The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction over the areas of broadband access, fair competition, radio frequency use, media responsibility, public safety, and homeland security.
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides myriad services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privately owned.
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), also known as the "Digital Telephony Act," is a United States wiretapping law passed in 1994, during the presidency of Bill Clinton.
Network neutrality, often referred to as net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering users and online content providers consistent transfer rates regardless of content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication. Net neutrality was advocated for in the 1990s by the presidential administration of Bill Clinton in the United States. Clinton's signing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, an amendment to the Communications Act of 1934, set a worldwide example for net neutrality laws and the regulation of ISPs.
In the United States, net neutrality—the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) should make no distinctions between different kinds of content on the Internet, and to not discriminate based on such distinctions—has been an issue of contention between end-users and ISPs since the 1990s. With net neutrality, ISPs may not intentionally block, slow down, or charge different rates for specific online content. Without net neutrality, ISPs may prioritize certain types of traffic, meter others, or potentially block specific types of content, while charging consumers different rates for that content.
The Internet in the United States grew out of the ARPANET, a network sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense during the 1960s. The Internet in the United States of America in turn provided the foundation for the worldwide Internet of today.
Julius Genachowski is an American lawyer and businessman. He became the Federal Communications Commission Chairman on June 29, 2009. On March 22, 2013, he announced he would be leaving the FCC in the coming weeks. On January 6, 2014, it was announced that Genachowski had joined The Carlyle Group. He transitioned from Partner and Managing Director to Senior Advisor in early 2024.
In the United States, Section 230 is a section of the Communications Act of 1934 that was enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which is Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and generally provides immunity for online computer services with respect to third-party content generated by its users. At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Comcast Corp. v. FCC, 600 F.3d 642, is a case at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia holding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have ancillary jurisdiction over the content delivery choices of Internet service providers, under the language of the Communications Act of 1934. In so holding, the Court vacated a 2008 order issued by the FCC that asserted jurisdiction over network management policies and censured Comcast from interfering with its subscribers' use of peer-to-peer software. The case has been regarded as an important precedent on whether the FCC can regulate network neutrality.
The Federal Communications Commission Open Internet Order of 2010 is a set of regulations that move towards the establishment of the internet neutrality concept. Some opponents of net neutrality believe such internet regulation would inhibit innovation by preventing providers from capitalizing on their broadband investments and reinvesting that money into higher quality services for consumers. Supporters of net neutrality argue that the presence of content restrictions by network providers represents a threat to individual expression and the rights of the First Amendment. Open Internet strikes a balance between these two camps by creating a compromised set of regulations that treats all internet traffic in "roughly the same way". In Verizon v. FCC, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated portions of the order that the court determined could only be applied to common carriers.
Internet bottlenecks are places in telecommunication networks in which internet service providers (ISPs), or naturally occurring high use of the network, slow or alter the network speed of the users and/or content producers using that network. A bottleneck is a more general term for a system that has been reduced or slowed due to limited resources or components. The bottleneck occurs in a network when there are too many users attempting to access a specific resource. Internet bottlenecks provide artificial and natural network choke points to inhibit certain sets of users from overloading the entire network by consuming too much bandwidth. Theoretically, this will lead users and content producers through alternative paths to accomplish their goals while limiting the network load at any one time. Alternatively, internet bottlenecks have been seen as a way for ISPs to take advantage of their dominant market-power increasing rates for content providers to push past bottlenecks. The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has created regulations stipulating that artificial bottlenecks are in direct opposition to a free and open Internet.
Net bias is the counter-principle to net neutrality, which indicates differentiation or discrimination of price and the quality of content or applications on the Internet by ISPs. Similar terms include data discrimination, digital redlining, and network management.
Ajit Varadaraj Pai is an American lawyer who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 2017 to 2021. He has been a partner at the private-equity firm Searchlight Capital since April 2021.
Fight for the Future is a nonprofit advocacy group in the area of digital rights founded in 2011. The group aims to promote causes related to copyright legislation, as well as online privacy and censorship through the use of the Internet.
Verizon Communications Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission, 740 F.3d 623, was a case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacating portions of the FCC Open Internet Order of 2010, which the court determined could only be applied to common carriers and not to Internet service providers. The case was initiated by Verizon, which would have been subjected to the proposed FCC rules, though they had not yet gone into effect. The case has been regarded as an important precedent on whether the FCC can regulate network neutrality.
United States Telecom Association v. FCC, 825 F. 3d 674, was a case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upholding an action by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the previous year in which broadband Internet was reclassified as a "telecommunications service" under the Communications Act of 1934, after which Internet service providers (ISPs) were required to follow common carrier regulations.
Brendan Thomas Carr is an American lawyer who has served as a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) since 2017. Appointed to the position by Donald Trump, Carr previously served as the agency's general counsel and as an aide to FCC commissioner Ajit Pai. In private practice, Carr formerly worked as a telecommunications attorney at Wiley Rein.
"Net Neutrality" is the first segment devoted to net neutrality in the United States of the HBO news satire television series Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. It aired for 13 minutes on June 1, 2014, as part of the fifth episode of Last Week Tonight's first season.
Net neutrality is the principle that governments should mandate Internet service providers to treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. For instance, under these principles, internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down or charge money for specific websites and online content.
Mozilla Corp. v. FCC, 940 F. 3d 1 was a ruling the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2019 related to net neutrality in the United States. The case centered on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s decision in 2017 to rollback its prior 2015 Open Internet Order, reclassifying Internet services as an information service rather than as a common carrier, deregulating principles of net neutrality that had been put in place with the 2015 order. The proposed rollback had been publicly criticized during the open period of discussion, and following the FCC's issuing of the rollback, several states and Internet companies sued the FCC. These cases were consolidated into the one led by the Mozilla Corporation.
