 Okay, I'm looking at the homepage of The Verge right now and it says we won the internet back. So, TLDR, the FCC decided not to mess up the internet for future generations. It's safe from the evil internet service providers. Yeah, which is pretty huge news. Huge. I mean, last year the net neutrality rules were struck down. Right. The FCC decided to propose new ones, which everybody thought were awful and would destroy the internet. And now here we are, basically a year later, and it looks like things are going to be in good shape. It's a classic comeback story. So for the past year, the Federal Communications Commission has been trying to implement new rules to protect net neutrality, which is the principle that all data on the internet, no matter who it's going to or where it's coming from, should be treated equally. Right. Can't slow it down just because it's a website you don't like. Exactly. Which is great. Because it's going to be protected, or at least advocates of net neutrality, which is mostly everybody aside from the big internet providers. Right. And so the old net neutrality rules were struck down in court because they didn't have solid legal footing. And so for the past year, the FCC has been trying to figure out what the right legal footing is. And today it's come forward and it said it's going to use Title II to enforce these strong net neutrality rules. And that's exactly what net neutrality advocates have wanted them to do. And so this is an idea about not allowing slow and fast lanes on the internet? So there are going to be three big rules here as far as net neutrality protections. And those three rules are that internet providers aren't going to be able to block any websites or data or services. As long as they're legal, you'll be able to get them. They're not going to be able to throttle any websites or data or services. And they're not going to allow paid fast lanes. So no company is going to be able to pay their way to make sure that their stuff goes faster while some other website, some small guy gets slower. So Title II is something that the FCC has been using for a long time to regulate telephone networks. It's well established and it's pretty much something that covers all communications. And when the internet arrived, they made a distinction between a telephone network and an information service provider, an ISP, which is what a lot of people will call the telephone company or cable company that's giving you the internet. And they said that they weren't providing sort of this transit, this communication service. They were an information service. And so they'd be regulated differently. Title II would basically bring them back in-house for the FCC to regulate the same way they have done for the telephone companies for decades. So that's why people think it's stronger legal footing for them to stand on in court. We don't know yet if that's going to be true. A lot of advocates think that Title II is great, but AT&T and the other, you know, beginner fighters, they think there's a lot of holes in FCC's argument. Yeah, I mean, they've said, well, if you're going to regulate us, you know, like you do telephone carriers, then are you going to regulate Facebook and Skype and, you know, any company that basically is communication over the internet? And I think one of the things the FCC made clear was that they are going to treat the network operators like a utility, but not the application layer. So they won't try and regulate, you know, your Facebook chat just because it's a communication that's happening online. That doesn't mean it falls under Title II for them. And the really big deal here is that for the first time, the FCC is going to put mobile internet under Title II as well. Right. So previously, mobile internet had just a few net neutrality protections, but it basically still gave, you know, wireless carriers like AT&T the ability to block and throttle to really, to some extent. Right. Yeah, I mean, I feel like we've written a bunch of articles about services when it comes to mobile where you're getting throttled by the company even though you're paying for unlimited data. And I know that that's actually gone not just to the FCC, but to the FTC. So... And the FCC actually specifically calls that out. That's something that won't be allowed. They won't be able to throttle just because you're on unlimited data. And like you're saying, you know, we probably won't see instances where for some reason the FaceTime app is blocked because the carrier is worried about it. Right. And the flip side of that is, you know, companies like T-Mobile were trying to entice customers in by saying, oh, if you sign up with us, you'll get free music and none of that music will count against your data cap. Right. So that's been really controversial. And it sounds like that's probably not going to fly under these new rules, which is probably a good thing. I mean, T-Mobile is basically choosing which services are going to win. If Spotify, you don't have to pay for the data, you're going to use Spotify and you're not going to use whatever little company you do have to pay for data use for. Right. Yeah, I mean, that's always been sort of the startup argument is that if you want innovation, if you want more, you know, great new companies, you want the next Facebook to happen, you can't give this benefit to the incumbents by saying, oh, there's no data charge. Increasingly we'll be paying for things, you know, by the gigabyte. And so people will be sort of prioritized to use whatever's free. Exactly. So FCC's new rules are still a little bit vague around this, around what will fly and what won't fly. It's said that, you know, it's happy to have companies go up to it and say, hey, is this going to be okay? But as far as something like sponsored data goes, it has said explicitly that's definitely not going to be okay. And so I think we probably are going to see a lot less of services like that. And then, you know, I think another thing that was kind of interesting we saw today was that all the stock prices for these cable and telephone companies went up. You would expect it to be the opposite. It feels like the proposal was what net neutrality advocates asked for and the opposite of what these guys were asking for. Right. And the cable companies for ever basically have been saying that Title II or really strong net neutrality rules are going to hamper innovation, they're going to hamper investment. And it seems like that's probably a bluff. Well, yeah, I mean, the market certainly thinks so. I think the big thing that we saw was the ISPs are getting pulled into Title II, which is often referred to, we say, oh, hey, we're making the Internet a utility. We're going to treat it like the telephone companies, you know, which is a utility closely monitored by the government. But the FCC was very clear to say, we're not going to be regulating any rates, meaning Comcast or Verizon or AT&T, whoever provides the broadband to your home can still charge you whatever they want and could charge you for a certain amount per gigabyte. And so I think investors feel like that's really the future of their business as we consume more and more data online, we'll end up paying for that data, not getting some unlimited plan. And if they can charge what they want, you know, that means it'll be a much healthier business. Right. And FCC has been like very clear about, you know, it's utility like, but they're not strictly utilities in the classic sense. There's not going to be extra taxes or tariffs. And like you said, they're not going to be regulating the rates, which is a big deal for, it basically keeps things as it has been. Right. I mean, the balance that Tom Wheeler had to strike was how do we make sure none of these sort of boogeymen of the worst, you know, dystopian Internet where it's controlled by a few companies happens. And he also had to make sure that he didn't, you know, in some way really cripple these companies or their ability to, you know, innovate or invest in the future. You know, and we'll see, you know, it's probably going to end up in court. It seems like with the proposal, if the telco stocks went up and the net neutrality advocates are cheering, you know, he kind of hit that balance. And I know a lot of them were threatening that they would stop or halt investments. I think it was AT&T actually said it was going to halt some gigabit investment until it found out what the new rules were. But Sprint, I think like a month ago, actually filed with FCC and said, well, if you do title two and you do it lightly, it's probably going to be fine. There'll still be investment. And so, you know, there's a wireless provider saying exactly what, you know, everybody expects is true. Yeah. I mean, Verizon said in their sort of public policy statements, if you guys use title two, it'll really hurt us. But when they're talking to their investors behind closed doors, they say, well, title two, it's actually not going to hurt us, you know? So there's a lot of, you know, sort of posturing to try and get a win on Capitol Hill, to try and get the policies they want implemented. In the end, it may not make a big difference, you know, the internet will keep growing and these businesses will continue to exist. So despite all that, we're still pretty certain that one internet provider or another is going to bring these new rules to court. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I read a bunch of blog posts from AT&T and Verizon and they were basically saying, these are the ways you could avoid going to court, you know? Dear FCC, like if you don't want to end up back in court, why don't you try this? And Tom Wheeler kind of threw that in their face. I mean, I think he went with a really strong proposal. He emphasized title two, which is what they had all asked him not to do. And he followed the lead of President Obama. So the net neutrality advocates I've spoken to think title two is a way stronger case for them to present than what they did last time. And I expect, yeah, over the next year, they'll be in court quite regularly. Yeah, no, you're right. And those blog posts very much read like threats to me. And the FCC, in what it said today, we still haven't seen the full proposal, but what it said today, it's tried to make it abundantly clear that it feels it is on extremely strong legal grounds. Though title two is the big story here, it's pulling from a handful of other areas in order to say, we have the authority to impose these rules. We have the authority to reclassify you. And the FCC has more success with classification than applying rules under wonky legal arrangements. Right. I mean, the interesting thing about today is also that for a lot of people, it feels like a big moral victory. We put up a post on the site, like we won back the internet. And I know John Oliver had a couple of shows this year about this. It's such a bizarre, arcane topic, and yet people get really fired up about it. It's true. It's a huge deal. The FCC wouldn't exactly say that it was John Oliver, but John Oliver basically crashed their website and brought a ton of new attention to the topic. I mean, Tom Wheeler knows that he's been called a dingo by John Oliver, which is pretty crazy. And President Obama definitely seems to have a pretty huge effect, especially all of the continued outpouring of support for title two afterward. Right. And like you said, it definitely feels like the huge net neutrality victory that advocates have been waiting for for a year, if not longer. Right. I mean, there are sort of large global bodies that consider the internet a human right. And by saying it's a utility, we're kind of moving it towards that. It's not something that's offered to you by a business. It's something that the government is heavily invested in and which every citizen has a right to and will be protected and enshrined in certain ways. And the funny thing is, even these rules aren't going to dramatically change anything in the short term. This basically is just saying that the internet's progression as it's been moving forward is going to continue as we've known it. We were asking them not to mess things up. Exactly. And these rules, hopefully, are going to not mess things up.