 We have the man who coined the term net neutrality here. Please welcome Tim Wu. Watch your step. Watch your step over there. I have to say I realize now after having three guests, the most guests we've ever had on the show by the way, that we have a lot of obstacles to getting onto the couch. Well that's what it means to be fancy. Just you gotta put up, you gotta make the barrier to entry very high. Tim, thank you for coming. Tim is the author of a book called The Master Switch. It looks like this. It's available in stores around the world and was by the way apparently very hard to find. We had some of our people go looking for copies of this and you might want to call Barnes and Noble. Yeah Barnes and Noble is my internet. It's almost like they don't want it to be sold. They don't want to hear the truth of this book. But you coined the term net neutrality. What does it mean? These people, people on the street don't know what it is. You know I was watching that video and I was thinking you got a lot of taxis in this video and it's exactly the principle that applies when you get in a taxi cab. The taxi cab has to take you where you want to go. You know imagine you get in the taxi cab, this actually happens in some countries and you say I want to go to Brooklyn and you end up in the gift store. Yeah, yeah. After this country, when I want to go home from Manhattan, I'm like I want to go to Brooklyn. They're like no I don't go to Brooklyn. Well there's that problem too. But essentially it's the idea that the taxi is supposed to take you where you want to go and the basic principle is the internet was built on the principle that the carriers take your data where you want it to go and that people are allowed to communicate over the internet without interference by the people in the middle. It's a pretty profound principle and the fact that people don't know about it is you know on the street doesn't mean it's not important because I think some of the most important principles are just sometimes very subtle. They operate at this sort of subterranean level. Like E equals MC square. That's not a good example. People on the street don't need to know what that means. I think it's a… Does anybody need to know? I don't think it's that important. Well we can debate about that but a lot of these things, you know freedom is a kind of a thing that you can't really experience. You just experience its absence. You know when you're not free but you don't notice when you're able to go to internet sites when you want to or say what you want to. Because you just live in life. Because you just live in and you're just doing what you want. It's when you aren't able to do that that suddenly you notice it. And I think that's why this is a profound principle. It was baked into the original design of the internet. It's what made the internet so revolutionary in so many ways. I mean what made all these companies able to grow without asking somebody for permission. The companies like Google, eBay, Amazon, whatever. They just started their businesses. They didn't sort of have to say you know AT&T or Verizon I've got a good idea. Do you want to run my service? Because they would have been like well you know we'll check it out, wait for five years, ten years and see what happens. I mean it's a very profound thing that as I said before you don't notice freedom you notice its absence. And whose job is it to ensure net neutrality? Is it the government's job? Is it Verizon's job? Is it a citizen's job? I think it's kind of everybody's. Damn it I knew you were going to say that. I knew I was going to say that but I'll tell you that in a functioning system it's never completely possible to allocate a responsibility to you know one entity. When you talk about something like how do you guarantee freedom of speech? Well you could say well you just have to have the government do that. But you know the government, I work for the government sometimes they're lazy, not everything gets to them, they're not all powerful. But the government does, but the government did do a lot of stuff to guarantee free speech. They do, they also try and mess with it so they're not completely reliable. No one's totally reliable. I'm going to sound a little paranoid although I'm sure you have people. But in terms of free speech, but you have to admit like the US government has done a relatively good job of saying like we've got, we need to have free speech and we're going to push that on our citizens. We're going to say like you can't just limit what somebody has to say. The courts have said that. The executive branch now and then is like maybe we don't want so much free speech. Maybe we'd like the New York Times to say that there's weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or something. You know what I mean? That's not freedom of speech, that's manipulation of the press. Well that's true. I'll just say that the federal, the executive branch hasn't been exactly reliable. To hell with the executive branch, I agree. You know they have their moments. But the laws exist, sorry, not to get off track, but they are, but we have said, not through legislation, but we've said we've got some basic rules here that we believe in. One of those rules is free speech and people have fought on both sides of it, but we have kind of pushed this agenda of free speech is valuable and we need to protect it. There has not been a similar, there has not been a similar fight for the internet. That's right. Nobody has said the free internet, the open internet is important and we need to protect it. What they have said is with like things like SOPA, fuck the free internet. We want to protect, we want to make sure we have money. And you've got people who are backed by lobbyists pushing laws that will ultimately diminish the openness of the internet. You're not a SOPA fan, are you? How would that be possible? I don't know. You tell me. I like soap, I don't like soap. You're a soap fan, that's great. But I mean, so what do we do? What's the obstacle here? How do we combat? I mean, it feels like we've got Verizon and AT&T largely controlling the pipes. There's a few other players in there, but not that many. And they are dictating in many ways what happens on the internet or what happens with the internet. You obviously have forces, you've got forces from places like Hollywood, which you talk about in your book and you've talked about elsewhere. I ran into some Hollywood forces recently that were very psyched on the idea that, you know, that it's like Verizon and AT&T's responsibility to block things. That's a fairly scary concept. What are we supposed to do? How do we fix this? You need two things. You need a norm and you need a law. So first of all, it has to be a principle that internet freedom is sacred and fundamentally important to a civilized nation. It has to be understood at the level of free speech, just like we've talked about. So you equate net neutrality with free speech? Yeah, I think it's sort of the flip side of it. I mean, free speech is I can say whatever I want. Net neutrality is I get to connect with whoever I want. You know, unless there's a really strong reason not to. Free speech is an absolute, net neutrality is an absolute, but as a general rule, I get to connect with whoever I want. Well, I mean, what are those reasons? How do we pick them? How do we decide? Well, that's another story. And, you know, there's obvious examples in free speech. You have principles like it might send a very serious message to assassinate the president, but that doesn't mean it should be legal, right? It obviously needs to be prevented. Similarly, with net neutrality, you can think of I think very narrow categories, but certain reasons that it might be reasonable to influence what people can connect to. But they're rare. They're sort of like interfering with terrorist efforts to sort of attack the United States or other countries. Things like this. Child pornography? Child pornography is probably another exception. What about pirated movies? No. I mean, because one man's pirated movie, you know, one man's pirated movie is another man's innovation. What is exactly a pirated movie is often not exactly clear. And you know, you say it as if we know what a pirated movie is, and sometimes you do. But the copyright law is so unclear that sometimes it's not legal, it's sometimes legal. And the other issue I have with pirated movies is that fundamentally I don't think it's important to pass laws to protect an industry that is in decline. And that, you know, I think we go in a dangerous direction when we have an industry which is essentially in decline and, you know, has been in decline for some time to try to use all the powers of government to try to save them. Right. This has been an issue since the 16th century is every time an industry is dying it says I'm threatened by piracy. Can you give us some examples? The booksellers in the 16th, I can give you a million examples. My book is full of them. Again, the Master Switch by Tim Wu, available in paperback, $15.95, very affordable, available in e-book form I would imagine. Yeah, it's ten, I think it's about $9 on Amazon. Nine dollars on Amazon where they're taking a cut of the profits, but hopefully not too big. No, I think Amazon's good, yeah, but go ahead. But so, no, so you have examples. So you've got... I have tons of examples. So if you look as early as in the 1920s, for example, at that point sheep music was the dominant industry for distributing music. And they said, sheep music. Oh, sheep. Sheep music. I thought you said, did anybody else think you said sheep music? I thought like the animal. I don't remember that. That's reasonable. I've never heard of that. Sorry, go on. No, but I mean the way you made music in the 19th century, it was actually nice as you bought music and then you took it home and played it. But that was like, that was the recording industry in the day. They were the dominant way of distributing music. Along came the record player. And the sheet music was suffering because people were listening to records, usually playing yourself. Yes. So what did they say? They said the recording industry are a bunch of pirates who are destroying American culture. They're just taking the sheet music, recording what's on it, and then selling it. Exactly. And they're like, these guys are destroying America because, you know, America used to be a place where people would sing and dance and now, you know, people are listening to these crazy phonographs and player pianos and we've lost our culture and it's a disaster. Musicians are out of work. Everyone's out of work. Yeah. You see the hair of the same thing every 20 years. I mean that is what the entertainment industry is saying. I mean, Ari Emanuel said, you can't make Curb Your Enthusiasm in any other way than to have this big industry behind it and if you don't have the $3 million per episode. There's a hundred, maybe 500 year old tradition of making starving artists the kind of symbol of what is really an industry that's dying, that's being replaced by different technology. Right. The same thing happened when cable came out. People were like, cable? And I don't love cable, but when it came out as a new industry and they said these cable guys are a bunch of pirates. All they want to do is loot Hollywood, loot TV. The same thing is said every single time. Is this a bit, you become what you despise because I feel like you've got the cable guys who are like, hey, we're innovators and now they're the old guard and you've got internet television, sort of this whole IP revolution. And the cable guys are going like, we've got to do something about this. Everyone becomes what they despise. Didn't you know that? Oh really? I'm going to become something terrible in that case. Just absolutely terrible. So obviously very complex. A lot to talk about here. We're not going to get to all of it tonight. But how are we doing? We've got Verizon, as I was saying earlier, they've got this monopoly. How do we regulate these guys? They own the pipes, they build the pipes. There doesn't seem to be a ton of regulation. There's a fear with government regulation that you're going to end up down this rabbit hole of, it's going to be like Brazil and nothing will ever get innovated on. How do you strike a balance? How do you do this? I think you have to have just very simple rules, net neutrality rules that say you must allow people to connect with who they want to connect with. It's exactly what I said before. They have to be regulated basically like New York taxicabs. And I know New York taxicabs don't always obey the rules. But the basic rule when you get in a taxicab is it goes where you want to go, not where they want to go. And as long as they understand that position, I think it's relatively straightforward. So that is difficult because as you pointed out, there is a growth, a return of the power of the telephone and cable monopoly. For most of the history of the United States, we had one company, AT&T, running the show. And things have a way, like the Terminator robot, of kind of going back to the way they were. And we have to be very careful to see that our phone companies, Ryzen, AT&T, Comcast, I guess their cable company, don't end up being essentially the gatekeepers of the internet. That's extremely important. So what do you say to people here? What's the best thing you can do? What is the best thing you can do to help promote? I think the best thing you can do is complain or get angry. Yes. When? No problem. We got Reddit for that. Reddit helps. You just need to be not willing to accept it when your cable company or your phone company says we're going to decide what the internet is. You have to take possession of this thing and say it is our network. I mean, some of the people on there were like, who owns the internet? People own the internet. And that's actually true. Right. It was not designed to be owned by anyone. But I mean, phone companies. But for all intents and purposes, Verizon owns the internet. Oh, that's not true at all. I mean, you can't, I can't just go get on the internet. I have to go through something. You have to go. I have to go through something that somebody else owns. Look, you have to take a taxi to go to Brooklyn. Doesn't mean the taxi owns Brooklyn. But I could also buy, but I could buy a car. You got to go through the Brooklyn Bridge to get there. And I could drive. And I could drive that road as anybody can drive on. By the way, this is a metaphor that apparently people who like so have a hate. But I mean, you can. But I can go buy a car and drive myself to Brooklyn. You can't drive yourself to the internet. To get to Brooklyn, you got to pass either the Brooklyn Bridge or the Manhattanville Bridge. Williamsburg, yeah. Those guys at Williamsburg, they don't own Brooklyn. You know, you got to go through them. If they had a policy like, oh, we're only going to let so and so through, that would change who could get there. Doesn't mean they own Brooklyn. And it's very important not to confuse a gatekeeper with an owner. Right. They're completely different people. Someone has a toll booth does not mean they own the thing. But the gatekeeper has a lot of power. They have a lot of power. Has almost as much power as the owner. They have a lot of power. Yeah. And that's why since basically medieval times, there's been a series of laws designed to guard the gatekeepers. So you think violent revolution is the only way to solve this. Maybe I'm paraphrasing. All right, we have to wrap up. But you're working on a new book. Can you just tell me quickly about your new book? You know, I'm interested basically in what technology should do next. I think we're starting to solve some of the problems of scarcity that have obsessed humanity for 500 years or so. And I think we're starting to get this question of what do we do now, now that we have a lot of things, enough food, enough information. What's next? That's my next book. I think Huge Party is going to be the answer. Tim, thank you so much. Great. Really awesome. Tim Wu, everyone. Again, the master switch in bookstores now. Thank you. And, finally, Juhle.