 Today history is being made by a majority of this commission. As we vote for a fast, fair, and open internet. So today was a big day. We saw Title II as the new authority for an open internet. Municipal broadband cannot be banned by local legislatures. And the FCC has really great taste in funk music. Today was pretty incredible. We got to watch the FCC debate its new rules for the open internet. And I cleaned out my entire email inbox during the two lengthy and very detailed tirades given by the Republican members. Yeah, they knew they had no chance here. It was already decided. And so they really took their time in explaining why they did not like Nitin's value. But that was fine because the rest of the commission gave much briefer speeches. Kind of outlining the reasons that we've heard over the past year about how important net neutrality is to protecting economic opportunities and diversity of voices on the internet. Yeah, it felt to me like the breakup talk. You know, if you know it's coming but you want to make sure you have your say. They really just needed to get it off their chest and then Tom Wheeler could not stop banging that gavel. Yeah, no, there was a lot of excitement when he finally said the eyes have it and the rules were in place. The room broke into applause, which probably doesn't happen all that often at FCC meetings. Yeah, it was a funky start and a really great finish, I thought. The rules that they proposed earlier this month are now official. They're going to go in place. Establishes some really important net neutrality rules, a lot of what advocates have been pushing for. You've got internet providers who are not allowed to block websites or apps or services. They're not allowed to throttle any of those either and there's no paid fast lanes. The boogeyman of this internet where the ISPs are controlling what you see or what arrives at your home. Is it better to access? Is it easier to access? Is it faster to access? Is it now off the table? We didn't have that to a huge extent right now, but there were signs of companies doing this stuff and this is going to prevent any of that from happening in a major way. The Federal Communications Commission now has the tools it needs to prevent companies from doing those things when or should they try to do them. Right. So the Democrats talked about this in terms of the internet has been this great economic engine. We invented it. It's like a point of pride and we're going to protect it. And the Republicans basically said the opposite. Yeah, the Republicans said this is government overreach, etc. etc. New taxes. Yeah, this is going to go awful for the internet, for consumers. You can pretty much guess what they said. And the reality is the FCC has done its part. Now the ISPs are probably going to get them back in court. They'll file some lawsuits just like we saw before with Comcast and AT&T. And Congress is also going to start working on its own sort of update to the Telecommunications Act, kind of put themselves into play. Yeah, so those are the expectations. The FCC definitely is going to have a big court issue ahead of itself once one provider or another challenges these rules. There are a lot of different issues that they have to bring up and some of their arguments seem better than others. We'll definitely have to wait and see how those pan out. To me, the chances look pretty good for the Communications Commission, but I'm also not a legal expert. Disclaimer, neither of us is a lawyer. So there's been a lot of posturing from Congress that this is actually Obama's plan, not the FCC's plan. That he kind of big-footed them by going out in public and saying how he thought that they should vote. And so now they would like to insert themselves into this process. If they feel the FCC has been compromised, Congress will step up to the plate and write some new, more modern telecommunications laws that will govern how broadband providers can and can't act. Right, and the problem potentially is that a Republican legislation might give the FCC less ability to actually do its job and enforce rules that promote an open broadband network. But again, we still have to see how that plays out. Now that there are rules in place, or that there are going to rules in place, the issue may be less of a hot topic. Another thing that happened today, which was kind of a subset of the big picture, was municipal broadband. So the FCC decided that small cities and towns that would like to build their own fiber can. And this has been an issue in some states. Local government has basically passed laws restricting them from competing with private enterprise. And so I believe that for now this only takes effect in the two cities or the two municipalities that had petitioned the FCC to preempt the state laws that are preventing them. But this is a big deal, and this is going to really start to help with the issue of competition. And that is the other big battle with the internet right now. There's no competition among wired internet providers, and wireless internet providers are not exactly an alternative. That's generically more expensive in most cases. Right, it's incredible because we've seen these small towns and places providing gigabit service to their citizens, and that is at the very high end of what's being offered in the supposedly competitive broadband space. Right, and so now we see the FCC saying, cities and towns should be able to do this. This is going to help broadband deployment. This is going to help people get better access. There's no reason that they shouldn't be able to do this. Right, I mean the crazy thing to me about the whole discussion around what the FCC is doing is, we were trying to ward off this boogeyman that people could start blocking or throttling services. But that hasn't really been happening. It's not a widespread problem, it's a potential problem. And now the shoe is kind of on the other foot. The FCC has weighed in with its new rules, and Republicans are saying the sky is falling, there'll be new taxes and businesses will shut down. So we're going to wait and see if that boogeyman happens. That's absolutely true, and it seems like a slightly absurd proposal that suddenly some new commissioner is going to come into the FCC and go totally crazy and just absolutely ruin internet providers. But he has that power, or she has that power. It is true. They may well be able to, but again, that is the new spook that everybody is worrying about. Okay, so six months from now we'll check back in. Will we have to pay internet taxes? Where do I pay my internet taxes? Is the internet dead in the water? Exactly. Six months from now the new rules are going to be in place, and probably everything is going to be exactly the same, except there's going to be a court challenge. Okay, status quo. Thanks government.