This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, May 15th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

This week the Federal Communications Commission will vote to change how the internet is regulated.

The changes have been attacked as an end to net neutrality,

that FCC Chairman Ajit Pye believes it's a move back to the light regulation

that governed the explosion of the internet. We spoke last week.

What is the central misconception that people have about a free and open internet, about

net neutrality, and the sort of what seems like a stowaway

on this net neutrality notion, which is title 2 regulation.

A great question, I think the biggest misconception is that Title II is a Cine qua non of a free and open

internet, that the only way to have an internet in which consumers can access lawful content is through these heavy-handed

regulations that were developed in the 1930s to regulate the Ma Bell telephone monopoly.

And the argument I have consistently made is that, look, we had a free and open internet for 20 years

from the dawn of the commercial internet in the 1990s all the way up to 2015.

So I think people's years long experience with the online world proves that Title II isn't necessary for free and open internet.

So I think that's a biggest thing that people should recognize.

So what has changed about the internet between 19, from 1996 to today in terms of Americans access

to it about how traffic actually has been treated by market participants?

Another good question, so I think the biggest things in terms of infrastructure have been

the deployment of broadband networks across the country and this is not to say that competition or the state of internet access is where consumers would want it to be or where the FCC wants it to be.

But when you think about the fact that within 20 years,

basically within a generation, we've had 1.5 trillion dollars spent on infrastructure.

...