Net Neutrality II: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

the internet repository of all human knowledge and videos of goats singing Taylor Swift [Music] [Applause] [Music] songs come on the Internet is an incredible place and tonight we need to talk about an issue that is impacting it next neutrality if that term rings a bell we actually talked about it in our fifth ever episode three years ago a piece that got a weird amount of attention Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has languished in relative obscurity since its debut in April but this week an Oliver diet tribe about net neutrality went viral hey you lady I didn't languish in relative obscurity I thrived in relative obscurity relative obscurity is my name but incredibly being neged by WGBH Boston was not the weirdest bit of attention that that segment attracted that without a doubt would be this all right it's comedian John Oliver in New York they did a big piece on net neutrality and uh the FCC and he directed everybody to go to the FCC website and leave like hateful comments and it turns out it totally worked the fcc's website crashed you did it John I didn't do anything what I people did it I just merely pointed out a problem now yeah I will admit that is a quintessentially British excuse you cannot possibly hold me responsible for what the masses decide to make a fuss about now run along scallywag I said good day to you good day sir now now the reason for our segment three years ago was that the future of net neutrality was in question and to their credit the FCC took steps to safeguard it and if you're wondering why I'm even bringing up a problem that was seemingly solved this is why the Trump Administration today announcing plans to roll back Obama era net neutrality rules une equal access of course it seems that the Trump era will basically control Z everything that happened on Obama's watch I genuinely would not be surprised if one night Trump went on TV just to tell us that he personally killed every turkey Obama ever pardoned the the the point is though once again net neutrality is in trouble and if you need a refresher on what it is involves please let the star of the 2007 viral Smash video uh Chocolate Rain explain it to you in 30 seconds net neutrality is the idea that your pipe to the internet whether that is your cable internet connection your LTE wireless internet connection however you are receiving information via the Internet that pipeline to the internet is not allowed to arbitrarily pick favorites in terms of the content that you consume for example if you like to use Google search and your your roommate likes to use being search your internet service provider can't say well being is paying us a lot of money so we're going to slow down Google and Yahoo and their other search engine competitors to make being load fast he's right although that's obviously just a hypothetical there is clearly no such search engine as Bing or or I know maybe there is I don't know there's really only one way to find out and that's by Googling it and that's kind of the point but but net neutrality is about more than just speed at its heart it is the principle that internet service providers or isps like these guys should not be able to engage in any sort of that limits or manipulates the choices you make online it also helps ensure a Level Playing Field so that big companies cannot undermine small companies before they can take off and without it ancestry.com could easily Crush my new site just tell me if I'm related to a na.com it's like ancestry.com except you get to skip all the net ity is objectively boring and that used to work to isp's Advantage but more people know what it is now which is why some companies have started putting out statements trumpeting their support for a free and open internet in fact Verizon even created a video to calm any concerns that you might have hey what's up everybody Jeremy here with Craig San who is our general counsel and leads our public policy group let's jump right into it is the FCC going to kill what we know as the open internet rules or net neutrality the FCC is not talking about killing the net neutrality rules and in fact not we nor any other ISP are asking them to kill the open internet rules all they're doing is looking to put the open internet rules in an enforceable way on a different legal footing now that sounds reasonable and why wouldn't you trust the commitment to open access of a man sitting at a table literally blocking an entire hallway but but while but while a different legal footing sounds pretty benign it is not and it is also worth understanding ing how net neutrality landed on its current legal footing because it happens to directly involve Verizon so let me explain and unfortunately to do that I have to introduce you to two terms even more boring than net neutrality specifically Title One and title two of the communications Act of 1934 the equivalent of chasing an ambian with a shot of chlorop form but here is very broadly what happened back in 2010 the FCC wrote net neutrality rules governing isps which at the time were regulated under the L strict Title One and the companies found those net neutrality rules inconvenient in fact Verizon successfully sued the FCC arguing that it didn't have enough authority to enforce those rules and the Court ruled that if the FCC did want strong enforceable net neutrality their best option would be to reclassify isps under title two which allows for much stronger oversight so the FCC did that and the fact they did was huge so when Verizon claims hey we love the open internet but why don't we just put it on a different legal footing it's basically OJ Simpson asking why you won't let him hold any of your Samurai swords come on juice you know why you of anyone should know why and the isps now have a powerful Ally on their side because Trump has appointed a new head of the FCC and it is this guy AJ Pi is known for being anti-regulation pro merger last month he said he wanted to quote take a weed whacker to current FCC rules and predicted net neutrality's quote days are numbered wow okay days are numbered and take a weed whacker are serial killer talk so that is pretty ominous when the code of federal regulations looks out of its window at night there's just agit pie standing silently holding his weed whacker waiting for his chance but the dangerous thing about p is that he presents himself as a fun downto Earth nerd the kind of guy whose Twitter feed is full of quotes from the big Labowski he quotes it all the time and look quoting the big Labowski is fine in certain context for example if you're an actor and it's 1998 and you're filming the movie The Big Labowski but it is completely intolerable in any other context and that's that's not the his only fun guy at the office traits just watch his very first press conference as chairman I would be happy to take questions uh from the panel mon go ahead Monty taow Comm daily uh how do you plan to examine yes AIT pie is the kind of guy who has a fun oversized novelty mug and he is really proud of it cuz here he is showing it off to a reporter here he is showing it off to his Twitter feed and in his first speech to his staff as commissioner he said I love walking into my office pouring about a gallon of coffee into my Infamous Reese's peanut butter cups mug and starting my day and you heard right he described his own mug as Infamous which is offensive for two reasons first at no point should you be describing your own fun mug aloud in the company of other adults and second it's a mug calling a mug Infamous is like calling your nety pot a real panty dropper in no context can that be remotely true but for all of P's doofy hey I'm just like you guys Persona there is there are some things about him that you should really know he's a former lawyer for Verizon and despite being a smart man he sure loves to play dumb over why isps were ever moved to title 2 for decades before 2015 we had a free and open internet indeed the free and open internet developed and flourished under light touch regulation we weren't living in some digital dystopia before the partisan imposition of a massive plan hatched in Washington saved all of us now that is true 2015 was not a digital dystopia for anyone with the possible exception of pizza rat because think about it the internet put that rat through hell one cheap day in three months of eating paleo and she never here's the end of it oh that's right I said she # greasy filth monster # feminism but but Pi's Pi's larger argument there is deeply disingenuous because he has to know that Verizon his ex-employer won a lawsuit that meant if the FCC wanted strong enforceable protection its only real option was to reclassify the isps and yet he cheerily insists under questioning that there is just no evidence the cable companies were engaging in rampant wrongdoing let's just say Comcast created a new TV series and it just so happened that that competed with a Netflix series very similarly if these rules go away how is the how was there not an incredible incentive for Comcast to slow Netflix down coming into my house and make their video the Comcast video very robust so under that hypothetical one of the things that's important to remember is that it is a hypothetical that we don't see evidence of that happening in the marketplace on a widespread level but here's the thing there are multiple examples of ISP over the years for instance a few years back Verizon AT&T and T-Mobile at one point shut out Google wallets from their phones a product that coincidentally happened to compete with their own mobile payment app an app incidentally that had a significant flaw it's a little subtle uh but see if you can spot it following in the footsteps of PayPal and Google Wallet is a virtual Mobile Wallet app called Isis that is incredible it if only because it means that at some point someone's mom probably sent a text along the lines of how do I make a payment to Isis love Mom P.S let me know about Passover and and incidentally when people complained that they couldn't use Google Wallet T-Mobile sent out tweets and this is true like we're supporting Isis we're really loving Isis and we have chosen to work with ISIS and hope to roll that out to everyone very soon and yet despite T-Mobile's vocal support for Isis which is all you should ever think about now whenever you hear the word T-Mobile or Isis for that matter they're essentially the same thing P's main argument is that we don't need Title 2 to have net neutrality but some of his ideas for what to have instead are almost laughably LAX for instance he reportedly floated just having isps voluntarily agree not to obstruct or slow consumer access to web content by putting that promise in their terms of service you know the things that no human being has ever read and that can change whenever companies want them to that idea would basically make net neutrality as binding as a proposal on The Bachelor Vanessa I have determined you to be marginally better for my brand than Karin but I reserve the right to change this agreement in the future should ABC ever offer me a slot on pile Island and and and P's other big argument to remove isps from title 2 is that it places too great a regulatory burden on companies and that it's already caused them to scale back their investment in Broad ban networks the economics are simple here the more heavily you regulate something the less of it you're going to get so what happened after the FCC imposed title 2 sure enough infrastructure investment declined okay so what is essentially suggesting there is that as soon as title 2 came in companies said it investing in infrastructure is way too difficult now we're not doing it anymore in fact pull some of the cable out of the ground we're going back to the telegraph but but it is worth noting infrastructure investment is harder to measure than you may think and Pi's numbers are in dispute in fact several companies have gone on the record saying their business has largely been unaffected by title 2 and maybe the best way to gauge title 2's impact is to listen to what cable companies told their own investors to whom they are legally obligated to tell the truth so here is what Verizon told its investors in 2014 about what the switch to title 2 would mean for them I mean to be real clear I mean this does not this does not influence uh the way we invest I mean we're going to continue invest in our networks and our platforms both in Wireless and and Wireline FiOS and and where we need to so so um nothing will influence that oh okay so that doesn't really sound like net neutrality was jeopardizing investment at all although to be fair that was a phone call and it was Verizon so it's entirely possible that every other word was dropped the the fact is the fact is title 2 is the most solid Legal Foundation we have right now for a strong enforceable net neutrality protections so so Pi saying let's have an open internet without it it's like me saying hey how about you have a gallon of coffee without your stupid mug just pour it into your hands and trust that you won't get burnt oh and and Mr chairman I know that you're probably thinking well you're only making fun of my mug because you're jealous of it to which to which I would say why would I be jealous your Mug's not that big you want to know what I'm drinking I'm drinking the blood of smaller mugs cheers now now the isps the isps will tell you that net neutrality could be protected by an act of Congress but I do not particularly trust this or any Congress to get something as complicated as this right and I definitely wouldn't want the current president involved as and this will not surprise you he doesn't seem to have any idea what any of this is Trump once tweeted back in 2014 Obama's attack on the Internet is another top- down power grab net neutrality is the fairness Doctrine will Target conservative media but that's the exact opposite of what it did Trump could not have been more off base if he tweeted net neutrality is the Monroe Doctrine will Target the wuang clown so sadly it seems once more we the people must take this matter into our own hands uh cuz the FCC are again going to invite public comment on their website and conveniently for them the process is actually a lot more complicated this time than it was three years ago you have to go to uh fcc.gov lowercase ecfs search- proceedings then when you get to this page put in the proceeding number which is 17-18 then hit search and on the next page restoring internet Freedom should be the only result you see then click on the link that says express and then and only then can you leave your comment and if you're thinking well look that's just too complicated I'm not doing it don't worry cuz that's why we bought the URL G fccy yourself.com and if you simply go there it will land you straight on this page where all you have to do is hit Express and comment telling Adent P that you specifically support Strong net neutrality backed by title 2 oversight of isps and every internet group group needs to come together like you successfully did three years ago every subculture must join as one Gamers YouTube celebrities Instagram models Tom from Myspace if you're still alive we need all of you even and I cannot believe I'm saying this Donald Trump's internet fans on sites like 4chan and Reddit the most powerful online trolls of all this subject is one of the few things that we actually really agree on so simply Express yourselves and harness the rage that you normally reserve for me the raise that you used when you said I'm genuinely one of the most visually and intellectually repulsive people I've ever seen with oddly long thumbs batchet crazy eyes and a mouth that looks like a cemetery after an earthquake that's pretty good that's pretty good the point is everyone needs to get involved comment now and then maybe comment again once the FCC makes its proposal official even call your representative and your senators and do not tell me that you don't have time to do this if the internet is evidence of nothing else it is evidence that we all have way too much time on our hands and yes I'm talking to you everyone who posted May the fourth be with you for Star Wars day this and every year and I'm talking to you everyone who posted on Facebook about 10 concerts you've seen and one you didn't and to you everyone who did it ironically and added a clever joke twist because and this is important you are exactly as bad because you cannot say that you are too busy when 540,000 of you commented on Beyonce's pregnancy announcements and 673 of you took the time to review the grant Canyon on Yelp seven of whom gave it a OnStar review what the is wrong with you and I'm specifically looking at you person on Amazon who gave the Wolf of Wall Street one star because and I quote there were no wolves in the movie and to you the 31 people who took the time to say they found that review helpful and finally I'm looking at the frankly surprising number of people who for some reason keep tweeting choke me Daddy at the pope you are you're wasting your time he's not going to choke you the Optics would be very bad so come on I am calling upon all of you the internets time wasters and troublemakers to join me once more in just 5 to 10 minutes of minor effort I need you to do this once more unto the breach my friends simply go to this URL and tell the FCC to preserve net neutrality and title 2 once again commenters America needs you to rise or more accurately remain seated in front of your computer screen to this occasion so please fly my pretties fly once more Fly [Applause] Away

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 8,711,872

Keywords: net neutrality, last week tonight net neutrality, john oliver net neutrality, ajit pai, john oliver agit pai, fcc, john oliver fcc, ajit pai fcc

Id: 92vuuZt7wak

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Mon May 08 2017