March 6, 2015 • 45 mins
The FCC's 2015 Open Internet ruling is either a victory or a disaster, depending on whom you ask. But what is it, exactly? Join Matt and Ben as they explore the facts and fiction surrounding the Open Internet and Net Neutrality.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to. Now, welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt and I'm Ben,
and we've got Noel Brown with us, super producer Noel Brown.
(00:22):
He's just hanging out over there. Hey are you? Are
you making beat Snol? No? Okay, all right, better not
be what's Snol's nickname today, Matt? His name is flashing
Light Noel Flashing lights, Flashing lights Brown, No one, Okay,
let us not get sued, uh, Matt. Before we jump
into today's show. Let's let's have a little bit of
(00:45):
of the story time, if you will, absolutely now, all right,
So this comes from a commencement speech I heard a
long long time ago, and it may be familiar to
some of you listeners out there. So, in the days
before refrigeration in the northeastern United States, there were these
(01:05):
companies that would transport ice via trucks. So they would
drive up to Canada or wherever the next big batch
of ice was. They would cut the blocks of ice,
they would throw hay over those blocks, and they would
drive back down to Boston and New York and other
cities in the Northeast. And you know, they'd lose a
(01:26):
lot of ice along the way. But people loved ice,
so they did. UH. They did pretty well for themselves.
They became an industry, a big industry. And then the
invention of refrigeration, right, a magic little box within which
you can place food, water that's cold enough to freeze.
You can make ice on your own. This was a
(01:49):
revolutionary thing for pretty much everybody. It made things safer,
it made things more convenient, It made UH, Canada just
a fingertip away everyone, that is, except for the ice
trucking companies and the ice trucking industry. UH could have
done a couple of things, could have started embracing refrigeration
(02:12):
or maybe building refrigerators something like that. But what they
did instead was invested in faster trucks, different types of hay. UH.
And what they did instead of working with refrigeration companies
was tried to shut them down by any legal means necessary,
(02:34):
and yes, because they were a threat to a status quo.
This is a tale as old as time. We see
it often that companies spend more time investing in maintaining
their status quo rather than innovating it, and that by
way of uh a circuitous UH family circus style comic
(02:58):
strip route brings us to today's topic, net neutrality the Internet.
How much control should a government have over the Internet
and people's access to it? And how should companies be
able to treat this precious thing that all of us
now rely on so heavily that we all need access
to arguably? Right? Yeah, how much control should a business
(03:22):
have over the Internet? How much control should a government
have over the Internet? Why is net neutrality just the
key word, the thought terminating cliche of net neutrality? Why
is it such a big deal? Why do why do
people care to answer that? We have to look at
the history of the Internet first, that's right, We have
to go all the way back to nineteen fifty seven.
(03:43):
And by the way, a lot of the information you're
gonna be hearing right here comes from our buddy Jonathan Strickland,
who was on our show not long ago. You might
remember him. You can find him over at tech Stuff
and Forward Thinking, Thank you, sir. So Way back in
nineteen fifty seven, the US was pretty terrified that the
U S. S R could launch a missile at North
America because they launched sput Nick, this satellite that they
(04:07):
shot up into space, and everybody over here just went,
oh boy, they can do that, and what else can
they do? That's a little scary. Yeah, they said. They
were sitting around, probably eating pizza or something, and one
of them said, ah, man, space is pretty far away.
If they could get something in space, could they get
it in Washington exactly? Could they could hit my house?
(04:30):
This led President Dwight D. Eisenhower to create the Advanced
Research Projects Agency or ARPA in nineteen fifty eight as
a direct response to this launching the spot Nick. And
the purpose of this agency was to give the US
some kind of technological advantage over other countries, like to
(04:50):
be the leading edge in all of these technologies. Um.
And one important part of ARPA's mission was computer science
because these were this is a brand new field that
was emerging, and you know, how can we use these
machines to become even better? Right? Yeah. ARPA, which is
(05:10):
a predecessor beginner of what is now known today is
dark and a couple other agencies. ARPA itself was the
think tank for mad science, and one of those most
mad science things at the time was was the computer. Now,
computers in the nineteen fifties. You may remember some of you,
(05:31):
and then some of you may just remember seeing these
on television or something. But point his computers in the
nineteen fifties were not mac air books. They were enormous,
size of rooms, size of buildings. They could only read
magnetic tape or punch cards. Uh. Shout out to IBM
and World War two. Google it if you'd like to
(05:52):
learn more. And they could not network at all, like
the Haggard anti heroes in action films and westerns. Uh.
These computers worked alone, only work by myself. Well, that's
a huge and important point here, that computers were self
involved things that you you couldn't even imagine that all
(06:13):
of these computers could talk to one another one day
in the future, back in the day, but a few
people could. Now ARPA wanted to change this with the
help of a company called Bolt, Barneck and Newman. They
networked four of these computers with four different operating systems
os is working together in this thing that they called
ARPA net. Uh. The ARPA network one of the first networks.
(06:37):
Let's go ahead. And also while we're here, correct the
commonly misquoted Al Gore thing, Okay, I like the idea
of one person venting the Internet. It's hilarious and impossible.
But he said he took the initiative in it usually
taken a mean that as a senator he pushed for
funding of that. So there you go, Al stop right,
(07:00):
and they hate mail, We get it. I'm kidding. Al
Gore is probably a nice person, is not to my
knowledge written to our show. Uh, But he doesn't really
come up in this because, of course one person could
never invent the Internet. There's already so many people involved.
Just to get to ARPA. But the evolution continues because
in nineteen seventy three, some of these people engineers started thinking,
(07:21):
could we connect our pannette to other networks. They started
with pr net, the Packet Radio Network, and the idea
here Matt was that they could send data across radio
waves transmitters receivers rather than phone lines. And it took
a few years, but in nineteen seventy six they connected
these networks and then they said we need more inteventy
(07:44):
seven they joined with the satellite network, which called what
do you Think? What do you think? That's called listeners Yep,
it's sat Net and the engineers called this connection between
the multiple networks internetworking or the Internet. And now we
come to uh, let's fast forward. The closest you can
get to one single person inventing quote unquote the Internet
(08:07):
is a guy named Tim berners Lee who created a
system to simplify web navigation. This is what we call
the world Wide Web, and the Internet and the world
Wide Web are different things that are often confused. Now, Matt,
you and I at different times for a show called
Stuff of Genius. We did we did a little bit
(08:28):
of history about this guy, right, Yeah, we did. He's fascinating,
great story. Check out Stuff of Genius on the How
Stuff Works YouTube channel. Yeah, and uh, Jonathan might even
narrate that episode. We've got a couple of different narrators here.
You were one. Yeah, recently, I've been on there a lot. Yeah,
your episodes of popping up. It's a bit strange, but
(08:50):
it's cool. Check it out, especially if you have kids
who want to learn about little loon inventors. Uh. It's
a show that I wrote for a long time. You
did voice on, Tyler did some editing. Yeah, our by
our buddy the producer for stuff to blow your mind.
Uh did the editing. It's kind of like a almost
Monty Python esque good stuff. But back to the history
(09:12):
of the Internet. Yes, yeah, so from here's here's some
really neat stuff. Uh the recent history internet usage from
two thousand to two thousand fourteen, Internet usage sky rocketed
matt from almost three hundred and sixty one million Internet
users across the world in two thousand to get this
(09:35):
three just over three billion, So three billion, thirty five million,
seven home forty nine, three and forty people. Geez, seven thousand,
three and forty people. What's the what's the growth rate there?
You know? Uh, let's see. I could get out some paper,
but you're good at math. What do you think it is?
(09:55):
Just give me a second here, let me just for
us to carry the one that's seven hundred. A growth
rate of seven hundred that is bonkers. And for those
of you who like specific numbers, that Internet usage stat
from two thousand was three hundred and sixty million, nine
hundred and eighty five thousand, four hundred and ninety two. Uh.
(10:19):
Those are just estimates, of course. But there's something else
that's weird here. As of two thousand thirteen, at least
the Internet remained a largely English language domain. Yeah, that's right.
Of the Internet's content is in English. Only twenty seven
percent of Internet users speak English. Isn't that a little weird? Uh? Yeah,
(10:40):
that is. That is strange, And I think there's a
I don't know. I think there's a disconnect between those stats.
But we'll have to look into it some more because
let me and get to the part I'm sure everybody's
waiting for, and that is the part where we complain
about the Internet in the United States. Friends, Romans, Canadians, countrymen,
(11:04):
anyone who is not in the United States. Uh may
not be as aware of this as you are in
the US. But compared to other countries South Korea, definitely, Uh,
the United States is every customer in the United States,
with a few exceptions, is paying way more for way
(11:24):
less and uh. Part of this is because cable companies
need a new infrastructure. But another part is that when
you know, when you're a small town that says, well,
we don't want to participate, we want to build our
own broadband, then all of a sudden, the cable company
(11:46):
that refused your service, or the telecom rather, uh is
right up there on Main Street in the courthouse telling
the judge you shouldn't be allowed to do it. And
that's something we'll talk about a little bit more when
we talk about this neutrality stuff. And I want to
be clear here. I think Matt, you and I should
both be clear. For a lot of people, including us,
(12:08):
the Internet, whatever that means to you, is more than
a pastime primary source of information for a lot of people.
The days of reading micro fish are done. Uh. For
a lot of people, it's ah, in our case, it's
a career. Yeah, it's what we do every day. Everything
we do goes onto the Internet. So clearly, you and
(12:29):
I and NOL as well, we have a bias of
sorts because we want people to be able to go
onto the internet find whatever they want, uh and well, okay,
find and whatever legal stuff they want, and we want
we want it to be as easy as possible for uh,
(12:50):
you guys to check out our show, because you know,
we're very fortunate that you would take your free time
to check out this crazy thing that we're doing. So
we love the Internet. Oh yeah, and by the way,
we might have to have a little conversation later about
you spending all your time with us. I mean, what
are you thinking. We appreciate it, but man, don't listen
(13:11):
to that. Hang out as long as you want, Okay.
So so that's that's some recent history. That's a quick
and dirty here um. And now the Internet, this amazing
thing allows you to find almost anything if you look
hard enough. One fee to your I s P let
you go anywhere online that you legally want to go.
(13:31):
Uh So, but how long could this last? I just
want to say, I love that one fee to your
I s P. It really felt like you were about
to bust into a larger rhyme. Oh hey, thank you man.
I appreciate it. Sometimes, you know, sometimes the poetry just
finds you. Right. But yeah, how long could this last? Well?
(13:52):
For not long, apparently, because the current debate over neutrality,
it's framed up as a fight between big business and government. Right,
these are the two opposing sides that we are presented with,
at least if you watch the news and the supporters
of each side, they like to claim that their team
represents the true interests of the common American man. But
(14:13):
how much of that is true? Ben? This is that
thing that we've talked about before, the Galien dialect where
you've got two opposing sides and you're only really you're
supposed to only be allowed to choose one. But really
there's much more middle ground there. And it's also then
you you call Chomsky's framing debate. Yeah, it's just both
of what these are really are false dichotomys or the idea.
(14:40):
I guess what you're talking about, um, specifically is the
the idea that people are only allowed to choose between
two things. The framing debate is more like there are
things that are not allowed to be in the conversation. So, um,
you can have a framed debate with more than two sides.
But our question, our our question here today is is
(15:02):
really about this, uh, this whole debate over net neutrality
and why are we doing this? Well, because there was
a recent ruling by the FCC or Federal Communications Commission
that changes the game. Yeah, on February of this year,
the f SEC approved the Open Internet Order. It's a
(15:27):
three ruling that most importantly reclassifies the Internet under Title two.
It's the same power that's used to regulate phone lines,
phone companies and how they use that infrastructure. Right, And
it ultimately comes from our originally comes from I should say, uh,
some laws regarding railroads that you can learn more about
if you check out our video this week where we
(15:50):
actually have an interview with Jonathan he's our he's our
go to guru for tech stuff and uh, this this,
and we'll talk about this open Internet or a little
bit later in more depth. But at the top level,
here's what it did. It requires some more transparency on
the part of your I, S P S or telecoms.
It prohibits blocking websites and what they call unreasonable discrimination,
(16:15):
which is a slippery slippery term legally speaking. And also,
and this is a huge part, it allows municipalities to
offer a public option for their broadband accent. Now that's
huge in places like where I live, pretty close to
our office. Yeah, you, I think the only two options
(16:35):
right now are A T and T and Comcast, which
I use. And if there was a public option, and
I would hop on that, I would only do it
if it were a better deal. But see what I
I think I would do it. This is maybe if
this is playing my hand too early, but I think
I would do it out of I don't know, some
(16:59):
principle and I you know, I've been. I've been a
customer of Comcast for a long time and I you know,
arguably they've treated me pretty well, but man, I've paid
out the law zoo for that stuff. Yeah. So, the
situation that people were finding themselves in, and we've all
read reports about this in the United States, was that
(17:21):
there would be towns or communities that were kind of
in a rural area, and the telecom that had blocked
them off in its territory would say, we're not going
out there. It's not worth our investment to make that connection.
But then when those communities tried to build their own
broad band, all of a sudden, we're up in court.
(17:44):
So on the offset. This sounds like stuff every everybody
would like, right, even whatever your ideological bent is, I
think we can all get behind the idea that if
a group of people wants to build their own thing
for themselves, it seems fairly fairly cut and dry. However,
(18:08):
that's just one piece. That's not the piece that's being
um I guess quoted the most. What's being quoted the
most is this idea of the open carrier title common
carrier UH title to stuff. And we have an op
ed that objects to Uh, some of this ruling. It's
from Jeffrey a Man. He had an op ed and
(18:28):
wired and it says quote Title to reclassification also allows
the FCC to impose a general conduct or catch all provision.
Under this standard, the FCC asserts its authority over literally
anything else that, in the eyes of three commissioners seems unreasonable.
As former Commissioner Robert McDowell has pointed out, reasonable is
(18:51):
perhaps the most litigated word in American history, which is
a valid, valid point. So Jeffrey Man goes on to
say that now the I s p s are regulated
under this Title two thing as common carriers, the Federal
Trade Commission can't enforce consumer protection laws against them anymore.
(19:11):
So this is not all you know, this is not
all good guys bad guys kind of stuff. But here's
here the big questions. Who actually owns the Internet? Uh,
it's it's tough to say, right, Yeah. Is it the
people who own the fiber optic wires that go underneath
the oceans and throughout you know, the continents? Right? Is
(19:31):
it the most successful online companies like Google for instance? Yeah,
the ones who make all the money. There? Is it
you and your friends who owns the Internet. We do
know that the people regulating it. There's an organization called
I CAN. Isn't that precious? And it stands for the
Internet Corporation for Signed Names and Numbers. Uh. This is
(19:52):
a nonprofit that coordinates maintains the name of names of
the Internet. Is the reason ww dot How Stuff Works
dot Com is just ww dot how Stuff Works dot
com or even stuff They don't want you to know
dot Com. Uh. They have a contract with the Department
of Commerce to do this. Still enormously controversial. People have
(20:15):
beef with I CAN. I love that name so much
and you you made a little joke about it, But
it is a it is a cute name. I CAN. Yeah,
I would totally. I would totally name a company I
CAN if it hasn't been covered. So now let's talk
about the definition of net neutrality, which you know, usually
(20:38):
when you hear a word having a definition, you expect
it will be one thing. But this has a very
different nuance depending upon whom you're talking to. Who you're
talking to, I can never figure out who and whom. Yeah,
it's it's a question that will remain throughout time. Then
we speak American English, it's fine, everything's a verb, and
(21:00):
if you just make the same mistake consistently, it becomes
the rule. That's right. It will be put into Webster's
little book that he wrote sometime a long time ago.
Who knows, the definition of net neutrality changes depending on
which one of these sides you happen to exist. For
For businesses, UH, they would say that net neutrality is
(21:23):
the freedom of businesses to grow and innovate without the
hampering of any kind of invasive regulation from a government.
But then on the other side, the governments would argue
that net neutrality is the freedom of Internet users to create, access, play, work,
and live online without the hampering of invasive or manipulative
(21:45):
business practices. Okay, so we've got two groups each saying
the other one is the bad guy, yes, and that
net neutrality like kind of co opting that that term
for their own means right. And if you look at
what the FCC is saying, or the common party line,
we hear about net neutrality or open internet, which is
(22:07):
the UH phrase they've been using more and more. This
is defined as requiring all Internet service providers to allow
users or customers equal access to legal content and applications
or apps. Uh, instead of doing a couple of things
that are possible now, like requiring users or other businesses
(22:28):
to pay extra for faster speed, which is a glass
half full way to phrase. The actual danger and the
actual danger is that users or other businesses website owners
would be throttled if they refuse to pay for a
premium service. Uh. But this wouldn't just be a slowdown
(22:50):
or speed up on your Internet connection. There would be
the question of what you could access at all. Right, Yeah,
the one of the biggest problems would be if these
I s He's decided to start carving up the Internet.
The way if you have a cable subscription right now,
there are different packages that you can buy, and you
have to pay a little bit more money if you
want to increase and get a couple more channels, Like
(23:12):
if you want the sports package, then hey, you can
get that. And in this case it would be let's
say you you've got the basic Google package, but then
you want to add on the Reddit sub package or whatever,
so you get Reddit Premium, you get Google Premium, Reddit
Google Premium Fast Lay now with Reddit, yes, extra blast CNN,
(23:33):
so yeah, yeah, yeah, um, which is a possibility there's
also the possibility that there would be UH no access
to some websites at all. Maybe maybe somebody had a
website that was like down with I, S P S
or something, and you would never know it because you
would not be allowed to see it. You have to
pay a month just to see that website. And of
course the A C l U H predictably has a
(23:57):
big problem with this because they're concerned as man ampilization.
They say that most people get their high speed internet
access from only a few telecoms rise in A T
and T, Comcast, Time, Warner, Cox, and Charter UH. They
say that these other smaller groups, and there are a few,
have to rely on the big guys, the big companies,
(24:17):
to serve their customers. When we send and received data
over the net, we expect these companies to transfer that
from one end to the network to the other, not
to analyze or manipulate it. And for a while, the
FCC had protections in place to stop these providers from
doing that. However, in January, a federal court said that
(24:38):
the FEC had overstepped its bounds, but while it also
said the FEC could impose new and potentially even stronger rules.
It took a while, but in uh, they just did
it right, I think, yeah, February awesome. So uh, well,
we'll see. I would feel I would feel much better
(25:00):
about that ruling if I had read it. It's true, guys. Uh,
this is a podcast on something that we have never read,
which we actually avoid. So let's let's save that part.
Let's save that part for a second, because we should
say that this but this idea of that neutrality, this
idea of using governmental powers to prevent monopolies of cable
(25:24):
providers turning into even worse businesses, uh, also runs the
risk of creating this Orwellian big brother Internet like uh
could the questions could government control the net be worse
than an oligarchist corporate regime? I mean, anonymity could be
gone completely, the government might not allow certain websites to
(25:45):
be accessed, just like in our other hypothetical thing with governments.
But there's an important point about that that we will
also make at the end. The question now is why
does it matter who should control the game, which, if
any side governed, business, etcetera, represents the interest of the
common people. You know, Jane Doe out there or Jane
(26:07):
knew you in out there just searching for the closest
barbecue place. We've all been there. It's desperate times, you know.
Or John P. Wallfopter, which I don't think is real,
last name out out there trying to navigate on his phone,
Like what, who represents these people? Well, let's go with
(26:28):
option A. Okay, let's say, just for argument's sake, that
the Internet service providers own the Internet. Okay, the businesses then, well,
they're not perfect, right, They've done some they've done some
pretty shady stuff right. Well, yeah, one of the things
they did is, well they do they tend to have
these mono let's let's I guess we'll just call it
(26:52):
monopolistic practices. They tend to exist in areas where they're
really the only choice and there aren't many other there are.
There really is a competition in a lot of places.
And part of that is it's proven that the leadership
of these companies has in some cases agreed to rope
off turf for each other. Well yeah, especially as they're
(27:13):
buying up other companies, as they're getting larger and larger,
which drives opponents crazy. Which again, but the the legal
basis of this hasn't hasn't resulted in these companies not
doing it, And then you know some people who are
supporters would say, well that's you have to be able
(27:34):
to guarantee a predicted income of some sort, so there's
money coming in. Uh. Speaking of money, they've also been
accused of unethical billing practices. You'll see these stories pop
up online all the time. Someone says, I just found
out I was getting charged, you know, ten to fifteen
dollars a month for a modem that I have never
(27:55):
touched or seen or something like that. You know, that's anecdotal,
but we hear those stories all the time. We hear
them and they we have experienced them me. So uh.
There they go through constant litigation to make sure that
their customers can't get around some of the regulations and
rules that they have sh when you're a customer, like
(28:15):
improving their situation. They banned band broadband like municipal like
we talked about earlier, and they'll they'll use data capping
so you can only use x amount of the Internet
and data capping on some applications but not on others.
So if you watch something via your Xbox, to pay
(28:36):
on which app you use it may or may not
count towards your data cap Uh. This is this is
something that is still being like handled in courts. People
are talking about how how data capping translates. What do
people actually get when you're paying for it? What is
the expectation? Right? Uh? They also of course throttle have
(28:59):
throttled access US two websites or services they don't like. Um.
One of the big things we always hear about this
is Netflix. Right, Yeah, there there is a a correlation there.
Oh so I guess that means that clearly the government
is the best uh watchman or gatekeeper of the Internet,
(29:19):
right absolutely. I mean they're already watching everything that happens
on the Internet right from that data center in Utah.
That's a good point to say, Yes, let's introduce it
this way. The US government in particular is no angel,
and that is not is not a conspiracy theory. It's
not some uh weird, overly dramatic thing to say the
(29:43):
United States government is monitoring everybody like that old Gift
where it's Gary Oldman screaming everyone. That's what they're doing. Yeah,
if you've got privacy somewhere and you think that it exists,
they're invading it. You can just assume that uncle's Sam
knows where you're going, what you ate for lunch, probably yeah,
(30:04):
on that credit card receipt and transaction that went through.
And you know, they just know about your phone's location data,
and that's all they need to know for to to
tell where someone's going. The phone's location data can be
enormously revealing. There's some fantastic reporting done recently about law
(30:25):
enforcement cell tower cloning, which is another another way to
get this information. So so we're worried about corporations tracking us,
but uh, we're worried about government invasion of people's personal
rights that already occurred more than a year ago. It
already the cat is out of the bag, the badgers
(30:47):
out of the can. I made that one up. So
also there's a possibility of burying. There's a little bit
more conspiratorial, the possibility of burying a a story that
they don't care for, suppressing a conversation. And you know what,
if too many people start saying, hey, the Federal Election
Commission is kind of weird, then uh, they could say oh,
(31:09):
or they say, oh, Trayvon Martin was shot a year
ago today, which uh, happened just very recently as we
record this, And I'd like to thank our Twitter listener
who pointed this out because I thought that was an
astute point. Or whichever government shill posted that white and
(31:29):
gold dress picture right, which I still haven't read about.
But what are the people who believe that the government
is actively manipulating what goes viral, what is and is
not buried? Believe that that picture of address was part
of it? Are those llamas on Twitter part of a distraction? Now?
I think that is possible, if only because we don't
(31:51):
know very much about a lot of social media algorithms.
You know, Ben, by denying it, you automatically become a
target of what of the uh the ire of people
who would believe these things? You know, I would love
to know if it is true. I really would. I
think it's completely I think it's possible. I do think
(32:13):
it's possible to control through those bottlenecks what people see.
Facebook spends a lot of time just Facebook spends a
lot of time doing that. Or or it could be
that this is all completely random. Maybe just one person
found that dress and when they posted it, the next
person said, oh no, it's this way and they were fascinated.
And then our populist is just more interested in that
(32:36):
dress than whether or not their Internet is going to
be available to them and how and how much they're
gonna have to pay for it. Now, if you ask me, Matt,
that is a much more disturbing possibility. But Okay, speaking
of disturbing, let's get to the good stuff. Matt Frederick,
what is the stuff they don't want you to know
(32:57):
about the Internet. Well, the first thing is that it
is extremely difficult to be completely truly anonymous when accessing
the Internet in any sense. Check out our our Tech
Stuff episode that we specifically focused on this. Yeah, how
to access the Internet anonymously? Yeah, or just it's a
(33:19):
fairy tale. You really can't do it, even if you're
using the Onion router tour because it was developed by
the government. By the government, just say, well you can.
You can do it, but it is just incredibly inconvenient.
It's spy stuff, to the point of dressing differently in
a nondescript costume, going to a computer you've never used
(33:39):
before in a public place, not carrying a cell phone,
and then never touching that computer again. Yeah, if you
want to go full ed snowden with it. You can, um,
but good luck it it's not. It's not a fun
thing to do. And there's so if we know that
this anonymity is out the window, uh, we know that
(34:00):
there's no way around this, regardless of your personal feelings
or your ideological bent. The fact of the matter is
that several large telecoms have not all the time, but
have in the past actively worked to hamper uh what
consumers want. Part of this is is lobbying, right, Yeah.
(34:22):
They lobby to prevent all kinds of follow through on
infrastructure updating, so we can't have faster access to the internet. Uh.
Comcast is one of the biggest lobbying groups in terms
of cost how much money they spend, only beaten by
Northrop Grumman, the defense contractor. So, and we've already talked
about the legislating against communities. Now at the time of
(34:45):
this recording, this is one of the things you wanted
to hold for a second. At the time of this recording,
it is true, Matt, for the very first time in
the lifetime of our show, you and I are doing
an episode about something that we we haven't really read.
We've read news stories about it. Yeah, but those people
(35:06):
writing those news stories, guess what, they haven't read it either.
That's because the big FCC agreement that happened on February
is called the Open Internet Order, and at the time
of this recording, ladies and gentlemen, the Open Internet Order,
all three d pages of it, is not available to
(35:29):
the public. One last time, the Open Internet Order is
not available for public reading. Now that might change. I
hope it does, but maybe pick a different name when
you're gonna do stuff like that. So, so here's the thing.
Here's the thing about all this stuff. And now I
know it sounds like we are taking shots at everybody,
(35:51):
but we haven't said, to our knowledge anything about these
companies or these governments that is untrue. Right there. Here's
one of the weird things. Though. As much as people
love to vilify these larger companies, right, everybody loves an underdog,
everybody hates a big, faceless company, right, But the corporations, Matt,
(36:13):
they couldn't have had these sweetheart lobbying deals unless they
worked with way Oh, the big opponent in the debate,
the government. And furthermore, the government couldn't have done all
this crazy, spooky or Willian, let's look into everybody's phones. Thing,
if they didn't work directly with corporations and other I
(36:33):
s p s to you know, to figure out how
to do it and to gather all this information, right
like those old A T and T switch rooms that
we hear about. And so so this is a good question,
like are there really two sides here? Considering that wheel
are the current FCC chairman who put this through, uh
came from a lobbyist position. There is a revolving door here.
(36:57):
So if that is all true, If if these people
that are being portrayed as ideological opponents big government versus
big business, if the teams they're rooting for are so
closely cooperating, Now, what's going on here? Like, what what
would net neutrality actually do or excuse me, open internet? Well,
(37:22):
in theory, it would allow society humans in general to
take advantage of this pretty badass technology that the Internet
is without the powerful muddying things up. And it would
it pretty much allow you to talk and talk to
and instantly access information with someone across the globe or
(37:43):
even somebody who's up there in your Earth orbit, just
at any time. The in theory, if the Internet was open,
you could use it to talk to anyone or access
anything at any time. Now here's one of the things
that people don't often bring up, which is, you know,
although we can vilify I, S P S, uh, they
are the reason that those things are working the way
(38:06):
they are now, and it would cost money to maintain things. Right.
I think every time a fiber optic cable is busted
somewhere in the ocean, entire countries can lose Internet access. Well,
and you gotta yes, I think that's a really great
point that is lost on me many of the times.
It's that these corporations spent craploads of money to make
(38:27):
sure it works. There's a lot of taxpayer money in
there too, Right, there's a lot of taxpayer money. But
these corporations, well, and they did it, and I don't
give them, Uh, those corporations the benefit of that fact.
Very often. Well, this net neutrality thing, it stops what
John Oliver, who had a great piece on this and
(38:48):
last week tonight, it stops what he calls cable company
will paraphrase and say shenanigans, okay, in exchange for giving
the f c C the power to decide what it
considers reasonable that word reasonable reasonable? What is a reasonable
interpretation of the word reasonable. That's the that's the tautology
(39:12):
that is as restricted so much in as sure is.
It's an oor Boro solids own. Um. So these are
some of the things we know, and we wanted to
ask you all a question that I just want to
put in your heads right now. What what is the
relationship here? Is? Is this Open Internet Order which we
will publicize if we can find a copy to read.
(39:35):
Is the Open Internet Order? Um? A good thing for people,
a good thing for government, a good thing for business?
Are these forces really opposed? You know? What's what's the
real story? We want to know what you think the
stuff they don't want you to know about the internet is.
And now one of our favorite parts of the show,
well we just talk about the future. Yes, the future,
(40:00):
great Orwellian future of an open internet that can that
the government can see into at all times and every
part of it, which again I feel like that's already happened.
And this is just me too. I think the Internet
at some point it's going to be that it really
(40:20):
is the lifeblood of commerce. Now, the Internet, it's it's
the way that we access almost everything, and if we don't,
if humans don't have access to it cheaply and a
very strong signal, then I think we fail as a society.
(40:40):
We will fail in the future. So I think eventually
this act I think will maybe change a couple of things.
But this isn't gonna be you know, the cure all pill.
It's going to make the Internet open, truly open. But
I think it will happen in the future. But when
it does happen, it's going to be so controlled by
(41:01):
whatever governmental entity that exists at that time, the most
powerful global one that it's gonna be. It's gonna be
this uh, pretty dark thing. I think it's I'm really
interested to see how this changes and how that movie
Hackers way back in the day becomes more of a
reality with this weird under class of people who just
(41:25):
hacked the Internet and fight back against these powers. Yeah,
I'm interested to see this to know a lot of
in a lot of ways, some of that is already happening.
Anymous um. I think one of the great social experiments
of our time is going to be applying psychological manipulation
(41:46):
on mass scales, like the idea of propaganda is is
changing fundamentally. Um, this is a little bit aside from
the point about net neutrality. But the scary thing that
happened possibly is that if a group, you're a hypothetical
the most powerful force if that group, whether a company
(42:09):
or government, uh garners enough influence. I think there will
be a social experiment where we'll move from the age
where authorities tried to control people into the age where
authorities taught people to control themselves, which is a frightening thing.
And when I say control themselves, I don't mean like
(42:31):
not urinate in public. You know exactly what I mean
I do. And it feels like we're in a way
brave new world. Nice nice, Well you know what that
music means. Later to each other. Uh, it is time
for us to check out here. Hopefully we will be
back at the same bat time, same bat channel. I
(42:51):
will just say, Matt, time there we go. I don't
know it loses something with the bin at it in there.
We want to know what you think, so hit us
up while you still can't on Facebook and Twitter, visit
our website stuff they want you to know dot com
where you can see everything we've ever done, maybe a
few exceptions, and we want to know what what do
(43:12):
you think is the I'll be honest, I think the
idea of net neutrality overall is a good thing. And
I think that because a lot of the stuff that
opponents of this of this order are saying already happened.
There's no point in pretending that the US government does
(43:33):
not already have vast monitoring and capabilities. I don't know
about censorship. That's something I'd love to ask about. State
governments throughout the world have that already. And we have
to remember that the the Internet is global and it's
it really is this world thing, right, And we sometimes
(43:53):
because we're dealing with it here in our U S courts,
that we think that it's a US centric thing that
maybe we got the blinders on, but maybe it's a
much bigger issue. So we want to know where you
think the Internet is headed in the future, not just
in the United States, but in the world and beyond.
(44:15):
I guess it's fair to say, you know, people in
space use the Internet, so technically it's beyond. Some folks
will be heading to Mars pretty soon. They're gonna need something,
I hope, So I hope those people actually do head
to Mars. And that is a podcast by friend for
another day. In the meantime, if you don't want to
do the social media bigger Mo role, you can send
(44:36):
us an email directly. We are conspiracy at how stuff
works dot com. From more on this topic and other
unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You
can also get in touch on Twitter at the handle
at conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to. Now, welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt and I'm Ben,
and we've got Noel Brown with us, super producer Noel Brown.
(00:22):
He's just hanging out over there. Hey are you? Are
you making beat Snol? No? Okay, all right, better not
be what's Snol's nickname today, Matt? His name is flashing
Light Noel Flashing lights, Flashing lights Brown, No one, Okay,
let us not get sued, uh, Matt. Before we jump
into today's show. Let's let's have a little bit of
(00:45):
of the story time, if you will, absolutely now, all right,
So this comes from a commencement speech I heard a
long long time ago, and it may be familiar to
some of you listeners out there. So, in the days
before refrigeration in the northeastern United States, there were these
(01:05):
companies that would transport ice via trucks. So they would
drive up to Canada or wherever the next big batch
of ice was. They would cut the blocks of ice,
they would throw hay over those blocks, and they would
drive back down to Boston and New York and other
cities in the Northeast. And you know, they'd lose a
(01:26):
lot of ice along the way. But people loved ice,
so they did. UH. They did pretty well for themselves.
They became an industry, a big industry. And then the
invention of refrigeration, right, a magic little box within which
you can place food, water that's cold enough to freeze.
You can make ice on your own. This was a
(01:49):
revolutionary thing for pretty much everybody. It made things safer,
it made things more convenient, It made UH, Canada just
a fingertip away everyone, that is, except for the ice
trucking companies and the ice trucking industry. UH could have
done a couple of things, could have started embracing refrigeration
(02:12):
or maybe building refrigerators something like that. But what they
did instead was invested in faster trucks, different types of hay. UH.
And what they did instead of working with refrigeration companies
was tried to shut them down by any legal means necessary,
(02:34):
and yes, because they were a threat to a status quo.
This is a tale as old as time. We see
it often that companies spend more time investing in maintaining
their status quo rather than innovating it, and that by
way of uh a circuitous UH family circus style comic
(02:58):
strip route brings us to today's topic, net neutrality the Internet.
How much control should a government have over the Internet
and people's access to it? And how should companies be
able to treat this precious thing that all of us
now rely on so heavily that we all need access
to arguably? Right? Yeah, how much control should a business
(03:22):
have over the Internet? How much control should a government
have over the Internet? Why is net neutrality just the
key word, the thought terminating cliche of net neutrality? Why
is it such a big deal? Why do why do
people care to answer that? We have to look at
the history of the Internet first, that's right, We have
to go all the way back to nineteen fifty seven.
(03:43):
And by the way, a lot of the information you're
gonna be hearing right here comes from our buddy Jonathan Strickland,
who was on our show not long ago. You might
remember him. You can find him over at tech Stuff
and Forward Thinking, Thank you, sir. So Way back in
nineteen fifty seven, the US was pretty terrified that the
U S. S R could launch a missile at North
America because they launched sput Nick, this satellite that they
(04:07):
shot up into space, and everybody over here just went,
oh boy, they can do that, and what else can
they do? That's a little scary. Yeah, they said. They
were sitting around, probably eating pizza or something, and one
of them said, ah, man, space is pretty far away.
If they could get something in space, could they get
it in Washington exactly? Could they could hit my house?
(04:30):
This led President Dwight D. Eisenhower to create the Advanced
Research Projects Agency or ARPA in nineteen fifty eight as
a direct response to this launching the spot Nick. And
the purpose of this agency was to give the US
some kind of technological advantage over other countries, like to
(04:50):
be the leading edge in all of these technologies. Um.
And one important part of ARPA's mission was computer science
because these were this is a brand new field that
was emerging, and you know, how can we use these
machines to become even better? Right? Yeah. ARPA, which is
(05:10):
a predecessor beginner of what is now known today is
dark and a couple other agencies. ARPA itself was the
think tank for mad science, and one of those most
mad science things at the time was was the computer. Now,
computers in the nineteen fifties. You may remember some of you,
(05:31):
and then some of you may just remember seeing these
on television or something. But point his computers in the
nineteen fifties were not mac air books. They were enormous,
size of rooms, size of buildings. They could only read
magnetic tape or punch cards. Uh. Shout out to IBM
and World War two. Google it if you'd like to
(05:52):
learn more. And they could not network at all, like
the Haggard anti heroes in action films and westerns. Uh.
These computers worked alone, only work by myself. Well, that's
a huge and important point here, that computers were self
involved things that you you couldn't even imagine that all
(06:13):
of these computers could talk to one another one day
in the future, back in the day, but a few
people could. Now ARPA wanted to change this with the
help of a company called Bolt, Barneck and Newman. They
networked four of these computers with four different operating systems
os is working together in this thing that they called
ARPA net. Uh. The ARPA network one of the first networks.
(06:37):
Let's go ahead. And also while we're here, correct the
commonly misquoted Al Gore thing, Okay, I like the idea
of one person venting the Internet. It's hilarious and impossible.
But he said he took the initiative in it usually
taken a mean that as a senator he pushed for
funding of that. So there you go, Al stop right,
(07:00):
and they hate mail, We get it. I'm kidding. Al
Gore is probably a nice person, is not to my
knowledge written to our show. Uh, But he doesn't really
come up in this because, of course one person could
never invent the Internet. There's already so many people involved.
Just to get to ARPA. But the evolution continues because
in nineteen seventy three, some of these people engineers started thinking,
(07:21):
could we connect our pannette to other networks. They started
with pr net, the Packet Radio Network, and the idea
here Matt was that they could send data across radio
waves transmitters receivers rather than phone lines. And it took
a few years, but in nineteen seventy six they connected
these networks and then they said we need more inteventy
(07:44):
seven they joined with the satellite network, which called what
do you Think? What do you think? That's called listeners Yep,
it's sat Net and the engineers called this connection between
the multiple networks internetworking or the Internet. And now we
come to uh, let's fast forward. The closest you can
get to one single person inventing quote unquote the Internet
(08:07):
is a guy named Tim berners Lee who created a
system to simplify web navigation. This is what we call
the world Wide Web, and the Internet and the world
Wide Web are different things that are often confused. Now, Matt,
you and I at different times for a show called
Stuff of Genius. We did we did a little bit
(08:28):
of history about this guy, right, Yeah, we did. He's fascinating,
great story. Check out Stuff of Genius on the How
Stuff Works YouTube channel. Yeah, and uh, Jonathan might even
narrate that episode. We've got a couple of different narrators here.
You were one. Yeah, recently, I've been on there a lot. Yeah,
your episodes of popping up. It's a bit strange, but
(08:50):
it's cool. Check it out, especially if you have kids
who want to learn about little loon inventors. Uh. It's
a show that I wrote for a long time. You
did voice on, Tyler did some editing. Yeah, our by
our buddy the producer for stuff to blow your mind.
Uh did the editing. It's kind of like a almost
Monty Python esque good stuff. But back to the history
(09:12):
of the Internet. Yes, yeah, so from here's here's some
really neat stuff. Uh the recent history internet usage from
two thousand to two thousand fourteen, Internet usage sky rocketed
matt from almost three hundred and sixty one million Internet
users across the world in two thousand to get this
(09:35):
three just over three billion, So three billion, thirty five million,
seven home forty nine, three and forty people. Geez, seven thousand,
three and forty people. What's the what's the growth rate there?
You know? Uh, let's see. I could get out some paper,
but you're good at math. What do you think it is?
(09:55):
Just give me a second here, let me just for
us to carry the one that's seven hundred. A growth
rate of seven hundred that is bonkers. And for those
of you who like specific numbers, that Internet usage stat
from two thousand was three hundred and sixty million, nine
hundred and eighty five thousand, four hundred and ninety two. Uh.
(10:19):
Those are just estimates, of course. But there's something else
that's weird here. As of two thousand thirteen, at least
the Internet remained a largely English language domain. Yeah, that's right.
Of the Internet's content is in English. Only twenty seven
percent of Internet users speak English. Isn't that a little weird? Uh? Yeah,
(10:40):
that is. That is strange, And I think there's a
I don't know. I think there's a disconnect between those stats.
But we'll have to look into it some more because
let me and get to the part I'm sure everybody's
waiting for, and that is the part where we complain
about the Internet in the United States. Friends, Romans, Canadians, countrymen,
(11:04):
anyone who is not in the United States. Uh may
not be as aware of this as you are in
the US. But compared to other countries South Korea, definitely, Uh,
the United States is every customer in the United States,
with a few exceptions, is paying way more for way
(11:24):
less and uh. Part of this is because cable companies
need a new infrastructure. But another part is that when
you know, when you're a small town that says, well,
we don't want to participate, we want to build our
own broadband, then all of a sudden, the cable company
(11:46):
that refused your service, or the telecom rather, uh is
right up there on Main Street in the courthouse telling
the judge you shouldn't be allowed to do it. And
that's something we'll talk about a little bit more when
we talk about this neutrality stuff. And I want to
be clear here. I think Matt, you and I should
both be clear. For a lot of people, including us,
(12:08):
the Internet, whatever that means to you, is more than
a pastime primary source of information for a lot of people.
The days of reading micro fish are done. Uh. For
a lot of people, it's ah, in our case, it's
a career. Yeah, it's what we do every day. Everything
we do goes onto the Internet. So clearly, you and
(12:29):
I and NOL as well, we have a bias of
sorts because we want people to be able to go
onto the internet find whatever they want, uh and well, okay,
find and whatever legal stuff they want, and we want
we want it to be as easy as possible for uh,
(12:50):
you guys to check out our show, because you know,
we're very fortunate that you would take your free time
to check out this crazy thing that we're doing. So
we love the Internet. Oh yeah, and by the way,
we might have to have a little conversation later about
you spending all your time with us. I mean, what
are you thinking. We appreciate it, but man, don't listen
(13:11):
to that. Hang out as long as you want, Okay.
So so that's that's some recent history. That's a quick
and dirty here um. And now the Internet, this amazing
thing allows you to find almost anything if you look
hard enough. One fee to your I s P let
you go anywhere online that you legally want to go.
(13:31):
Uh So, but how long could this last? I just
want to say, I love that one fee to your
I s P. It really felt like you were about
to bust into a larger rhyme. Oh hey, thank you man.
I appreciate it. Sometimes, you know, sometimes the poetry just
finds you. Right. But yeah, how long could this last? Well?
(13:52):
For not long, apparently, because the current debate over neutrality,
it's framed up as a fight between big business and government. Right,
these are the two opposing sides that we are presented with,
at least if you watch the news and the supporters
of each side, they like to claim that their team
represents the true interests of the common American man. But
(14:13):
how much of that is true? Ben? This is that
thing that we've talked about before, the Galien dialect where
you've got two opposing sides and you're only really you're
supposed to only be allowed to choose one. But really
there's much more middle ground there. And it's also then
you you call Chomsky's framing debate. Yeah, it's just both
of what these are really are false dichotomys or the idea.
(14:40):
I guess what you're talking about, um, specifically is the
the idea that people are only allowed to choose between
two things. The framing debate is more like there are
things that are not allowed to be in the conversation. So, um,
you can have a framed debate with more than two sides.
But our question, our our question here today is is
(15:02):
really about this, uh, this whole debate over net neutrality
and why are we doing this? Well, because there was
a recent ruling by the FCC or Federal Communications Commission
that changes the game. Yeah, on February of this year,
the f SEC approved the Open Internet Order. It's a
(15:27):
three ruling that most importantly reclassifies the Internet under Title two.
It's the same power that's used to regulate phone lines,
phone companies and how they use that infrastructure. Right, And
it ultimately comes from our originally comes from I should say, uh,
some laws regarding railroads that you can learn more about
if you check out our video this week where we
(15:50):
actually have an interview with Jonathan he's our he's our
go to guru for tech stuff and uh, this this,
and we'll talk about this open Internet or a little
bit later in more depth. But at the top level,
here's what it did. It requires some more transparency on
the part of your I, S P S or telecoms.
It prohibits blocking websites and what they call unreasonable discrimination,
(16:15):
which is a slippery slippery term legally speaking. And also,
and this is a huge part, it allows municipalities to
offer a public option for their broadband accent. Now that's
huge in places like where I live, pretty close to
our office. Yeah, you, I think the only two options
(16:35):
right now are A T and T and Comcast, which
I use. And if there was a public option, and
I would hop on that, I would only do it
if it were a better deal. But see what I
I think I would do it. This is maybe if
this is playing my hand too early, but I think
I would do it out of I don't know, some
(16:59):
principle and I you know, I've been. I've been a
customer of Comcast for a long time and I you know,
arguably they've treated me pretty well, but man, I've paid
out the law zoo for that stuff. Yeah. So, the
situation that people were finding themselves in, and we've all
read reports about this in the United States, was that
(17:21):
there would be towns or communities that were kind of
in a rural area, and the telecom that had blocked
them off in its territory would say, we're not going
out there. It's not worth our investment to make that connection.
But then when those communities tried to build their own
broad band, all of a sudden, we're up in court.
(17:44):
So on the offset. This sounds like stuff every everybody
would like, right, even whatever your ideological bent is, I
think we can all get behind the idea that if
a group of people wants to build their own thing
for themselves, it seems fairly fairly cut and dry. However,
(18:08):
that's just one piece. That's not the piece that's being
um I guess quoted the most. What's being quoted the
most is this idea of the open carrier title common
carrier UH title to stuff. And we have an op
ed that objects to Uh, some of this ruling. It's
from Jeffrey a Man. He had an op ed and
(18:28):
wired and it says quote Title to reclassification also allows
the FCC to impose a general conduct or catch all provision.
Under this standard, the FCC asserts its authority over literally
anything else that, in the eyes of three commissioners seems unreasonable.
As former Commissioner Robert McDowell has pointed out, reasonable is
(18:51):
perhaps the most litigated word in American history, which is
a valid, valid point. So Jeffrey Man goes on to
say that now the I s p s are regulated
under this Title two thing as common carriers, the Federal
Trade Commission can't enforce consumer protection laws against them anymore.
(19:11):
So this is not all you know, this is not
all good guys bad guys kind of stuff. But here's
here the big questions. Who actually owns the Internet? Uh,
it's it's tough to say, right, Yeah. Is it the
people who own the fiber optic wires that go underneath
the oceans and throughout you know, the continents? Right? Is
(19:31):
it the most successful online companies like Google for instance? Yeah,
the ones who make all the money. There? Is it
you and your friends who owns the Internet. We do
know that the people regulating it. There's an organization called
I CAN. Isn't that precious? And it stands for the
Internet Corporation for Signed Names and Numbers. Uh. This is
(19:52):
a nonprofit that coordinates maintains the name of names of
the Internet. Is the reason ww dot How Stuff Works
dot Com is just ww dot how Stuff Works dot
com or even stuff They don't want you to know
dot Com. Uh. They have a contract with the Department
of Commerce to do this. Still enormously controversial. People have
(20:15):
beef with I CAN. I love that name so much
and you you made a little joke about it, But
it is a it is a cute name. I CAN. Yeah,
I would totally. I would totally name a company I
CAN if it hasn't been covered. So now let's talk
about the definition of net neutrality, which you know, usually
(20:38):
when you hear a word having a definition, you expect
it will be one thing. But this has a very
different nuance depending upon whom you're talking to. Who you're
talking to, I can never figure out who and whom. Yeah,
it's it's a question that will remain throughout time. Then
we speak American English, it's fine, everything's a verb, and
(21:00):
if you just make the same mistake consistently, it becomes
the rule. That's right. It will be put into Webster's
little book that he wrote sometime a long time ago.
Who knows, the definition of net neutrality changes depending on
which one of these sides you happen to exist. For
For businesses, UH, they would say that net neutrality is
(21:23):
the freedom of businesses to grow and innovate without the
hampering of any kind of invasive regulation from a government.
But then on the other side, the governments would argue
that net neutrality is the freedom of Internet users to create, access, play, work,
and live online without the hampering of invasive or manipulative
(21:45):
business practices. Okay, so we've got two groups each saying
the other one is the bad guy, yes, and that
net neutrality like kind of co opting that that term
for their own means right. And if you look at
what the FCC is saying, or the common party line,
we hear about net neutrality or open internet, which is
(22:07):
the UH phrase they've been using more and more. This
is defined as requiring all Internet service providers to allow
users or customers equal access to legal content and applications
or apps. Uh, instead of doing a couple of things
that are possible now, like requiring users or other businesses
(22:28):
to pay extra for faster speed, which is a glass
half full way to phrase. The actual danger and the
actual danger is that users or other businesses website owners
would be throttled if they refuse to pay for a
premium service. Uh. But this wouldn't just be a slowdown
(22:50):
or speed up on your Internet connection. There would be
the question of what you could access at all. Right, Yeah,
the one of the biggest problems would be if these
I s He's decided to start carving up the Internet.
The way if you have a cable subscription right now,
there are different packages that you can buy, and you
have to pay a little bit more money if you
want to increase and get a couple more channels, Like
(23:12):
if you want the sports package, then hey, you can
get that. And in this case it would be let's
say you you've got the basic Google package, but then
you want to add on the Reddit sub package or whatever,
so you get Reddit Premium, you get Google Premium, Reddit
Google Premium Fast Lay now with Reddit, yes, extra blast CNN,
(23:33):
so yeah, yeah, yeah, um, which is a possibility there's
also the possibility that there would be UH no access
to some websites at all. Maybe maybe somebody had a
website that was like down with I, S P S
or something, and you would never know it because you
would not be allowed to see it. You have to
pay a month just to see that website. And of
course the A C l U H predictably has a
(23:57):
big problem with this because they're concerned as man ampilization.
They say that most people get their high speed internet
access from only a few telecoms rise in A T
and T, Comcast, Time, Warner, Cox, and Charter UH. They
say that these other smaller groups, and there are a few,
have to rely on the big guys, the big companies,
(24:17):
to serve their customers. When we send and received data
over the net, we expect these companies to transfer that
from one end to the network to the other, not
to analyze or manipulate it. And for a while, the
FCC had protections in place to stop these providers from
doing that. However, in January, a federal court said that
(24:38):
the FEC had overstepped its bounds, but while it also
said the FEC could impose new and potentially even stronger rules.
It took a while, but in uh, they just did
it right, I think, yeah, February awesome. So uh, well,
we'll see. I would feel I would feel much better
(25:00):
about that ruling if I had read it. It's true, guys. Uh,
this is a podcast on something that we have never read,
which we actually avoid. So let's let's save that part.
Let's save that part for a second, because we should
say that this but this idea of that neutrality, this
idea of using governmental powers to prevent monopolies of cable
(25:24):
providers turning into even worse businesses, uh, also runs the
risk of creating this Orwellian big brother Internet like uh
could the questions could government control the net be worse
than an oligarchist corporate regime? I mean, anonymity could be
gone completely, the government might not allow certain websites to
(25:45):
be accessed, just like in our other hypothetical thing with governments.
But there's an important point about that that we will
also make at the end. The question now is why
does it matter who should control the game, which, if
any side governed, business, etcetera, represents the interest of the
common people. You know, Jane Doe out there or Jane
(26:07):
knew you in out there just searching for the closest
barbecue place. We've all been there. It's desperate times, you know.
Or John P. Wallfopter, which I don't think is real,
last name out out there trying to navigate on his phone,
Like what, who represents these people? Well, let's go with
(26:28):
option A. Okay, let's say, just for argument's sake, that
the Internet service providers own the Internet. Okay, the businesses then, well,
they're not perfect, right, They've done some they've done some
pretty shady stuff right. Well, yeah, one of the things
they did is, well they do they tend to have
these mono let's let's I guess we'll just call it
(26:52):
monopolistic practices. They tend to exist in areas where they're
really the only choice and there aren't many other there are.
There really is a competition in a lot of places.
And part of that is it's proven that the leadership
of these companies has in some cases agreed to rope
off turf for each other. Well yeah, especially as they're
(27:13):
buying up other companies, as they're getting larger and larger,
which drives opponents crazy. Which again, but the the legal
basis of this hasn't hasn't resulted in these companies not
doing it, And then you know some people who are
supporters would say, well that's you have to be able
(27:34):
to guarantee a predicted income of some sort, so there's
money coming in. Uh. Speaking of money, they've also been
accused of unethical billing practices. You'll see these stories pop
up online all the time. Someone says, I just found
out I was getting charged, you know, ten to fifteen
dollars a month for a modem that I have never
(27:55):
touched or seen or something like that. You know, that's anecdotal,
but we hear those stories all the time. We hear
them and they we have experienced them me. So uh.
There they go through constant litigation to make sure that
their customers can't get around some of the regulations and
rules that they have sh when you're a customer, like
(28:15):
improving their situation. They banned band broadband like municipal like
we talked about earlier, and they'll they'll use data capping
so you can only use x amount of the Internet
and data capping on some applications but not on others.
So if you watch something via your Xbox, to pay
(28:36):
on which app you use it may or may not
count towards your data cap Uh. This is this is
something that is still being like handled in courts. People
are talking about how how data capping translates. What do
people actually get when you're paying for it? What is
the expectation? Right? Uh? They also of course throttle have
(28:59):
throttled access US two websites or services they don't like. Um.
One of the big things we always hear about this
is Netflix. Right, Yeah, there there is a a correlation there.
Oh so I guess that means that clearly the government
is the best uh watchman or gatekeeper of the Internet,
(29:19):
right absolutely. I mean they're already watching everything that happens
on the Internet right from that data center in Utah.
That's a good point to say, Yes, let's introduce it
this way. The US government in particular is no angel,
and that is not is not a conspiracy theory. It's
not some uh weird, overly dramatic thing to say the
(29:43):
United States government is monitoring everybody like that old Gift
where it's Gary Oldman screaming everyone. That's what they're doing. Yeah,
if you've got privacy somewhere and you think that it exists,
they're invading it. You can just assume that uncle's Sam
knows where you're going, what you ate for lunch, probably yeah,
(30:04):
on that credit card receipt and transaction that went through.
And you know, they just know about your phone's location data,
and that's all they need to know for to to
tell where someone's going. The phone's location data can be
enormously revealing. There's some fantastic reporting done recently about law
(30:25):
enforcement cell tower cloning, which is another another way to
get this information. So so we're worried about corporations tracking us,
but uh, we're worried about government invasion of people's personal
rights that already occurred more than a year ago. It
already the cat is out of the bag, the badgers
(30:47):
out of the can. I made that one up. So
also there's a possibility of burying. There's a little bit
more conspiratorial, the possibility of burying a a story that
they don't care for, suppressing a conversation. And you know what,
if too many people start saying, hey, the Federal Election
Commission is kind of weird, then uh, they could say oh,
(31:09):
or they say, oh, Trayvon Martin was shot a year
ago today, which uh, happened just very recently as we
record this, And I'd like to thank our Twitter listener
who pointed this out because I thought that was an
astute point. Or whichever government shill posted that white and
(31:29):
gold dress picture right, which I still haven't read about.
But what are the people who believe that the government
is actively manipulating what goes viral, what is and is
not buried? Believe that that picture of address was part
of it? Are those llamas on Twitter part of a distraction? Now?
I think that is possible, if only because we don't
(31:51):
know very much about a lot of social media algorithms.
You know, Ben, by denying it, you automatically become a
target of what of the uh the ire of people
who would believe these things? You know, I would love
to know if it is true. I really would. I
think it's completely I think it's possible. I do think
(32:13):
it's possible to control through those bottlenecks what people see.
Facebook spends a lot of time just Facebook spends a
lot of time doing that. Or or it could be
that this is all completely random. Maybe just one person
found that dress and when they posted it, the next
person said, oh no, it's this way and they were fascinated.
And then our populist is just more interested in that
(32:36):
dress than whether or not their Internet is going to
be available to them and how and how much they're
gonna have to pay for it. Now, if you ask me, Matt,
that is a much more disturbing possibility. But Okay, speaking
of disturbing, let's get to the good stuff. Matt Frederick,
what is the stuff they don't want you to know
(32:57):
about the Internet. Well, the first thing is that it
is extremely difficult to be completely truly anonymous when accessing
the Internet in any sense. Check out our our Tech
Stuff episode that we specifically focused on this. Yeah, how
to access the Internet anonymously? Yeah, or just it's a
(33:19):
fairy tale. You really can't do it, even if you're
using the Onion router tour because it was developed by
the government. By the government, just say, well you can.
You can do it, but it is just incredibly inconvenient.
It's spy stuff, to the point of dressing differently in
a nondescript costume, going to a computer you've never used
(33:39):
before in a public place, not carrying a cell phone,
and then never touching that computer again. Yeah, if you
want to go full ed snowden with it. You can, um,
but good luck it it's not. It's not a fun
thing to do. And there's so if we know that
this anonymity is out the window, uh, we know that
(34:00):
there's no way around this, regardless of your personal feelings
or your ideological bent. The fact of the matter is
that several large telecoms have not all the time, but
have in the past actively worked to hamper uh what
consumers want. Part of this is is lobbying, right, Yeah.
(34:22):
They lobby to prevent all kinds of follow through on
infrastructure updating, so we can't have faster access to the internet. Uh.
Comcast is one of the biggest lobbying groups in terms
of cost how much money they spend, only beaten by
Northrop Grumman, the defense contractor. So, and we've already talked
about the legislating against communities. Now at the time of
(34:45):
this recording, this is one of the things you wanted
to hold for a second. At the time of this recording,
it is true, Matt, for the very first time in
the lifetime of our show, you and I are doing
an episode about something that we we haven't really read.
We've read news stories about it. Yeah, but those people
(35:06):
writing those news stories, guess what, they haven't read it either.
That's because the big FCC agreement that happened on February
is called the Open Internet Order, and at the time
of this recording, ladies and gentlemen, the Open Internet Order,
all three d pages of it, is not available to
(35:29):
the public. One last time, the Open Internet Order is
not available for public reading. Now that might change. I
hope it does, but maybe pick a different name when
you're gonna do stuff like that. So, so here's the thing.
Here's the thing about all this stuff. And now I
know it sounds like we are taking shots at everybody,
(35:51):
but we haven't said, to our knowledge anything about these
companies or these governments that is untrue. Right there. Here's
one of the weird things. Though. As much as people
love to vilify these larger companies, right, everybody loves an underdog,
everybody hates a big, faceless company, right, But the corporations, Matt,
(36:13):
they couldn't have had these sweetheart lobbying deals unless they
worked with way Oh, the big opponent in the debate,
the government. And furthermore, the government couldn't have done all
this crazy, spooky or Willian, let's look into everybody's phones. Thing,
if they didn't work directly with corporations and other I
(36:33):
s p s to you know, to figure out how
to do it and to gather all this information, right
like those old A T and T switch rooms that
we hear about. And so so this is a good question,
like are there really two sides here? Considering that wheel
are the current FCC chairman who put this through, uh
came from a lobbyist position. There is a revolving door here.
(36:57):
So if that is all true, If if these people
that are being portrayed as ideological opponents big government versus
big business, if the teams they're rooting for are so
closely cooperating, Now, what's going on here? Like, what what
would net neutrality actually do or excuse me, open internet? Well,
(37:22):
in theory, it would allow society humans in general to
take advantage of this pretty badass technology that the Internet
is without the powerful muddying things up. And it would
it pretty much allow you to talk and talk to
and instantly access information with someone across the globe or
(37:43):
even somebody who's up there in your Earth orbit, just
at any time. The in theory, if the Internet was open,
you could use it to talk to anyone or access
anything at any time. Now here's one of the things
that people don't often bring up, which is, you know,
although we can vilify I, S P S, uh, they
are the reason that those things are working the way
(38:06):
they are now, and it would cost money to maintain things. Right.
I think every time a fiber optic cable is busted
somewhere in the ocean, entire countries can lose Internet access. Well,
and you gotta yes, I think that's a really great
point that is lost on me many of the times.
It's that these corporations spent craploads of money to make
(38:27):
sure it works. There's a lot of taxpayer money in
there too, Right, there's a lot of taxpayer money. But
these corporations, well, and they did it, and I don't
give them, Uh, those corporations the benefit of that fact.
Very often. Well, this net neutrality thing, it stops what
John Oliver, who had a great piece on this and
(38:48):
last week tonight, it stops what he calls cable company
will paraphrase and say shenanigans, okay, in exchange for giving
the f c C the power to decide what it
considers reasonable that word reasonable reasonable? What is a reasonable
interpretation of the word reasonable. That's the that's the tautology
(39:12):
that is as restricted so much in as sure is.
It's an oor Boro solids own. Um. So these are
some of the things we know, and we wanted to
ask you all a question that I just want to
put in your heads right now. What what is the
relationship here? Is? Is this Open Internet Order which we
will publicize if we can find a copy to read.
(39:35):
Is the Open Internet Order? Um? A good thing for people,
a good thing for government, a good thing for business?
Are these forces really opposed? You know? What's what's the
real story? We want to know what you think the
stuff they don't want you to know about the internet is.
And now one of our favorite parts of the show,
well we just talk about the future. Yes, the future,
(40:00):
great Orwellian future of an open internet that can that
the government can see into at all times and every
part of it, which again I feel like that's already happened.
And this is just me too. I think the Internet
at some point it's going to be that it really
(40:20):
is the lifeblood of commerce. Now, the Internet, it's it's
the way that we access almost everything, and if we don't,
if humans don't have access to it cheaply and a
very strong signal, then I think we fail as a society.
(40:40):
We will fail in the future. So I think eventually
this act I think will maybe change a couple of things.
But this isn't gonna be you know, the cure all pill.
It's going to make the Internet open, truly open. But
I think it will happen in the future. But when
it does happen, it's going to be so controlled by
(41:01):
whatever governmental entity that exists at that time, the most
powerful global one that it's gonna be. It's gonna be
this uh, pretty dark thing. I think it's I'm really
interested to see how this changes and how that movie
Hackers way back in the day becomes more of a
reality with this weird under class of people who just
(41:25):
hacked the Internet and fight back against these powers. Yeah,
I'm interested to see this to know a lot of
in a lot of ways, some of that is already happening.
Anymous um. I think one of the great social experiments
of our time is going to be applying psychological manipulation
(41:46):
on mass scales, like the idea of propaganda is is
changing fundamentally. Um, this is a little bit aside from
the point about net neutrality. But the scary thing that
happened possibly is that if a group, you're a hypothetical
the most powerful force if that group, whether a company
(42:09):
or government, uh garners enough influence. I think there will
be a social experiment where we'll move from the age
where authorities tried to control people into the age where
authorities taught people to control themselves, which is a frightening thing.
And when I say control themselves, I don't mean like
(42:31):
not urinate in public. You know exactly what I mean
I do. And it feels like we're in a way
brave new world. Nice nice, Well you know what that
music means. Later to each other. Uh, it is time
for us to check out here. Hopefully we will be
back at the same bat time, same bat channel. I
(42:51):
will just say, Matt, time there we go. I don't
know it loses something with the bin at it in there.
We want to know what you think, so hit us
up while you still can't on Facebook and Twitter, visit
our website stuff they want you to know dot com
where you can see everything we've ever done, maybe a
few exceptions, and we want to know what what do
(43:12):
you think is the I'll be honest, I think the
idea of net neutrality overall is a good thing. And
I think that because a lot of the stuff that
opponents of this of this order are saying already happened.
There's no point in pretending that the US government does
(43:33):
not already have vast monitoring and capabilities. I don't know
about censorship. That's something I'd love to ask about. State
governments throughout the world have that already. And we have
to remember that the the Internet is global and it's
it really is this world thing, right, And we sometimes
(43:53):
because we're dealing with it here in our U S courts,
that we think that it's a US centric thing that
maybe we got the blinders on, but maybe it's a
much bigger issue. So we want to know where you
think the Internet is headed in the future, not just
in the United States, but in the world and beyond.
(44:15):
I guess it's fair to say, you know, people in
space use the Internet, so technically it's beyond. Some folks
will be heading to Mars pretty soon. They're gonna need something,
I hope, So I hope those people actually do head
to Mars. And that is a podcast by friend for
another day. In the meantime, if you don't want to
do the social media bigger Mo role, you can send
(44:36):
us an email directly. We are conspiracy at how stuff
works dot com. From more on this topic and other
unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You
can also get in touch on Twitter at the handle
at conspiracy stuff.
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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