[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 59 (Wednesday, May 4, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2665-S2667]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Net Neutrality

  Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I rise today to talk about the effort 
of the House last month to repeal the Federal Communications 
Commission's net neutrality rules. Net neutrality is the very simple 
idea that all content and applications on the Internet should be 
treated the same regardless of who owns the content or the Web site. 
This is not a radical concept, in large part because it is what we see 
and experience every time we use the Internet. But the House wants to 
change all of that and effectively turn control of the Internet over to 
a handful of very powerful corporations.
  I want to take a few moments today to tell you why I think the 
House's vote was a mistake, and why I am going to do everything in my 
power to make sure we don't make the same mistake in the Senate. But 
before I get into those details, I think it is important to take a step 
back and talk about the Internet we have today.
  Let's be clear. The Internet we have exists because it is free and 
open, because we have always had net neutrality throughout the entire 
existence of the Internet. I have to give credit to my opponents on 
this issue who have done a masterful job of manipulating the American 
public into believing that net neutrality is something that it is not.
  Net neutrality is not about a government takeover of the Internet. It 
is simply the idea that all content, whether it is a Web page, an e-
mail, or a movie we are downloading can load onto our computers at home 
at the same speed, regardless of who owns or controls that content.
  This is not a radical idea. It is what we experience today when we 
use the Internet. Right now, if we buy Rihanna's latest song from 
iTunes, it downloads as quickly as a song from a friend who started a 
band in his or her garage.
  If you send an e-mail to your mother, it arrives in her inbox just as 
quickly as the e-mail she gets from President Obama. If you start a Web 
site for your small business, your customers are able to access your 
Web site and place orders for your products just as quickly as if they 
were buying from a multinational corporation.
  I like to talk about YouTube's early days as a startup because it is 
such a

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powerful example of why net neutrality is so critical and how this 
simple concept helped create a billion-dollar company practically 
overnight. YouTube's early headquarters were situated in a tiny space 
above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Francisco, CA. But just 
6 months after the site was activated, over 100 million people were 
using YouTube to watch videos every day. Less than 2 years after it 
started, YouTube sold their business to Google for $1.6 billion. Isn't 
that incredible?
  Well, I am here to tell you it would not have been possible without 
net neutrality. At that time, Google had a competing product, Google 
Video, which was the standard at the time but was widely seen as 
inferior. If Google had been able to pay Comcast or Verizon or any of 
the others large amounts of money to make its Web site faster than 
YouTube's, YouTube would still be floundering over that pizzeria or 
most likely it would have ceased to exist at all. Fortunately, Google 
couldn't pay for priority access, and the rest is history.
  What I am saying is, we take, and have taken, this equality that 
YouTube enjoyed--this basic fairness or neutrality--for granted in 
large part because that is how the Internet has always been. 
Unfortunately, many Members of the House have twisted this concept and 
are misleading the American public into believing that the government 
wants to take over the Internet. That is simply not true.
  One Member of the House actually got up on the House floor and said 
this:

       Over the last 10 years, over $500 billion--billion with a 
     ``b''--of private investment has been made to develop 
     broadband throughout the country. This is without any kind of 
     taxpayer money.

  He is wrong on that point, but let's put that aside for now. He went 
on to say:

       This is private sector money being put into the marketplace 
     to go and create jobs, to go and create the kinds of 
     technologies that allow you to view and use all kinds of apps 
     that are available on these kinds of devices. That was done 
     without net neutrality. They would tell you that they need 
     net neutrality in order to have this innovation. Of course, 
     they fail to point out that net neutrality was not in place 
     when all this innovation happened.

  Yes, it was; it was in place. That is the whole point. All of this 
innovation occurred while net neutrality was in place. We are not 
trying to change anything. We are keeping the Internet the way it has 
been during this explosion in innovation.
  Now, my fervent hope is that this Member of Congress was just 
horribly, egregiously misinformed because not only is his statement 
untrue, it is the opposite of true. It is 180 degrees opposite of the 
truth.
  Please, everyone understand this, I beg you. Net neutrality has been 
in place since the beginning of the Internet.
  From the very beginning, during all of that explosive growth, the 
Internet operated with an understanding that network providers must 
treat all content the same and must interconnect the pipes they have to 
customers' homes with the pipes that are owned by other operators. This 
was a fundamental design principle that was established by academics, 
engineers, and computer scientists who designed the earliest protocols 
for Internet traffic.
  The fact is, the Internet started and grew because everyone realized 
they needed to cooperate and work together for customers to be able to 
have access to the content they wanted. They realized that is what 
consumers needed to create demand for Internet service, and they 
realized that is what would lead to the most innovation on the 
Internet.
  The FCC isn't trying to change that. It has no interest in derailing 
free enterprise. Quite the contrary. The FCC is interested in 
protecting the innovators and entrepreneurs who have made the Internet 
what it is today. Because of the Internet, you no longer need a major 
studio to like your film or a television show you produce in order to 
have people see it. You no longer need a major record deal to start 
distributing your music. You no longer need a high school diploma or a 
fancy degree to launch a small business and sell your products online. 
We don't want to change that. We want to preserve that.
  The FCC's only goal is to make sure the Internet we know and love 
does not become corrupted and altered by a small number of large 
corporations controlling the last free and open distribution channel we 
have in this country.
  As telecom companies have grown larger and fewer and started owning 
not just the pipes but also the content, their incentives have changed. 
They are starting to care more about giving their own content a 
competitive advantage rather than promoting innovation and competition 
on the Internet.
  The fight for net neutrality isn't about changing the Internet, it is 
about creating a few rules of the road to keep it open and free, to 
keep it the same, and to continue the innovation and growth that is 
such a creator of jobs and wealth.
  The fight for net neutrality is about making sure large corporations 
are not allowed to put tollbooths on the information superhighway. This 
fight is about making sure that the Internet stays the way it is--free, 
open, equal, available to everyone regardless of how much they can pay 
to get their content.
  There was a time not so long ago when net neutrality was a bipartisan 
issue that was not incredibly controversial. Three years ago, Mike 
Huckabee was talking about the need to keep the Internet a level 
playing field. In 2006, 11 House Republicans voted in favor of net 
neutrality on the floor. Rarely do you have the Gun Owners of America 
and the Christian Coalition joining with moveon.org and the ACLU to 
advocate for the same policy of nondiscrimination on the Internet. But 
they all agree on net neutrality. And so do the Catholic bishops.
  Later today, I will receive 87,000 letters opposing the House's 
effort to undo the FCC's open Internet rules. These letters came from 
Americans across the United States, including 2,000 letters from 
Minnesotans who are worried about this issue. They want the Internet to 
stay the way it is--open and free from corporate control.
  I am confident as more Americans realize what is at stake, we will 
hear from more and more constituents who will ask us to protect them 
from corporate takeover of the Internet.
  What is most striking about this issue, which seems to have gotten 
lost in the rhetoric that my opponents use, is that experts from Bank 
of America, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and 
Raymond James have all stated they do not believe the FCC's current 
rules will hurt investment. Citibank has called the rule ``balanced'' 
and Goldman Sachs said it is ``a framework with a lot of wiggle room'' 
that is a ``light touch'' by the FCC. Despite this broad and diverse 
coalition of businesses and interest groups, we are still arguing about 
something that should have been settled long ago.
  Why is that? A lot has changed in the last couple of years. Control 
of the Internet has been placed in the hands of a small number of 
players. Media consolidation has raised the stakes for certain mega 
conglomerates which have a lot more to gain in a world without net 
neutrality. I was last year on the Senate floor talking about net 
neutrality back in December when the NBC-Comcast merger had not yet 
been approved by the FCC or the Department of Justice. At the time, I 
warned this would be the first in a cascade of media consolidation 
deals. Wouldn't you know it, 2 months later, AT&T announced another 
record-breaking $39 billion deal with T-Mobile.
  That merger, which Wall Street applauded, is almost assuredly going 
to be a raw deal for consumers. If approved, we will have a duopoly in 
wireless telecommunications in this country. Eighty percent of the 
wireless space will be controlled by two companies--AT&T and Verizon.
  I look forward to the hearing next week in the Antitrust Subcommittee 
of the Judiciary Committee so we can further explore the details of 
this deal. But I think it is fair to say I am very skeptical because it 
is likely to raise prices and it certainly will reduce choice for 
consumers. I have always been skeptical of media consolidation because 
at the end of the day, when corporations have tremendous amounts of 
power to control prices and cripple competitors to benefit their bottom 
line, everyone loses.
  But the impact of media consolidation in telecommunications is about 
more than just consumer prices. We

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have always known that large corporations have the power to influence 
elections. Last year, the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United 
took a situation that was already terrible and made it worse--much 
worse. Now AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, and Comcast can spend unlimited 
amounts of money to support the candidate or campaign they care most 
about or try to weaken or kill net neutrality. It does not take a 
rocket scientist to realize that when a single corporation--in this 
case AT&T--spends $15.3 million in a single year to influence Congress 
and has 93 full-time lobbyists on its roster, Congress might churn out 
legislation that AT&T likes.
  How can American consumers, stuck with rising cable, Internet, and 
cell phone bills, ever be expected to counter that type of lobbying 
power?
  With media consolidation, we have seen a shift in the net neutrality 
talking points of Members of Congress who are also receiving large 
checks from Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast. Yet the irony here is that the 
open Internet rules passed by the FCC earlier this year are actually 
pretty weak and riddled with loopholes. Actually, I think that is the 
``wiggle room'' to which Goldman Sachs was referring.
  These rules are, let's be honest, a mediocre compromise drafted to 
appease a handful of powerful Internet service providers.
  I was not happy with these rules and thought the FCC should have done 
more, particularly to cover wireless Internet networks. But it did not. 
It did not in part because the Commission wanted companies such as AT&T 
to get on board with its plan, and AT&T did--more or less. AT&T did not 
think the rules were ideal, but it acknowledged the framework is a 
compromise that gives its investors certainty.
  That has not changed how the House is framing its rhetoric about this 
rule, which is one of the reasons I think the vote last month was a 
political stunt designed to misinform Americans and appease a small 
number of very vocal critics. This is not what most Americans, 
entrepreneurs, or small businesses want. They and I want a world where 
the future Twitters, eBays, and Amazons of the world can grow and 
thrive without interference from big, mega conglomerates.
  Finally, regardless of how one feels about the FCC's rules, I think 
we can all agree this issue requires thoughtful debate and discussion, 
not the kind of uninformed rhetoric I quoted earlier from the House 
debate. By forcing an up-or-down vote through the Congressional Review 
Act, the House leadership short circuited the normal legislative 
process and ignored the FCC's work on this issue.
  The FCC spent months examining this topic and meeting with tons of 
stakeholders and Internet companies. It carefully considered and 
compromised on a range of issues that I, frankly, wish they had not 
budged on. To claim that the FCC engaged in a power grab is unfair and 
far from the truth.
  The White House has said the President will veto this resolution, but 
I will be working hard in the coming months to make sure that we have 
enough votes to stop this before it reaches the President's desk.
  We are at a pivotal moment. If we do not act to preserve the FCC's 
open Internet rules, the Internet as we know it today may cease to 
exist. I hope my colleagues will recognize this and will join with me 
in voting down the House's resolution of disapproval.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.