Transcript

Fighting for the Internet: Inside DC's Policy Wars

November 03, 2011

0:00:0

MICAH SIFRY: Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Personal Democracy Forums regular series of conference calls for members of the PDF network, which by the way is going to be called Personal Democracy Plus.

And as always, we have to thank our sponsor, AT&T for making these calls possible. This week we will be joined by Gigi Sohn who is the President and Founder of Public Knowledge, which is a small but very hard working, nonprofit organization in Washington works on issues related to internet and the public interest.

And we’re going to really get into the details with her of what it’s like to battle on a daily basis inside Washington for user rights, for online democracy, for the sort of freedom of choice and the best possible services that consumers ought to be able to get against a system that is in many cases dominated by some very big and well-heeled players.

Just to say before we dive in, as always this conversation is going to be structured like our previous calls. For the first half hour, it will be me and Gigi talking and then in the second half hour we will open up the call to people who are listening in who want to ask a question.

In addition, if you are listening and want to Tweet along, use either PDF Network or PD Plus, we want to start switching over to PDPlus, so some people may still be using PDF Network to Tweet about the call and if I see a question there that someone is raising or a comment, I’ll try and inject that into the conversation.

So, without any further adieu, Gigi thank you for joining us. Before we dive into the nitty gritty, I wonder if you would just say a little bit to set the stage. What is Public Knowledge? How long has it been around? And what are you guys focused on and who supports you and your work? Give us the lay of the land from where you sit.

GIGI SOHN: Sure, thanks Micah and thanks to everybody for being on the call. It’s really a privilege for me to be on the call and talk a little bit about Public Knowledge and the work we do.

So, Public Knowledge just turned 10 years old this year, which I’m very proud of. I’m one of the co-founders and I am the President and we represent the public’s right to an open, democratic, de-centralized communications system and that means we work in several areas; we work on broadband policy in trying to ensure an open internet and an internet without gatekeepers; we try to ensure that consumers can attach any device to the network as long as it’s not harmful to the network, we think you should be able to use any phone on any network or any set top box on any cable network.

We also do a lot of work on copyrights basis because to us just like Comcast and AT&T and Verizon are the network of gatekeepers that determine whether the is an open, democratic medium, the Hollywood studios and the big recording companies also serve as gatekeepers using copyright as a cudgel to prevent the free flow of information and free speech.

So, those are the two big areas we work in and that means we do advocacy at Federal Communications Commission and the Copyright Office. Obviously we lobby on Capitol Hill, we work with the Executive Branch a lot. We’d love to do more privacy and patent work, but right now it’s not in the cards for us so we really focus on those two areas; so telecommunications, policy and copyright and some trademark policy again, all in the service of ensuring an open communications system where you and I have control over our communications as opposed some huge, multi-national company.

MICAH SIFRY: And the primary support for you comes from foundations?

GIGI SOHN: Yes, we are primarily funded by foundations. I worked at the Ford Foundation for a number of years, I actually developed the portfolio that is now our biggest funder. We also receive – we’ve received over the years funding from the Open Society Institute, Cummings Foundation, Warhol Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation. You know, they come in and out, they don’t all fund us now.

We also take funding from individuals and we take corporate funding as well in small amounts, but from all parts of the industry. So, this might shock people, even though we agree with Comcast on just about nothing, they give us a small contribution every year.

So, we do take – it’s a small part of our budget. Unfortunately, foundation funding is not enough to allow us to be effective, I wish it was. But it isn’t, so we do take money from individuals, law firms and some – and like I said, most companies that are in this space.

MICAH SIFRY: And I have to say looking at your annual report, you have a very impressive group of directors including people like Susan Crawford, who is a good friend of ours; Joy Ito, who’s now the Chair at the MIT Media Lab; Reed Hunt, a former FCC Chairman; Brewster Kale from the Internet Archive.

It’s many people who are working hard in different ways to realize the benefits of a truly open and robust internet. And just to be clear, you’re work is – I mean, everybody has to specialize somewhere so you’re specialized in the kind of detailed policy knowledge and lobbying that needs to be done inside Washington on a daily basis? Would that be fair?

GIGI SOHN: We’re more inside Washington than outside now on this copyright bill, this awful copyright bill that I’m happy to – which I hope we’ll talk about.

MICAH SIFRY: Yes, we will.

GIGI SOHN: We are definitely working the grass roots, but we’re also join with groups like Demand Progress. I’m happy to say that our colleagues at Free Press are working this bill, but generally haven’t done copyright-related work. But this bill is really not about copyright, it’s about whether the internet is going to be open or whether it’s going to be completely restructured to protect copyright.

So, we’re working with them, we’re working with EFF, so we work – working in coalition is critical to us. And not only working collaboratively with our friends who work both on telecommunications and media policy and also on copyright policy, but also working with companies who have commonality of interest.

So, obviously when we talked about things like network neutrality or AT&T mobile, we’re going to be at odds with the telephone companies and cable companies, but when it comes to copyright policy and when Hollywood and recording industries want to shift the liability for copyright enforcement onto not only Google and Yahoo and Facebook, but also onto the internet access providers like Comcast and Verizon and AT&T, we actually find commonality of cause.

So, we have shifting alliances and the fact of the matter is –

MICAH SIFRY: Makes sense.

GIGI SOHN: Yeah, makes sense, right?

MICAH SIFRY: (Overlapping remarks) let’s (inaudible) this new Stop Online Privacy Act, SOPA, which is as I understand it, it’s kind of the House version of the Protect IP Act, which has already gone through the Senate which is in some ways worse.

So, give us first the round up of why you’re so concerned about this and then I really do want to get into the nitty gritty of what it’s like to sort of fight these battles on a daily basis. What are you up against?

GIGI SOHN: So, let me just say a little bit about Protect IP and SOPA, so I’ll call it PIPA and SOPA if that works for people.

So, PIPA has not yet passed the Senate. Thanks to our hero and frankly America’s hero, Ron Widen who has placed a hold on this bill essentially since it’s been introduced, PIPA has passed through the Judiciary Committee and the Judiciary Committee has not gone to the floor.

MICAH SIFRY: My error then.

GIGI SOHN: Yeah, my folks just said they’re going to try and get on the floor, they’re going to try to (sounds like: roll it) Senator Widen. And rest assured that folks will start getting action alerts from (inaudible) sister organizations when we get a sense of when that’s going to happen. So, we’ll definitely let people know but that’s (inaudible) so it’s not yet been passed through the Senate.

The House is going to have a hearing on November 16th and they also want to push through their personal bill. So, how is their version of the bill worse than the Senate version? Well basically it lowers the standard by which any internet intermediary, and again, when I say internet intermediary I mean search engines, you know, domain names, system registrar and registers, internet access providers, anybody who provides any kind of conduit for internet conduct and internet content will basically be held liable if their website, if their conduit is used for any type of copyright infringement.

So, it basically puts every single link and internet chain at risk of getting an order from the Attorney General making it block websites that they believe are infringing on copyrights. And it’s just remarkable.

0:10:05

The way it’s been for the past you know, past 25 years, the internet is that if there is copyright infringing content and online, the content holders, there’s a Hollywood studio, the record company has to tell –Google has to tell Verizon, you take down that content. And if they take it down, there’s no liability. This completely changes the equation. This puts the onerous on Google, on Verizon, on Comcast, on Yahoo, on Facebook to be the copyright police at the behest of the Department of Justice. And I think that is very, very dangerous for the free flow of information.

MICAH SIFRY: And is this – I mean at the technical level is there some other – I mean some of the elements here just have to do with putting the burden on the site owner themselves to please their own site in ways that many, many smaller start ups or independent web site operators which we just fine incredibly onerous. Isn’t that part of the problem, too?

GIGI SOHN: That’s absolutely the case because it lowers the standard for how you can hold a website, a site owner liable you basically have to guess. And it is a guess, right because it’s not so clear what is a copyright violation and what is what we call a fair use.

So, fair use for folks that are not familiar with copyright is an exception to the rights that copyright holders have and an example of fair use is when you parody somebody. And it also depends on how much of the original work you use and how you use it, so it’s something that a judge usually has to determine whether there is a fair use or not.

Now you’re placing the burden of a site owner, they could be selling chocolate, all right, or they could be doing any number of things, could be a music blog, all of a sudden they have to determine whether something is a fair use? That is a very, very unfair and unreasonable burden to place on them.

MICAH SIFRY: But like what the most damaging effect you could see in terms of the – look at the penalties they’re proposing here for somebody who doesn’t – you know, so I post a video on my site of my kid sister singing her favorite Justin Bieber song, right? And then the company that owns the rights to that song goes after me – let’s bring it down to the level where the ordinary person can kind of go, oh – why is this –

GIGI SOHN: So, here’s the level; is your website is taken down, it’s basically removed, okay? And nobody can find it, right? And then you have to struggle – and actually by the way, the government’s already doing this in some instances. It’s basically blocking access to websites, okay, and basically taking their domain names away from them. And then you have to fight like the dickens to get your domain name back, so if your identity or your brand is tied up in your domain name, you are out of luck.

Okay, this is based on allegation. And okay, and we’ll see – this is one – I’ve been doing this for 10 years – this is one of a long line of crazy ideas that the studios have for controlling their content. You know, the previous idea was if you are alleged to have infringed on copyright three times on peer to peer, they cut off your internet connection. It’s called three strikes, you’re out. This is based on allegations.

We are a country of laws that says you are innocent until proven guilty. This is guilty until proven innocent. And there are also other technical – this will destabilize the internet. I don’t want to get into all the details of when you go after domain name and registers and registars, how it just destabilizes the entire internet and makes it easier for not only companies to control but for governments to control. And it makes the internet less secure.

I mean we can get into it if you want but the bottom line is the threat to you is that you could be served with an order from the Attorney General and your domain name – your domain will be blocked and your domain name will be taken away from you. Great, GoDaddy loves it, GoDaddy supports it, you know why? Because every time you lose your domain name, you have to by another one from them.

MICAH SIFRY: Right, and there’s no due process here, it’s after the fact.

GIGI SOHN: No, due process is – like I said, there are – of all people, the immigrations and customs enforcement service has been already starting to block these domain names. And they’ve basically been making it – several people have wanted to challenge it but there’s this sports website in Spain called Roja Directa, which is legal in Spain by the way, and their lawyers have been trying to get information necessary to go to court, and they’ve been making it difficult. So, there’s no built in due process protection.

MICAH SIFRY: So, what’s the – okay, so where did this bill come from? Who’s pushing it? And how do you – the idea we were going to get to is okay, you’ve identified the problem, right? There’s yet another bad bill floating around out there. So, what does public knowledge try to do in this –

GIG SOHN: (Overlapping remarks) So let me tell you, let me tell you what we’re up against, okay? And I’ve been doing this kind of work for over 20 years so obviously you know, I think we make progress. It’s not all – you know, I may sound like all doom and gloom but actually given the amount of money that’s inside the entire media technology policy reform field, it’s tiny, we’ve actually made some progress. So, overall, I’m a pretty optimistic person.

0:17:00

Let me just tell you what we’re up against. The Hollywood studios and recording industry, even though they don’t actually contribute all that much to our economy, the GDP, are still not compared to the tech sector. They have this inordinate amount of power in Washington and that’s because they’ve been around for 100 years. And all the studios own broadcast stations and some of them now own cable systems and so they are used to being in Washington as regulated entities, so they not only do the usual thing that corporations do that is give tons of money to both parties.

It used to be that Hollywood and the recording industry were very much identified with Democrats; that has changed in the last five, six years largely due to the fact that the Recording industry Association of America, RAA, hired (inaudible) Chief of Staff, a guy named Mitch Bainwall who made it specifically his business to court Republicans.

So, now you have both Democrats and Republicans that feel beholding to Hollywood, Hollywood’s spreading their money around, but they do more than that, okay? On 16th and I Street, they have a huge screening room where they show first run movies and invite legislators and policy makers to come. We could never match that. They not only spread around their own money, they go to public knowledges and other groups like EFF funders, our foundation funders. I know this for a fact that several of the studios have gone to the funders and said, why are you funding these people, they’re dangerous.

It’s remarkable to me that they even have the time to do that. And this is the kind of things they do. They have lavish parties even in these tough times, they have huge fund raisers for senators and congress members and the President, the President was just out in Hollywood not too long ago.

But that’s what we’re up against. So, how do we fight that? Well, we fight that number one, just through persistent advocacy. We don’t have nearly as many lobbyists as they do, but we do have our friends on The Hill and we try to leverage them to get more friends in Congress.

We also leverage grass roots, so we do a combination of action alerts, in-district visits, in-Washington visits and then the public debate, which I think is critically important. You know, we can rely on people like Corey Doctoro (sp), Ohm Malix (sp), Matt Lazar and Nate Anderson of NARS Technica to continue to beat the drum and shake the public perception.

And I think we are pretty good in the press, too. It’s interesting, in The Los Angeles Times, which is Hollywood’s home town newspaper –

0:20:00

-- has consistently been on our side on the SOPA and PIPA bills. So, we have a multi-pronged approach; it’s not just trying – because we can’t match them one for one on Capitol Hill, so we’ve got to go out to the public, we’ve got to go out to the press, we’ve got to go out to the blogosphere and we really have to sort of change the public perception that this is not just – they would like you to believe that this is just a bill that protects their IP against their horrible websites. Our position is no, this is a bill that will fundamentally change the internet and give these huge multi-national media companies control over it.

MICAH SIFRY: Do you think that the last few years where Congress – members of Congress and their staff themselves are finally becoming more digitally literate in the sense that many of them are using these tools, many of them are using these sites, they finally got through the sort of lawyer objections and their own traditional objections to using social media.

And we certainly hear a lot about much members of Congress are Tweeting or on YouTube. So, do you think that’s perhaps helping shift their understanding of how the internet works, why we have to fight to keep it open or it doesn’t penetrate.

Is there any sign because we certainly at PDF have our eyes out for members and staffers on both sides of the aisle who seem to get it, who are – whether they harness online social networks in smart ways to help themselves get elected or to move their messages. And there’s a certain element of this that’s more two way, you know, it’s different than broadcast media.

So, do you think there’s any sign of the culture shifting inside the institution just because they’re using the tools?

GIGI SOHN: Yes, but it’s very, very slow and it’s much slower than we would like because while the staffer may be 23 or 25 and using Twitter, the member, and this is typically true of the Senate, is probably 85. So, you still have the member – you know, you have an influx of more technologically savvy members and this is particularly true on the Republican side as well as the Democratic side. But you still have folks, you know, they don’t do their own Tweeting and they barely use a computer so it’s slowly changing atmosphere there.

But let me explain something else I think that’s really important, generally comes up on the copyright space is that people seemed to have cordoned off copyright – I think Cory (inaudible), she just wrote something about this today – from the rest of the debate over open internet. I mean it’s even hard – you know, public knowledge is the only organization in Washington DC right now doing day to day work, you know, public interest advocacy organization doing day to day work on copyright because people – oh, that’s something else, right?

And Hollywood portrays it as, you know, it’s about enforcing our rights to our property. But when you force Google and force more websites holders (inaudible) providers to become the copyright police, you are fundamentally changing the nature of the internet and the end to end nature of the internet and the open nature of the internet. And people have not made that connection yet.

They think they’re cordon off copyright and influential property enforcement from the health and the growth of the internet in general and until we can get people to understand that they are married together, that they are integral to one another it’s going to be a little bit harder to make progress.

But yes, things are changing very slowly, but I think Cory’s article was Don’t Call It Copyright anymore, it’s not about copyright. It’s about an open internet, it’s about the free flow of information and let’s get away from those silos that people like to put that in. It doesn’t help us, it helps the other side for sure.

MICAH SIFRY: So, you know, on a daily basis, what does this come down to for you? I mean, what does your day look like in terms of –

GIGI SOHN: My day is – I have an ADD job. I mean, number one, no two days are alike and I can literally be working on six or seven things at one time.

Let me – I think a good way to describe what my day what look like is to talk a little bit about – if you don’t mind me shifting gears just a little bit on the AT&T mobile take over –

MICAH SIFRY: Yeah, I wanted to get into that, too. That’s another very important continuing saga.

GIGI SOHN: Right, and again, at the risk of boring people that are more deeply steeped in these issues, AT&T in March proposed to take over T-Mobile, which would combine the second largest wireless telephone company, the 4th largest telephone company. And if that deal were to be consummated, AT&T and Verizon would control 80 percent of the wireless telephone and wireless internet access market, which is double of what the concentration you would see of the number one and number two of any other market; you’re looking at gas, auto, airline – it would be double that amount.

So, it’s just unprecedented and I think a sign of AT&T’s (inaudible) and AT&T’s guts, let’s put it that way, to even try and push this through.

And in August, the Department of Justice decided to block the merger and now that is a court case, actually. They actually have to go to court to block the merger and that’s a case pending. We’re waiting for the Federal Communications Commission to act. If they act to block this merger, it’s over essentially for all intents and purposes.

But as some of you may know, this chairman, this SEC chairman is very deliberate, he doesn’t always have the courage to engage in these kind of so-called controversial acts although it’s not that controversial in the Department of Justice already blocked it.

So, we’re trying to push him to act before the court case is heard and the court case is decided because even though we believe that the Justice Department is a very strong case, and they’ve been winning every step of the way, the Justice Department has and in fact, just this week the judge decided that Sprint and C-Spire, which is both competitive companies to AT&T, that their court cases could move forward which is something not only significant, it’s something we didn’t expect.

Also, another decision came out of this same court blocking a 3:2 merger, which is exactly what this is – well, it’s a 4:3 merger. So, all the cards are stacked against AT&T so we think we’re going to win in court, but despite that fact you never know what’s going to happen in court. You never know how a judge is going to act. So, for the FCC to act now would essentially put the final nail in the coffin of this very, very bad takeover.

But what my day is like working on this merger – well I have to – in addition to speaking both with the Justice Department and with the FCC and trying to help them make their case to block this, I mean that’s a common issue advocacy that we have to deal with, we often get attacked by the right wing press, folks like (inaudible) and Left Government, so I’m constantly dealing with attacks fully funded by AT&T, it’s like not even a secret, calling us Soros-supported Marxists and Google shills and all this kind of –

So, I don’t often respond to those things but those are things again, they shape the debate, they’re out in the air. They have to contend with the fact that AT&T has funded untold numbers of not just national organizations, it’s been pretty well documented that they’ve given large amounts of money to the National Civil Rights organizations and there was a huge (sounds like: glow back) when one of the gay rights organizations actually reversed its position because they got so much static – this is the Gay and Lesbian Allies Against Defamation.

So, you often have to deal with how to do you combat the perception that civil rights groups and all these other local groups like – AT&T gave money to the Louisiana Balloon Foundation, The International Lights Festival, the Montana Cattle Rancher’s Association, and they all filed comments at the FCC in favor of this merger.

So, how do you do it—you know, the hordes of the – it’s funny, I have my Google alerts set on AT&T and every day I see oh, they gave the Girl Scouts this money and they gave you know, the 4H that money and I keep waiting for the filings of the FCC from the Girl Scouts and the 4H supporting the merger.

Have to deal with the ads; I mean – AT&T spends – it’s documented that they spend $5 million a quarter in lobbying. But that’s just congressional lobbying. That doesn’t count what they’re doing at the state legislatures. They’ve had a large – I think half the governors in the country write in to congress and tell them (inaudible) the Justice Department, excuse me, and the FCC and tell them to let this deal go through.

They have a bunch of State Attorneys General do it. So it is a constant game of pinball trying to figure –

0:30:14
-- where can we have some of the most bang for our more limited buck.

So, what we try to do is every time they try and spin a new (inaudible), for example the mean for a while has been this merger will create 96,000 jobs. So, we’ve basically gotten proof that there’s no way and in fact this merger will lead to fewer jobs. So, we do things like post blog posts not only on our own blog but also on Huffington Post, we talk to the press, Art (sounds like: Blowski) is my Communications Director who’s listening in here, he basically dredges up – you know, gets our friends in the press to write stories you know, trying to raise skepticism about whether this would create jobs.

Another means that AT&T (inaudible) was justice wants to settle and we knocked that one down. Seems like every other weeks there’s this new –

MICAH SIFRY: Yeah, but is the audience the press? Is the audience congressional staffers? I mean who are you really trying to influence here in this conversation?

And you said before you’re trying to pressure the FCC to take a position on this. Walk us through – what do you actually do? I mean, you’re not beaming thought waves at Julius Jeniokowski, you know, no one’s perfected that technology yet, so what’s the – how do you actually get into these peoples’ awareness in a way that you know can make a difference?

GIGI SOHN: So, obviously we do the show leather, right? So, I and my staff are constantly meeting with FCC staff, with its admissioners, with what they call the transaction team, which is a group of experts working on the transaction, with the chairman when he’ll speak to people, he’s not a very available guy but we can get into to see him when we want.

So, there is direct oral advocacy, there’s direct written advocacy. We file – the FCC, when they opened the proceeding consider this merger and we obviously filed what we call a petition to deny the mergers, basically asking the FCC to block it.

We do both written advocacy, oral advocacy, we do directed press work (inaudible) just talking to the press not only through blanket press releases but through individual calls of the most influential bloggers and influential press.

We do – I do probably 40 or so speaking engagements a year and this year there’s been an awful lot on AT&T mobile and there’ll be everything from conferences at a law school to briefings on The Hill, you know, among a lot of staffers.

So, really spread them far and wide and then we have a strong Facebook and Twitter (inaudible). I spend a half an hour at least every day Tweeting you know, critical court cases, critical articles and the idea is to try to build – not only build awareness but build our own means that this takeover is bad for consumers, bad for competition and it’s on the rocks and that’s a big thing because AT&T has tried to paint this as having an air of inevitability. And now they’ve had so many losses the Justice Department and courts, we’re now saying this is a loser and they’re just throwing good money after bad.

And they really should – they should just quit, you know, say we don’t want to do this anymore.

MICAH SIFRY: We just reached a little bit past the half way point so I just want to let folks know that if anyone’s listening and has a question that they’d like to ask Gigi Sohn, what you should do is just hit *6 on your phone and we’ll make room for you to ask your question though if no one does, I’ll keep the conversation going myself. I’m always full of questions.

So, the issue though is you’re describing a Washington that is if you will wired by money. And that the public side of this conversation – I mean there isn’t a significant political action committee on the public side, right? I know there’s a group of folks who organized themselves on Reddit to create a political action committee, you know, I don’t think they have a significant amount of money.

I mean there really isn’t much money on the consumer side of this, of these arguments, right?

GIGI SOHN: Well, right. But here’s the good news, the good news is –

0:35:00

-- when members of congress – let’s say you’re in the House of Representatives, if you even hear from 100 of your constituents or if you’re a senator and you hear from 500 or 1,000 that will have impact more than money because more than money, they need votes.

So, yeah, do I like the amount of money in the political process? Absolutely not, but I do think it’s going to be overcome by constituents voices weighing in – and this is where the internet is so wonderful. I mean look, I started doing this work 23 years ago, we were still using these daisy wheel you know, typewriters. And when – you had to have a meeting of all your friends and you had to make – you know, in college you had to make 20 calls.

So, the internet has bathed – you know, has just lowered the friction and the ability for us not only to do our coalition work more easily and cheaply, but to reach out to millions of people. So, it’s just been – frankly, a miracle in that regard and we can – I’ll give you an example; on PIPA / SOPA, we now have I think about 118,000 names of people who have either signed petitions or written letters – and that’s just in a couple of days.

Now we’re going to figure out you know, what congressional district and what states they’re from and we’re going to let their members of congress and senators know you’ve got x hundred number of constituents who think this is a horrible bill. That will have results.

It’s hard to – when your constituents really show that they care it becomes increasingly harder for members of congress to say, well, I don’t care, Hollywood wrote me a, you know, a $10,000 check, I’m just going to roll it.

And I just want to make very, very clear that you know, all these things I think could take place in order to have success. You know, sometimes we get the criticism, well you’re just an inside Washington group and you know, you don’t do enough for the grass roots and my feeling is we need it all. We do need someone who is a constant presence in Washington DC just to let these people know that we’re there. And you also need the (inaudible) and again some of that – we’re not the best – we’re not as good as say a (inaudible) progress. We also (inaudible) and that’s important as well.

You have to do it all. Now we love to play in the stakes and that’s where AT&T in particular and Verizon are incredibly powerful and Comcast, I mean that’s just beyond our resources. So, we do the best with what we have and we do believe that a combination inside / outside game is the way you get things done and it can still be the Washington money.

Again, I’d love to see significant campaign finances for Larry (inaudible) who’s been on my board for a number of years and I love what he’s doing, but that’s a very, very long haul and it’s not going to happen any time soon.

MICAH SIFRY: Do you think there’s anything changing in the public climate now with this whole Occupy Wall Street, you know we are the 99 percent versus the one percent? Meaning the banks just you know, all back down on their plans to increase debit card fees just in the last few days, which is you know, obviously they’re very sensitive to the potential of people withdrawing money from their accounts and moving them into credit unions and you know, I think they probably realize that right now there’s a public wave that they have to be responsive to.

Is there any sign of that affecting the debate over any of the issues that you work on?

GIGI SOHN: Well it affected it a different way. It’s not affecting the company and here’s the reason why: there’s no competition, there’s very little competition. When you’ve got four wireless companies, two of whom are incredibly powerful and Sprint and T-Mobile are incredibly weak, that’s – you know, why does AT&T need to listen? Or Verizon need to listen to anybody.

And I’ll give you an example of how they sort of essentially throw sand in the consumer’s face; you know, folks may be aware but now you start to see attacks on the amount of data you can use over your internet connection for both wireless internet and also wire line internet because what happens when you hit those caps, you either get charged a huge amount of money for each gigabyte that you use more than that, or you can be disconnected or your connection can be slowed down.

Now if there was true competition for internet access, this would never happen because these caps have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that some (inaudible) use a lot of bandwidth at particular times. It’s just essentially price gouging.

0:40:11

I think that’s where there’s a disconnect with the Occupy Wall Street and (inaudible). It’s that these folks feel no pressure because there’s no competition. This is really where the Federal Communications Commission has failed. They have not put in place the protection for consumers necessary to (inaudible).

MICAH SIFRY: Isn’t there also a deeper problem? It seems to me – no, I’m thinking about Canada. I was recently there a couple months ago and there’s a vibrant movement there on these same issues and Jessie Brown who is an online writer and activist and runs a great podcast called Search Engine was starting to push this medium of you know, let’s list all the ways that the internet sucks in Canada.

And they have these caps also and so I think they probably have even less – you know, they have even a worse situation than we have here.

But Americans, I think – and we’re guilty of this, too – you know, of kind of saying wow, the internet’s this amazing thing, look at all these cool things you can do with your phone now or with your iPad. You know, there’s – the general drum beat is well at least this sector of our economy is dynamic and you know and all these shiny new things, right?

And the adulation for Steve Jobs, you know, when he passed away, it’s a signal, right? That part of us, we really want this, want to believe in this stuff and what you’re describing is a reality that if people understood how bad the reality was, you know, maybe they’d be a little angrier.

GIGI SOHN: I think people are starting to understand and I’ll tell you how: cable television is becoming way too expensive for people to afford. And people are not only dropping their cable subscription, they are not signing up at all, particularly younger people.

So, I think they’re starting to kind of see that the realization of the fact not only that there’s very little competition but that the stuff that is so essential to use is becoming too expensive. And I think that once people start getting their bills and see the data caps being imposed, once they start getting $300 and $400 overage charges, I think they’re going to start to see the outlays.

So, I think we are kind of on the cusp of people recognizing that all is not well in the communication’s space and the internet space industry. I think we’re still at the very beginning there.

MICAH SIFRY: What do you think of recently the FCC just announced I guess a voluntary (inaudible) with the – sort of beyond the original focus of our call but I might as well ask you – you know, this voluntary agreement with the – all the mobile providers to send people alerts when they’re approaching their monthly – whatever their plan allows them so they can avoid bill shock.

GIGI SOHN: Yeah, so a couple things are raised by this, okay? Number one is this agreement was nothing more than what the companies were giving to consumers anyway. So, the FCC portrayed this as some great victory to consumers, it’s nothing more than they’re already getting.

And it raises a more fundamental issue: the question arises why didn’t the FCC just adopt some rules mandating certain baseline levels of transparency that the wireless companies would have to provide to consumers? Why not, right? Who could disagree with this?

Well let me tell you the answer: the answer is is that this FCC and this first arose in the context of net neutrality, refuses to clarify what its legal authority is to protect consumers from the predatory practices of broadband internet access providers and wireless companies.

You may recall when we were fighting over whether the FCC would adopt network neutrality rules, a decision came out of the (inaudible) Court of Appeals, the Federal Court of Appeals here in Washington saying that the FCC did not have the power under the Communications Act or the authority (inaudible) to regulate the network management practices of broadband internet access providers.

At that point we urged the FCC to classify, to say that broadband internet access is a telecommunications service, like your telephone service. And the FCC chairman did not have the courage to do that. So, what has happened? What has happened is it is uncertain whether the FCC has the power to protect consumers from the predatory practices of broadband internet access providers and wireless telephone companies.

And so what he’s doing is he’s trying to avoid having to go to court to determine that every single time, but he can’t avoid it. You came out with the net neutrality rule, they have finally gone into effect –

0:45:26

-- they have been appealed right back to that same court in federal court in DC. And guess what the main question is: does the FCC have the legal authority to impose these rules?

The FCC imposed requirements that AT&T and Verizon enter into (inaudible) agreements for data so if T-Mobile or Cricket or a customer wants to use their data in a place where they don’t have service, AT&T and Verizon would have to enter into an agreement to let them do that.

It goes right to court, challenging the FCC’s power to engage in those kinds of regulations. So, this is the overarching theme and the overarching concern that we have is that because of the chairman’s lack of courage to say, this is a telephone service of the 21st century and to be regulated as such. We have no idea whether the FCC will really have the power to protect consumers be it net neutrality, roaming, bill shock, what they call planning, so there’s a whole long list.

And it’s a very, very tenuous time for consumers right now with the Federal Communications Commission.

MICAH SIFRY: Right. What is the – and you know, we’re winding down here so I’m going to ask you a few questions about the future. I’m going to – let’s lift our heads from the grind of the day to day.

Do you see any possibility of okay, maybe this is intractable, but people have gotten a taste at least of this window of time here where the internet does challenge this other model of communications, sort of artificial scarcity model that you’re describing again and again.

And I think there’s an awareness that this is a tenuous place that we’re in now and that relying on the private pipe owners to keep providing the level of freedom that people think they have when they use the internet, it may be mistaken that we need a different backbone entirely.

And so you know, people talking about other solutions for creating peer to peer network or mesh networking or the – Evan Moglen’s idea for the Freedom Box – do you think there’s – I mean, having tasted this, right? And let’s assume the incumbents just don’t want to let it thrive. You think there’s a chance that we can sort of technicalogically sort of the way the internet supposedly routes around censorship, do you think there’s any hope in that solution? Or are we really stuck with the situation where it does come down to winning these fights and these regulatory battles?

GIGI SOHN: Look, I always hope, right? But I wouldn’t put all my money on it. I think the efforts – like Evan Moglen’s efforts for the mesh networking effort, from the community broadband efforts, I think are really important.

Although I will say that when it comes to community broadband, when Comcast and Verizon go to their local and state legislators and get laws passed saying you cannot protect their dollars on a community network, it kind of makes it hard to route around it.

So, you’re always going to have to engage in the day to day battles to make sure that they don’t legislate competition or work around that of existent (inaudible). This is a lot of what the copyright battles are about, right?

I explained this horrible domain name blocking bill, but the fact of the matter is is you could route around all of that, right? All you need is a domain name address, you don’t need the domain name, right, the domain address, you don’t need the domain name – or the IP address, excuse me, right? So, you can get around all those problems.

Well, what have they done in The House bill? They’ve made it illegal for people to give people the tools to route around it. So, you know, the way the big gatekeepers look at things I that there’s always a way to legislate or regulate – as much as they say they hate regulation, right? There’s always a way to regulate our competition into the ground or to work around into the ground.

So, you can’t say, well we’ll just have this sort of technological determinism attitude and say well, we’ll just innovate around it. It doesn’t – and Silicon Valley makes that mistake, they innovate around what these companies try to do in the policies here. I think you have to do both.

MICAH SIFRY: Do you have friends in Silicon Valley?

GIGI SOHN: I’ve got lots of friends in Silicon Valley. In fact I was just talking to one of them yesterday, a guy named Blake Krikorian who invented the flame box which is a miracle that he didn’t get sued because he happens to be a really nice guy and made sure that he made nice to the Hollywood company.

And he said to me basically offered himself out to some of the Hollywood studios, to some of the bigwigs there, they tried to connect him to some of the innovators in Silicon Valley and he said he was shocked that some of the studio heads or people high up in the studios didn’t even know how to use a computer.

0:51:05

These are the people who are trying to regulate the internet out of existence to protect their copyright and they don’t know how to use a computer?

So, it is just mind boggling sometimes you know, what people cook up in the regulatory / policy arena when they’re not even really familiar with the core subject matter of what they’re trying to regulate.

MICAH SIFRY: Yeah, well it’s an ongoing fight. I’m going to end on a hopefully more optimistic note which is I do think that there is a generational shift on the way and so many young people are growing up taking for granted the level – both the connectivity that they have an also the sort of freedom they have. And there is to my mind 75 million content share –

(CALL DISCONNECTS)