Get ready: On Monday, the government's new net neutrality rules will be published in the Federal Register, opening the door to lawsuits from Internet providers looking to toss out the rules.

The Federal Register is the official record of government business. It's where new rules and regulations, like net neutrality, are published and made final.

Telecom regulators submitted the net neutrality rules to the Register last week. And on Friday, the Register put the document out on what's called "public inspection" — a step that takes place one business day before they're published.

Beginning Monday, then, opponents of the net neutrality rule will have a small window in which to file a legal challenge to the Federal Communications Commission. Industry groups are widely expected to lead the assault against the rules, which seek to prevent Internet providers from unfairly speeding up or slowing down certain favored Web sites over others. Individual providers such as Comcast and Verizon are expected to take more of a backseat role in the looming litigation.

The trade groups will likely argue that the FCC didn't adequately notify the public about certain provisions of the rules, in a violation of federal process. Analysts also say the agency will be challenged on some of the substance of the rules, which seek to reclassify Internet providers as telecommunications providers rather than a lightly regulated "information service."

One trade group and a small, Texas-based Internet provider have already tried to sue — but those challenges haven't gone very far, as the regulations in question haven't yet been made public. All that will change next week.

The Federal Communications Commission recently adopted strong net neutrality rules that should prevent cable and phone companies from creating fast and slow lanes on the Internet. But policy makers in other parts of the world, particularly in Europe and India, are considering very different kinds of rules that could hurt consumers and start-up Internet businesses.

Last month, the European Council, which is made up of the 28 national governments of European Union members, adopted a proposal that would allow telecommunications companies to charge Internet businesses like Netflix and Google fees to deliver their videos and other content to users faster than could smaller companies that cannot afford to pay for preferential treatment.

In India, the country’s telecommunications regulator asked for commentson whether it should adopt a provision similar to what Europe is considering. The regulator also asked if telecom companies should be able to charge users extra fees for services like YouTube, WhatsApp and Skype on top of the fees people already pay for access to the Internet.

These proposals would hurt consumers because access to some services would cost more money. They would also hurt smaller Internet businesses that could not afford to pay fees to get preferential access. By contrast, the F.C.C. adopted rules in February that prohibits deals for better delivery and also forbids telecom companies from blocking or slowing down content.

In Europe and India, proponents of weak net neutrality rules appear to have bought into the misguided notion that higher charges are necessary to keep telecommunications companies in business and, further, that the companies have a right to impose them. The idea goes something like this: Internet companies like Google and Facebook are making lots of money because cable and phone companies have built networks that give people access to their services. Therefore, Internet-based businesses should help pay the costs of creating, maintaining and upgrading networks.

This is a disingenuous argument. Telecom companies make money by charging individuals and businesses monthly fees for access to the network. If that revenue was inadequate to cover the cost of running networks, telecom companies would raise prices or they would become insolvent. If anything, prices have fallen as it has become cheaper to provide service. Big telecom companies like Vodafone, which does business in Europe and India, are in fact quite profitable.

There is resistance to the proposals in Europe and India, some of it from official sources. The European Parliament, for example, voted last year for legislation similar to the F.C.C. rules. Neither the rules adopted by Parliament nor the Council’s proposal can take effect until the Parliament, the Council and the European Commission, the executive branch of the E.U., work out a compromise.

In India, with the comment period underway, Internet activists have organized a campaign against the regulator’s proposal and appear to be having some impact. The minister of communications and information technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, recently said on Twitter that the government would study the issue closely before adopting final rules, noting that the Internet belonged to all of “humanity and not to a few.”

One of the main reasons the Internet has been so successful is that people have generally been able to use it how they wish. The worst thing policy makers could do to the network would be to allow telecom companies to mess with that.

Srini Gopal: Airtel Zero is free for each and every customer and offers the same speed to all. Further, it charges the same amount to each company for data without any discrimination.

It’s been a few days since the launch of Airtel Zero, an open marketing platform that will allow customers to access mobile applications “free of cost”. We are seeing a big and somewhat unrelated debate on net neutrality with regards to the product. While opinions from critics of the product are welcome, it is pertinent that we look at some key facts relating to Airtel Zero and the benefits it brings to customers and industry alike.

First and most important, Airtel Zero is “free” for all our consumers and open to all marketers—big or small. Since we announced Airtel Zero on April 6, over 150 start-ups—majority being small start-ups—have contacted to inquire about the product. Every one of them told us what a great platform we will be providing to them and, for a change, they will have an “equal opportunity” to run with the big boys. On an average, Airtel Zero will help reduce their marketing costs by almost three quarters. Not bad, I would say, though some may still feel otherwise. There is a high level of misinformation around the product, which is not surprising since the very concept of net neutrality is a bit misunderstood. Let us bust some myths regarding Airtel Zero.

Myth: The product concept amounts to preferential access.

Reality: Not at all. Airtel Zero provides universal access and is free for all our customers. They have the choice to decide if they want to come there or not.

Myth: Large companies with big budgets will be favoured while small start-ups will lose out.

Reality: No. On the contrary we have had many “small” start-ups calling us and congratulating us for building this platform which offers them a great opportunity to market products at low costs. Over 150 companies are in touch with us and want to sign up.

Myth: “Smaller” start-ups will not be able to afford to pay for the data.

Reality: Why not? Today, when a consumer downloads a new app and uses it for a day, the total data consumed is about 20-30 MB. Assuming R1/MB of free data, this works out to R20 for the start-up. Instead, the average cost of marketing digitally through large media/internet companies is about R50 to 300 per download. This platform will make it cheaper for small companies to gain distribution and visibility.

Myth: Telcos will charge other companies for data used by customers. This is a way of making money.

Reality: Telcos have been working with businesses for decades to offer “toll-free” voice services, where business pays for a customer to call in. Airtel Zero is the same concept.

Myth: Airtel Zero is against net neutrality and gives advantage to those who can pay for data.

Reality: As a concept, Airtel Zero has nothing to do with net neutrality. It is free for each and every customer and offers the same speed to all. It charges the same amount to each company for data without any discrimination.

Myth: Speed to access the apps that are not on Airtel Zero will be throttled.

Reality: Completely incorrect. There is no difference in speed to access various apps, whether they are on Airtel Zero or not.

Today, some mobile devices can store 50 or more apps, others can store five and some can’t even do so. Will net neutrality imply that all devices must be standardised and offered at the same price to make the net neutral? There are multiple mobile technologies—2G, 3G, 4G—to access the internet. Should all speed and pricing be the same in the garb of net neutrality? Some customers pay cheaper data rates based on volume purchased. Does net neutrality imply that everyone must pay the same rate irrespective of usage?

The debate over the past few days has brought out one thing clearly—many people are still not clear what net neutrality is all about. This gives an opportunity to the so-called experts to make various as well as baseless arguments. While their point of view is important, we should have a more informed and nuanced debate without painting a picture that is based on rhetoric rather than reason.

Given these facts, what better way to contribute to the Digital India vision. Never before has an open and innovative platform like Airtel Zero been on offer that will help drive internet adoption through free usage (and companies and app developers being an equal partner in the process). It will also drive innovation in the internet and mobile app space by providing a cost-effective and non-discriminatory platform, in particular, to smaller companies. This will truly drive “Make in India, For India”.

The author is director, Consumer Business, Bharti Airtel

Nikhil Pahwa: Airtel Zero is a walled garden, where Airtel chooses what people access for free while increasing costs for everything else. Telcos want to divide the internet into limited experiences.

An electricity company doesn’t tell you which device you can plug in, which new devices you can try out, or charge you differently based on what you use. Sure there is discrimination between free and commercial use, but the internet is even freer—it is a virtual environment, which allows you to go wherever you want, see what you want to see, and do what you want. It’s what makes the internet this beautiful, free-roam, immersive space. We fight on Twitter, flirt on Woo, put food photos on Instagram, contribute to Wikipedia, debate and troll on random message boards like Pagalguy and IndiaMike. We can use global services like Meerkat and Periscope at the same time as it is launched for the rest of the world.

We do more as we discover more. Bit by bit, we discover ourselves. This azaadi is what makes it immersive. We choose, and we have control.

Airtel Zero is a walled garden created by Airtel, where it will choose what people access for free while possibly increasing costs for everything else. All Airtel and telecom operators want to—through the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai)—is divide and conquer the World Wide Web, and take the ultimate meritocracy away from the user. They want to slice it into limited experiences and erect walls so that users who come online after us have a different, limited experience: they get a free internet that is muft but not mukt. They get to shop of Flipkart because it pays hafta, but not DailyObjects, because it can’t. In truth, what they will be providing won’t be “the internet”, but an Airtel menu with few services, more like a TV channel and an “Airtel Chosen Web” than the open web. What’s worse, Trai is considering licensing the internet while refusing to ensure that there is no abuse of net neutrality.

Airtel Zero divides the internet into two parts: free versus paid. Soon, every other telecom operator will follow suit. What one Airtel customer gets to use online through the Zero will be different from what a Vodafone customer might. Slicing the internet into many more pieces by creating packs so that consumers can buy, say WhatsApp usage but not Twitter, will kill the ability to free roam. It will restrict consumer choice.

Whoever buys this access will increase costs for consumers because this toll tax will get passed. They, in turn, will use Airtel Zero to kill competition.

Airtel might say that they paid a lot of money in the spectrum auctions, and have to invest in infrastructure for a roll-out; that net neutrality, which means that information highways like telecom operators should not discriminate internet content and services on the basis of cost, speed or availability, makes their business unviable. If that is the case, then did they take part in the spectrum auctions without a viable business model? Couldn’t they have opted out of the auctions like they did in March 2013? This is something their investors must take note of. Or did telecom operators make business plans which included splitting up the internet and extorting money from start-ups like they did with mobile VAS? Did they know that their attempts to lobby Trai would yield a consultation paper which MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who has been a pioneer in the telecom sector in India, recently said has a pro-industry bias? Chandrasekhar and Tathagata Satpathy have done what Trai should have: spoken up for consumers.

Telecom operators may say there is need for a level-playing field, and the internet is cannibalising their revenues. In truth, last quarter, Airtel reported stable minutes, higher revenue realisation per minute on voice, and exponential growth in mobile internet revenues. Globally, telecom operators are profiting from increasing data usage, without net neutrality being infringed.

It is important for the “Make in India” initiative that Indian start-ups are freely available to all, and build a market here and then go global.

Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal recently spoke about how they tried a hundred ideas in India, and now have ideas to choose from for the 22 countries that they are in. If telecom operators control access and pick winners in India, and not consumers, start-ups will move to freer markets. A LIRNEasia study revealed that in many countries where they get Facebook-only data packs, first-time users believe that Facebook is the internet. Walled gardens reduce choice. Does our government want to cede control of the internet to walled gardens like Facebook’s Internet.org and Airtel Zero, instead of standing for an open internet built on ensuring net neutrality and user choice? I hope not.

The author is editor & publisher, MediaNama

Cogent CEO Dave Schaeffer told the National Journal that if those companies continue to refuse to provide their customers "with access to the entire Internet on an unfettered basis . . . we would have no choice but to file a complaint with the FCC under the Open Internet Order."

Internet backbone provider Level 3 Communications said in an e-mail statement that it is also currently evaluating its options.

Protecting Rights?

While the Net neutrality rules mandate that Internet service providers should not block or degrade traffic once it's on their networks, the complaints from Cogent and Level 3 would focus on how so-called last mile providers load traffic onto their networks. However, the dispute might not interest consumers initially, Hunter Newby, CEO of New York-based collocation and interconnection provider Allied Fiber, told us. 

"People just want better, faster, cheaper," he said. "The FCC is casting a vision of protecting people's rights. This comes in the form of making a rule that keeps Internet access providers from blocking, or degrading any content on their network."

Backbone providers transport data from Web sites to the Internet service providers, which then deliver the Internet content to people's homes. Most network operators exchange traffic without charging any fees under the idea that both benefit by freely exchanging traffic back and forth.

The expansion of online video streaming services such as Netflix has upset the equation. Netflix alone now accounts for more than one-third of all U.S. Internet traffic during peak hours.

Clock Starts Ticking Monday

The companies will be able to file their complaints once the rules go into effect, which happens 60 days after they are published in the Federal Register. The rules are set to be formally published on Monday. 

The backbone providers have been trying to push huge amounts of traffic through connections that were intended for much smaller exchanges. In many cases, that congestion resulted in grainy and choppy videos for customers. The Internet service providers have been demanding payments to build better connections for the traffic. 

"The semantics of when content actually reaches an access provider's network is where the entire Open Internet Rule falls apart," said Newby. "If the access providers can claim that some kind of content did not yet reach their access network, they will be able to block and degrade it without penalty."

28 U.S.C. § 2344 sets up a 60-day window for “Any party aggrieved” by a finalized federal order to “file a petition to review the order” with a federal appeals court.

With the neutrality rules officially becoming part of the Federal Register on April 13, that means telecom and Internet companies seeking to block them from being enforced have until mid-June to get their petitions in.

While it was a lawsuit brought by Verizon that ultimately gutted the 2010 neutrality rules, it seems unlikely that individual companies will put themselves out there as the ones looking to kill the order. 

Instead, as we recently wrote, the more likely candidates for going to war with the FCC are industry trade groups like the wireless industry’s CTIA and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), which primarily represents the cable industry. 

It’s expected that the plaintiffs in these cases will contend that the FCC failed to give the industry proper notice in advance of passing the new rules. They will likely argue that the initial draft rules proposed by FCC Chair Tom Wheeler — which included some allowance for controversial Internet “fast lanes,” where ISPs can charge content providers for improved access to end-users — are so different than what was ultimately voted on by the Commission that more time was needed.

There will also be the argument that the FCC lacks statutory authority to reclassify broadband service as telecommunications infrastructure. 

When the 2010 rules were gutted, it was because Verizon successfully argued that the FCC could not impose strict neutrality regulations because broadband was not classified the same way that more highly regulated telephone services are. And so the FCC, in creating the new rules, reclassified broadband to recognize its vital importance to the public. 

The FCC is within its rights to reclassify broadband; the plaintiffs will have to prove that the reclassification wasn’t justified or that the Commission erred in the process of reclassification. 

A pair of early lawsuits have already been filed by a telecom industry trade group and a Texas-based broadband company no one outside of San Antonio has ever heard of. Those petitions were filed within a 10-day window detailed in 28 U.S.C. § 2112(a) just in case the “declaratory ruling” sections of the rule were actually considered finalized on March 12 when the FCC published the full text of the order on its site. 

The two lawsuits have since been consolidated into one case that is now before a federal appeals court in D.C., though some legal experts say it’s likely the complaints will be dismissed for being filed too early.

Every month, consumers pay a small fee on their phone bills for a federal program that uses the money -- a total of $8.8 billion raised nationwide last year -- to provide affordable access to telecommunications services in rural areas, underserved inner cities and schools.

There's a telling moment in Laura Poitras' Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour. As Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower at the center of the film, packs his bags in a Hong Kong hotel for a desperately uncertain future, the camera lingers for a beat on the book near Snowden's ever-present laptop: Cory Doctorow's novel Homeland.

As sci-fi nerds can tell you, Homeland is no random novel. The book tells the tale of a wary, civil libertarian college-dropout hacker who has in his possession a four-gigabyte file of nefarious government documents, which he seeks to release even as powerful interests stalk his every move. Sound familiar?

The novelist is also no ordinary scribbler. In addition to producing Prometheus Award–winning novels, Cory Doctorow is an influential copyright reform activist and co-editor of the hugely popular tech-culture group weblog BoingBoing. As the media thinker Lawrence Lessig pointed out last year, Citizenfour's core audience of geeks recognized Homeland as one of several key "internal references," along with the stickers on Snowden's laptop from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the online privacy tool Tor. "If you are a public official on the wrong side of this fight," Lessig proclaimed, "that core will stand against you."

But that's not quite true. Or at least, it's not the whole story. As I watched Citizenfour for the first time the day after the Academy Awards, the Doctorow reference felt bittersweet. That's because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was on the cusp of a long-telegraphed 3–2 vote along party lines to place unprecedented regulatory controls onto the Internet. And one of the key lobbies supporting the FCC's intrusion was led in part by none other than Cory Doctorow himself.

Under the vague banner of "net neutrality"—once technical jargon, now a surprisingly effective political slogan—federal regulators unceremoniously shoved the Internet out of the less-regulated "information service" category and reclassified it as a "telecommunications service," thus subjecting it to oversight under the far more hands-on Title II of the Telecommunications Act. The aim, in the words of supporters such as Doctorow, is to forcibly prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon from "extract[ing] ransom from everyone you want to talk to on the internet." That such ransom notes have stubbornly failed to materialize has been deemed immaterial.

Salimfadhley / WikimediaAs dissenting FCC commissioner Ajit Pai puts it bracingly in a must-read interview with reason's Nick Gillespie on page 44, net neutrality is "a solution that won't work to a problem that simply doesn't exist." Instances where large ISPs have violated the principles of the "open Internet" are vanishingly few, and all involve disputes between corporations that were resolvable under existing laws, not circumstances where Comcast is brutally repressing a lone defenseless blogger.

Why did the same Netizens (as they are no longer called) who rally against government in the name of privacy turn around and rally in favor of it when it comes to data prioritization arrangements? Partly because of a deep-seated and wholly understandable dislike of ISP giants. In a world where very few brands matter anymore on a visceral level (with Apple being one of the few exceptions), companies like Time Warner and Comcast inspire deep hatred. My family probably called Time Warner customer service at least four dozen times in our two years as unhappy clients; the moment we were able to escape to Verizon felt like V.J. Day. Champagne was uncorked.

It's not hard to upgrade such well-deserved customer hostility from assertions of incompetence to accusations of organized thuggery. As Doctorow charged in The Guardian last year, "The ISPs aren't seeking to get paid, they're seeking to get paid twice: once by you, and a second time because you are now their hostage and the companies you want to do business with have to get through them to get to you."

But one problem with today's (and yesterday's) complaints about ISP giants is that they discount the more competitive developments coming tomorrow—if government gets the hell out of the way. As Geoffrey A. Manne and R. Ben Sperry explain in "How to Break the Internet" (page 20), "imposing public-utility regulation under Title II means the qualities you don't like about your cable company will become more widespread. It will mean less competition, reduced investment (especially in underserved communities), slower broadband for everyone, and new regulatory hurdles for startups." If you don't like what the comparatively free market offered, just wait until broadband providers start feeling more like your local electric company.

Manne and Sperry argue that allowing the Internet industry to set prices on data prioritization (or not!) is an excellent way to maximize the potential for experimentation and business development. We'll all be streaming live video to and from all our devices soon enough; somebody needs to build out the infrastructure to make that possible. And an underappreciated benefit to legalizing prices is that it allows total unknowns to buy their way onto the same radar screens as the major players. Take that ability away and incumbents will become even more entrenched.

Even if you take as given that tolerating data-delivery prices equals allowing for "discrimination," it's still a terrible idea to task the government with preventing it. Adam Thierer, the thinker behind the concept of "permissionless innovation," explains on page 30 ("Uncle Sam Wants Your Fitbit") that the precautionary principle could prove disastrous if applied to America's globally envied Internet culture. "If we spend all our time worrying over worst-case scenarios," Thierer argues, "that means the best-case scenarios will never come about either."

Are the days of the freewheeling Internet behind us? Of course not. To see why, look no further than the proclamations 15 years ago from the very people cheering loudest today about net neutrality.

When AOL announced a merger with Time Warner in 2000, the media activist Robert McChesney warned that unless the mega-deal was blocked on antitrust grounds, "the eventual course of the Internet—the central nervous system of our era—will be determined by where the most money can be made, regardless of the social and political implications." Not only was the macro-prediction wildly off-base—the course of the Internet has continued flowing through every which way that humans dream up, regardless of the money implications—but the micro-fear was quickly rendered ridiculous as well. AOL Time Warner no longer exists; its remaining husk sheared off Time Inc. in 2013.

Yet McChesney and his Free Press group continued soldiering on, lobbying on behalf of net neutrality for more than a decade now. Their short-term victory is a triumph of fear over evidence, of anti-corporate animus eclipsing suspicion of the state. I don't expect anything different from pessimistic anti-capitalists, but it's more disappointing coming from libertarian-fluent, future-loving optimists like Cory Doctorow, whose work has been discussed scores of times in the pages of this magazine.

So consider this special issue of reason the beginning of a new conversation. To our net-neutrality-hating friends on the right, we say thank you for correctly identifying "Internet freedom" as a key political and moral issue for our time; America's online innovation has been one of the most salutary developments of the last two decades, one that everyone on every side of every political debate benefits from. Now let's talk about clemency for Edward Snowden.

As for Cory Doctorow and our pals on the techie left, we promise you this: After the FCC's net neutrality push is rolled back by the courts—and it will be—let's talk together about why we think a government powerful enough to read all your emails is one that we shouldn't entrust with protecting the future development of the Internet. We're all in favor of free minds; it's up to us to persuade you that free markets are the quickest way to get there.

Carly Fiorina: Obama's net neutrality failure 

By Carly Fiorina 

 

Updated 8:45 AM ET, Tue April 7, 2015

  (CNN)Crony capitalism is alive and well. If you need proof, look no further than the Federal Communication Commission's new Title II regulations imposed in the name of "net neutrality" under pressure from President Barack Obama, and the big businesses that benefit.

Net neutrality proponents did a masterful job of marketing it with the help of late-night hosts and political spin, arguing that it would level the Internet playing field. The truth, however, is that it will insert Washington bureaucracy and control into the 21st century's greatest success story. The Internet, which has empowered hundreds of millions of Americans in so many aspects of life, will now be subject to the same types of regulations that governed telephone service in the 20th century.

 

Carly Fiorina 

As someone who led a $87 billion company for six years, I know this: Only big companies can deal with vast, sweeping regulation like the 313 pages imposed by the FCC. This administration has had a habit of identifying a particular problem and then convincing the voters that we require enormous new swaths of government control to fix it. 

For example, Dodd Frank started out as way to protect consumers. But the consequence of Dodd Frank has been that 10 banks too big to fail became 5 banks too big to fail with record bonuses all around. Meanwhile the community banking system, which gives Main Street and mainstream entrepreneurs its credit, is on its back. In other words, the big got bigger and the smaller got weaker.

The Affordable Care Act exists because we had a problem: health insurance was too expensive, and people with pre-existing conditions were shut out of the market. Those are real problems. 

But after enacting a piece of legislation that is literally longer than a Harry Potter novel and accompanying it with tens of thousands of pages of additional regulation, millions of people saw their plans canceled or their access to their doctors limited. And health care isn't any cheaper. 

Title II regulation gives the Federal Communications Commission nearly unlimited authority to micromanage how, when and where Internet companies innovate.

Whereas the old Internet was "permissionless," the new Internet will require bureaucratic approval for the most mind-numbing minutiae and create huge areas of uncertainty . Major companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay and Netflix now have a government-conferred advantage over start-ups because they can afford the lobbyists and lawyers necessary to navigate the new Title II landscape. When influence trumps innovation, big entrenched companies benefit.

A lot has been made of the "Netflix problem." Last year, Netflix claimed that their customers saw a degradation in the quality of their Netflix service because Comcast and Verizon were unfairly trying to make Netflix pay for network upgrades. But here's the kicker: The new FCC rules don't address this issue. 

Instead, the FCC has said they will review such disputes when complaints are filed. So the very problem advocates cited as proof that we need hundreds of pages of new regulations won't even be addressed.

The new Internet will also lead to higher prices -- the very thing net neutrality was supposed to prevent. Broadband fees will necessarily increase for three reasons: 

One, the Internet economy will no longer benefit from the competition that has steadily driven prices down over the past two decades. 

Two, companies will devote more of their resources to lobbying and regulatory compliance, passing the costs of these activities directly on to consumers. 

Three, as Commissioner Ajit Pai notes in his dissenting vote, under Title II "the FCC now has a statutory obligation to make sure that all Internet service providers (and in the end, their customers) contribute to the Universal Service Fund," which is financed by a tax that up until now broadband service wasn't subject to.

In exchange for higher prices, we may see Internet quality decrease. In Europe, where broadband providers have typically been classified as public utilities for years, just over half of Europeans have access to high-speed Internet, compared with 82% of Americans.

The past six years have seen Washington establish unprecedented control over ever more of American life, from health care to finances to everything in between. The only area, it seemed, that was free from the Obama administration's grasp was perhaps the most dynamic sector of the economy -- the Internet. 

There's the old saying that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. 

For politicians, regulations and bureaucracy are their hammer. For so long, they have been in the business of managing problems, they've forgotten that leadership is about envisioning solutions. We need leaders who understand the power of technology and can imagine a new way of doing business that encourages new tech start-ups and drives innovation on the Internet.