Entrepreneurs Should Step Up on Net Neutrality, Schatz Urges NVCA Members

“They really need to hear from people like you,” Schatz said of Republicans seeking to roll back the 2015 open internet order, urging the group's members to come with a message: “This isn’t good for the entrepreneurial ecosystem.” He said without the order, ISPs will be able to favor established companies or package news in certain ways, sometimes motivated due to the lack of ISP competition in certain communities. “Maybe they’re not going to do the egregious thing first,” Schatz considered. He said “new companies will find it harder to thrive” over time and “history will bear” out his belief that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is making a mistake in trying to undo parts of the order.

Schatz dubbed net neutrality the issue of the moment but foresees bigger questions that Congress may need to deal with over time, involving aging statutes, siloed consideration of issues within the legislature and the burgeoning challenge of IoT. There are “some bigger, broader questions about data security and privacy and about the future of the internet,” he cautioned.

IoT “will shine a spotlight on issues that have languished in Congress for years,” said Schatz, long active on the issue. “It’s absolutely the next transcontinental railroad. … [Its] potential also raises legitimate concerns about consumer protections, privacy and national security.” He doesn't think government should be involved yet but sees those questions as crucial to policymaking going forward.

That’s one of many tech issues Schatz thinks need to be considered. “We actually need a comprehensive privacy statute,” he added. He spoke with Republican colleagues during the ISP privacy debate this year, where Republicans killed the FCC’s ISP privacy rules, and those he considered libertarian privacy hawks told him this of the ISP relationship, as he summed up Wednesday: “You signed a contract.” Schatz described his frustration with dragging FCC and FTC commissioners before the Commerce Committee to chastise them for their decisions when lawmakers could be creating laws: “There is a place for a rewrite of many of our laws over time to account for the fact that everything has changed.” He doesn’t think Congress “is ready yet” for some of the bigger questions but he foresees the challenges coming, from IoT to artificial intelligence to the rise of machines taking jobs. “I am very intrigued by the idea of guaranteed minimum income,” he said of the future consequences of such job loss. One limit is that “tech and telecom belongs to a particular subcommittee,” whereas internet policy, AI and robotics affect all of the economy, he said. “Tech belongs in one subset of one committee, and it makes it really difficult to make big-picture tech policy. … It’s frankly more difficult to do long-term thinking about how technology is impacting technology and society, the big picture.”

Flake, speaking earlier at the meeting, touted his planned reintroduction of the Attracting and Retaining Entrepreneurs Act as a ways to encourage long-term tech investment. The bill, originally introduced in December, would create a “nonimmigrant invest visa” or “invest immigrant visa” available to immigrant entrepreneurs who demonstrate a significant ownership stake in a startup that also receives investor funding and meets requirements on job creation and other benchmarks. Flake, who as Senate Judiciary Privacy Subcommittee chairman led the GOP measure to kill the FCC ISP privacy rule, said that “attracting foreign entrepreneurs and making it easier for them to stay here is just common sense, and it’s especially important at a time when other countries are actively working to attract venture investment.”

“I want the next Google to be founded in Scottsdale, not Shanghai,” said Flake. He wants to lower the federal corporate tax rate since the current 35 percent puts U.S. companies “at a distinct disadvantage against their international competition.”