, how do we know these protests aren't organized by Russian trolls?
[44:15.240 --> 44:16.180]  How do we know this?
[44:16.240 --> 44:17.480]  We can't be certain, can we?
[44:17.480 --> 44:26.280]  I suppose, but if we, if we show up and, uh, you know, everyone's speaking Russian and maybe, uh, wearing, uh, on their hats and whatever, but anyway, that, that, that, that's a whole other thing.
[44:27.220 --> 44:31.340]  There is, there is a lot, uh, a lot else going on this, uh, this particular week.
[44:31.800 --> 44:35.120]  Um, there's an anniversary that, uh, that I'm kind of interested in.
[44:35.520 --> 44:41.080]  Um, and, you know, Emmanuel and Kyle are off the line now, sort of the, the bosses, uh, left us alone.
[44:41.280 --> 44:50.160]  And I'm really interested in this, so I'm going to check this out because tomorrow is, happens to be the anniversary of the, the show Doctor Who, um, of which I'm a big fan.
[44:50.280 --> 44:50.860]  You guys know that.
[44:51.100 --> 44:57.360]  Uh, so, you know, I, I thought I'd, uh, I thought I'd tune in and I think there's a rerun on now and I thought I'd tune in and, uh, check it out.
[44:57.520 --> 44:59.660]  And, you know, you guys can, you guys can watch with me.
[44:59.720 --> 45:05.100]  Um, if you're listening, you can listen in, I guess, because, uh, I think, I think it's a great show and I think it's worth, uh, checking out.
[45:05.240 --> 45:08.120]  So here's a, here's a rerun of Doctor Who that's going on.
[45:09.020 --> 45:11.400]  You should talk often with the old ones of your tribe.
[45:11.680 --> 45:13.040]  That is the only way to learn.
[45:14.040 --> 45:15.240]  I'll get you a hot drink, man.
[46:03.800 --> 46:04.640]  Wait, wait, no.
[46:04.840 --> 46:05.220]  Get out of here.
[46:05.400 --> 46:06.280]  Get the fly swatter.
[46:06.460 --> 46:06.900]  No, no.
[46:07.460 --> 46:07.780]  Okay.
[46:08.620 --> 46:09.060]  All right.
[46:09.220 --> 46:11.420]  I may have been a little disingenuous there.
[46:11.500 --> 46:13.160]  We weren't actually watching Doctor Who.
[46:13.240 --> 46:20.420]  What we were watching was the Max Headroom incident, which is something that there's the... today is the 30th anniversary of.
[46:20.420 --> 46:34.300]  This is something that happened on November 22nd, 1987, in Chicago, on PBS station WTTW, when they were showing the Doctor Who rerun in question, which was the horror of Fang Rock, which is a very good story.
[46:34.400 --> 46:34.860]  I recommend it.
[46:35.060 --> 46:49.240]  But what happened was their broadcast of Doctor Who got invaded by an unknown individual wearing a Max Headroom mask, Max Headroom being a cool cyberpunk character from the 80s.
[46:49.240 --> 47:03.820]  And this individual wearing a mask proceeded to do all sorts of shenanigans in front of a camera, hum the theme to clutch cargo, and it gets weirder and weirder the longer you watch it.
[47:03.940 --> 47:06.820]  And you can find this all over YouTube by just searching for Max Headroom incident.
[47:06.820 --> 47:18.360]  Now, what this was, was somebody actually broke in on WTTW's signal in 1987 with what is ostensibly some gear in a garage somewhere, maybe.
[47:18.660 --> 47:20.740]  This individual has never been caught.
[47:21.500 --> 47:26.820]  And they've got this really... they've lasted 30 years with these particular bragging rights.
[47:29.700 --> 47:39.840]  And frankly, it's fascinating to me, because this is something that you see all the time in fiction, broadcast signal intrusion, you know, people break in on TV signals to spread some news or do some, you know, plot point stuff.
[47:39.960 --> 47:45.080]  But this is one of the very few times that it happened on a meaningful level in this country.
[47:45.440 --> 47:49.940]  And, yeah, they still don't know what happened, how this person did it.
[47:50.400 --> 47:52.240]  Staff from the station are still puzzled.
[47:52.240 --> 47:55.140]  People who are watching have various memories of it.
[47:55.700 --> 48:07.520]  And WTTW.com, the station that... the website for the station that this happened to, wrote a little piece on it, on chicagotonight.wttw.com, which makes for some interesting reading.
[48:07.640 --> 48:10.360]  You can also look up Max Headroom incident on, I think, Wikipedia.
[48:12.060 --> 48:17.780]  We have a resident lawyer in, so has... let me ask you, what is the Statue of Libertations for this?
[48:18.520 --> 48:32.240]  That's a good question, because, you know, I guess it would relate to the laws that were actually on the books at that particular time, because you couldn't apply laws that came into effect after the incident to the particular incident itself.
[48:32.240 --> 48:33.500]  That would be unconstitutional.
[48:33.520 --> 48:36.460]  That would be an ex post facto law being applied.
[48:37.460 --> 48:44.680]  So, in all likelihood, and I'm not too familiar with the laws in... this was in Chicago, it was?
[48:44.800 --> 48:45.440]  In Chicago, yes.
[48:45.440 --> 48:48.720]  So, in Illinois, I'm not admitted to the Illinois State Bar, thank God.
[48:49.980 --> 48:52.780]  But I would guess it would probably be three or six years.
[48:52.800 --> 49:05.680]  And if this individual were caught today, he would probably be immune from prosecution unless, whether it be a federal or state prosecutor, could make some kind of argument that the statute of limitations should be told.
[49:07.080 --> 49:10.240]  For, essentially, you know, 25 years or so.
[49:11.020 --> 49:15.560]  But I think this guy is probably... I say guy, I'm being, you know, gender exclusive here.
[49:15.760 --> 49:24.920]  This guy or gal should feel safe to come out and show up at Hope this year and talk about how they did this.
[49:25.000 --> 49:25.780]  Or this radio show.
[49:25.920 --> 49:27.500]  Or this radio show, sure.
[49:27.740 --> 49:29.880]  You know, we'd love to replicate something like this.
[49:29.980 --> 49:31.580]  I mean, not necessarily targeting PBS.
[49:32.440 --> 49:34.100]  PBS, you know, I love PBS.
[49:35.060 --> 49:45.900]  However, I do find it curious, though, that Emmanuel and Kyle are, you know, transporting some kind of strange equipment from Florida up to New York.
[49:46.780 --> 49:48.960]  Perhaps it has something to do with this anniversary.
[49:49.280 --> 49:51.670]  Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised knowing those guys, but...
[49:52.100 --> 49:53.220]  Or fly swatters.
[49:53.400 --> 49:55.200]  You mentioned fly swatters before, too.
[49:55.200 --> 50:02.320]  Now, could you explain to us the relevance of the fly swatter with respect to this particular pirate broadcast?
[50:02.680 --> 50:06.380]  Oh, I'm not sure I want to spoil it because this is something that needs to be seen to be believed.
[50:06.520 --> 50:19.220]  So just get on YouTube and search for Max Headroom Incident, and you can watch what actually happened and what got broadcast over Chicago's unsuspecting airwaves on November 22nd, 1987.
[50:19.220 --> 50:22.760]  And you will understand these sort of cryptic allusions to fly swatters.
[50:22.900 --> 50:23.180]  Yes.
[50:23.600 --> 50:30.300]  I love this story so much because it involves, like, a hacker milestone, and it also involves Max Headroom and Doctor Who, two things I love a lot.
[50:30.400 --> 50:34.180]  So, like, sometimes I just feel like the universe is providing for me.
[50:35.020 --> 50:35.980]  Oh, no doubt.
[50:36.120 --> 50:36.660]  No doubt.
[50:36.780 --> 50:37.700]  I agree.
[50:37.940 --> 50:39.160]  So what else are we going to talk about?
[50:39.260 --> 50:40.500]  Do we want to talk about Uber?
[50:40.580 --> 50:42.620]  Do we want to talk about the Paradise Papers?
[50:42.760 --> 50:43.400]  You choose, Rob.
[50:43.400 --> 50:50.100]  We've got about 10 minutes left in the show, so we can cover some of this pretty quickly and possibly read some listener email.
[50:50.380 --> 50:52.940]  You can always write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
[50:53.100 --> 50:53.740]  Or tweet.
[50:53.900 --> 50:58.860]  Or you can tweet at us, Hacker Radio Show, and we'll keep an eye on that and check out your comments.
[50:59.000 --> 51:05.760]  But, yeah, this Uber story that came out where Uber paid hackers to delete stolen data on 57 million people.
[51:05.760 --> 51:07.360]  That's the headline on Bloomberg Technology.
[51:08.380 --> 51:15.060]  And, yeah, apparently, people, you know, nefarious individuals stole the personal data.
[51:15.220 --> 51:17.900]  They call them hackers in this story, which, I don't know.
[51:18.100 --> 51:26.200]  They stole the personal data of 57 million customers and drivers from Uber, which is a massive breach that the company concealed for more than a year.
[51:26.440 --> 51:32.560]  But this week, a new CEO took over and decided, yeah, we're going to be a little more open about this.
[51:32.560 --> 51:40.000]  And they ousted their chief security officer and someone else in the, you know, one of his deputies.
[51:40.440 --> 51:42.960]  And it was a lawyer.
[51:43.220 --> 51:44.100]  Yeah, it was a lawyer.
[51:44.280 --> 51:55.580]  And, you know, there was info released on what happened and the fact that Uber paid $100,000 ransom to some people who broke into their system and stole 57 million people's data.
[51:55.580 --> 51:57.920]  And, you know, who knows?
[51:58.060 --> 51:58.620]  Maybe they...
[51:59.080 --> 52:04.900]  Do you suppose that there's a possibility they didn't delete the data after Uber paid them $100,000?
[52:05.260 --> 52:11.100]  Well, that's the really crazy thing about this story is that they thought they could get away with this without reporting it.
[52:11.900 --> 52:16.040]  If you are breached, and I use that word instead of hacked.
[52:16.380 --> 52:19.060]  Just to clarify, that being Uber thought they could get away with this.
[52:19.120 --> 52:19.260]  That's right.
[52:19.260 --> 52:20.000]  Keeping all this secret.
[52:20.000 --> 52:21.940]  Exactly, yes, yeah, exactly.
[52:22.300 --> 52:31.480]  So if Uber is breached and yet they pay these malicious actors, we can call them nefarious individuals, whatever you want to phrase them as.
[52:32.020 --> 52:39.400]  If they pay them to delete this data, regardless of whether they do it or not, the data was still breached.
[52:39.440 --> 52:41.320]  So you still have to comply with the law.
[52:41.320 --> 52:50.560]  You still have to comply with this, you know, stumbling and fumbling morass of data breach notification statutes that go across the United States.
[52:50.560 --> 52:53.520]  And I'm sure this implicated people over in Europe.
[52:53.520 --> 52:58.100]  So you're going to have to comply with the European data breach notification regulations as well.
[52:58.500 --> 53:01.540]  And yet they just thought they didn't have to do this.
[53:03.300 --> 53:19.080]  And what's one of the more interesting things about this story is that the only way that the board of Uber found out about this was that apparently over the last month or so, they had independently launched an investigation into the activities of the CSO,
[53:19.180 --> 53:31.140]  the security officer, Joe Sullivan, who also happens to be a lawyer and a former federal prosecutor, if I understand correctly, because they were concerned about some of his activities.
[53:31.140 --> 53:34.160]  What those concerns were, we don't necessarily know.
[53:34.260 --> 53:38.380]  But we do know that an external law firm was hired to investigate those activities.
[53:39.300 --> 53:47.560]  He was going off piste and doing something nefarious together with, I believe, the lawyer's name who was recently fired was Craig Clark.
[53:49.320 --> 53:56.040]  And it was only through that investigation from outside counsel that they discovered that they had been breached.
[53:56.040 --> 53:58.040]  And they had intended to cover it up.
[53:58.920 --> 54:11.600]  One of the craziest things about the story is that the lawyer claimed that giving the money to pay these intruders off was attorney-client privilege because he was a lawyer.
[54:11.780 --> 54:15.500]  Well, it's a poorly hatched plan, for sure.
[54:15.800 --> 54:24.500]  And companies are very smart to utilize legal privilege sometimes when it's right and appropriate to do so in the aftermath of a breach.
[54:24.500 --> 54:32.020]  But you certainly have a lot of issues doing that with internal communications, especially if it's a lawyer who's in a non-lawyer role.
[54:32.900 --> 54:40.080]  The ability for in-house lawyers to consider their communications privileged is not airtight.
[54:40.080 --> 54:51.620]  So that was a very poorly hatched plan and sort of another crisis of governance within Uber because in-house counsel often have roles that are business-related and not strictly legal.
[54:51.620 --> 55:05.980]  If he really wanted to cover this up, he probably should have engaged external counsel who would play ball with him and sort of making sure this information and all of their work product was privileged.
[55:05.980 --> 55:15.360]  But then he would probably have had to justify those expenses and he wanted to do this himself and tried to rely on his law degree inappropriately to do so.
[55:16.120 --> 55:19.620]  So there's major, major issues that are coming out of this.
[55:19.720 --> 55:23.000]  Now, Uber is, I think, already been sued.
[55:23.220 --> 55:27.880]  I think there have probably been several class actions filed or complaints looking for class action certification.
[55:27.880 --> 55:43.680]  And if these go forward, if they go into trial, if these actually get to discovery, those internal communications from Joe Sullivan, the CSO slash lawyer, supposedly at Uber, together with his deputy, Craig Clark, they may very well come out in litigation.
[55:44.320 --> 55:48.520]  Because it's going to be very difficult to claim that they are actually legally privileged.
[55:48.780 --> 55:56.740]  If they had gone through outside counsel, which is the best practices, they would have a much harder time accessing...
[55:56.740 --> 55:59.560]  Well, plaintiffs would have a much harder time accessing those communications.
[56:00.020 --> 56:07.140]  Yeah, that attorney-client privilege thing kills me because, you know, is the lawyer saying then that the data thieves are his client?
[56:07.460 --> 56:11.040]  And if so, why is my lawyer not paying me $100,000 randomly out of the blue?
[56:11.040 --> 56:14.920]  So, but I'm afraid we don't have time for too much more.
[56:15.220 --> 56:16.280]  We have to wrap things up here.
[56:17.660 --> 56:21.140]  Yes, send us email, OTH at 2600.com.
[56:21.800 --> 56:23.220]  Tweet at us at Hacker Radio Show.
[56:23.400 --> 56:30.640]  Check out the sites, VerizonProtests.com, BattleForTheNet.com, ComcastroTurf.com.
[56:31.840 --> 56:36.140]  And keep a hold on what internet freedoms you have while you have it.
[56:36.220 --> 56:37.120]  And Voltaire, what's coming up?
[56:37.360 --> 56:48.440]  This weekend, Saturday at 3 p.m., our friends at QueerCon, NYC, which is a group for LGBTQ hackers, is having a meetup.
[56:48.680 --> 56:57.740]  So go to QueerCon.NYC or follow them at QueerConNYC on Twitter.
[56:58.560 --> 56:58.820]  Excellent.
[56:59.420 --> 57:09.700]  So until next week, when we'll hear more of the adventures of Emmanuel and Kyle and parts unknown, parts to be determined, have a very good week.
[57:09.940 --> 57:11.020]  For Off the Hook, this is Rob T.
[57:11.140 --> 57:11.500]  Firefly.
[57:11.900 --> 57:12.240]  Good night.
[57:20.110 --> 57:20.630]  Swing.
[57:28.660 --> 57:29.180]  Swing.
[57:30.840 --> 57:32.260]  Now I know I'm dreaming.
[57:32.940 --> 57:33.460]  Dreaming.
[57:33.560 --> 57:33.860]  Dreaming.
[57:35.140 --> 57:39.440]  How do I get to sleep?
[57:40.560 --> 57:42.620]  We'll count those bars on the window.
[57:42.620 --> 57:45.580]  One, two, three, sleep.
[58:17.860 --> 58:20.300]  How do I get to sleep?
[58:20.760 --> 58:23.120]  Please let me sleep.
[58:27.370 --> 58:28.150]  Poetry.
[58:28.770 --> 58:29.930]  That'll work.
[58:30.350 --> 58:34.470]  Come, sweet slumber, and shroud me in thy purple cloak.
[58:35.250 --> 58:36.490]  Doesn't even rhyme.
[58:37.650 --> 58:39.530]  Is that what my tea's made?
[58:39.830 --> 58:40.710]  Paranoid.
[58:40.990 --> 58:41.770]  Paranoid.
[58:41.990 --> 58:42.970]  I can't stand tea.
[59:27.740 --> 59:30.500]  Papi Harry's High Club.
[59:31.240 --> 59:33.220]  How do I get to sleep?
[59:34.740 --> 59:35.900]  Trust me.
[59:38.260 --> 59:39.200]  Trust me.
[59:42.420 --> 59:43.500]  Trust me.
[59:46.690 --> 59:47.770]  Trust me.
[59:50.670 --> 59:50.950]  Trust me.
[59:50.950 --> 59:51.110]  Trust me.
[59:51.110 --> 59:51.150]  Trust me.
[59:51.310 --> 59:51.410]  Trust me.
[59:51.410 --> 59:51.470]  Trust me.
[59:51.470 --> 59:51.530]  Trust me.
[59:51.530 --> 59:51.830]  Trust me.
[59:52.190 --> 59:52.470]  Trust me.