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The Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 is a bill in the United States House of Representatives. [1] It is one of several bills on the topic of network neutrality proposed as part of a major overhaul of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Act is sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ), and Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-IN).
The legislation was approved 20-13 by the House Judiciary committee on May 25, 2006, but was never taken up on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, and therefore failed to become law.[ citation needed ]
The "Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006" has the stated purpose of the promoting competition, facilitating trade, and ensuring competitive and non discriminatory access to the internet (see net neutrality). It proposes a change in the Clayton Antitrust Act to prohibit certain kinds of discrimination by broadband network providers. Specifically, the Act would make it unlawful for any broadband network provider to discriminate against any content, applications, or services, or to refuse to connect to other broadband providers. It would also make it unlawful for any broadband provider to restrict the sending or receiving of lawful conduct, to charge premiums for unrestricted access to lawful content, and to fail to disclose any terms, conditions, or limitations on the service it provides. Additionally, the Act would require any prioritization or enhanced quality of service to certain types of data to apply to all data of that type, regardless of the origin of such data, without imposing a surcharge for the enhanced service.
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.
Anna A. Eshoo is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative from California's 16th congressional district. She is a member of the Democratic Party. The district, numbered as the 18th district from 2013 to 2023, is based in Silicon Valley, including the cities of Redwood City, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Palo Alto, as well as part of San Jose. Eshoo is the only Assyrian-American in Congress and the only Armenian American woman in Congress. On November 21, 2023, she announced she would not seek re-election in 2024.
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.
The Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement (COPE) Act of 2006 was a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. It was part of a major overhaul of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 being considered by the US Congress. The Act was sponsored by Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX), Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), Rep. Charles Pickering (R-MS) and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL).
The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) is United States legislation regulating online gambling. It was added as Title VIII to the SAFE Port Act which otherwise regulated port security. The UIGEA prohibits gambling businesses from "knowingly accepting payments in connection with the participation of another person in a bet or wager that involves the use of the Internet and that is unlawful under any federal or state law." The act specifically excludes fantasy sports that meet certain requirements, skill games, and legal intrastate and intertribal gaming. The law does not expressly mention state lotteries, nor does it clarify whether interstate wagering on horse racing is legal.
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.
Net neutrality in Canada is a debated issue, but not to the degree of partisanship in other nations, such as the United States, in part because of its federal regulatory structure and pre-existing supportive laws that were enacted decades before the debate arose. In Canada, Internet service providers (ISPs) generally provide Internet service in a neutral manner. Some notable incidents otherwise have included Bell Canada's throttling of certain protocols and Telus's censorship of a specific website critical of the company.
Tiered service structures allow users to select from a small set of tiers at progressively increasing price points to receive the product or products best suited to their needs. Such systems are frequently seen in the telecommunications field, specifically when it comes to wireless service, digital and cable television options, and broadband internet access.
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.
Policies promoting wireless broadband are policies, rules, and regulations supporting the "National Wireless Initiative", a plan to bring wireless broadband Internet access to 98% of Americans.
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.
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.
Zero-rating is the practice of providing Internet access without financial cost under certain conditions, such as by permitting access to only certain websites or by subsidizing the service with advertising or by exempting certain websites from the data allowance.
Net neutrality law refers to laws and regulations which enforce the principle of net neutrality.
Arguments associated with net neutrality regulations in the US came into prominence in mid-2002, offered by the "High Tech Broadband Coalition", a group comprising the Business Software Alliance; the Consumer Electronics Association; the Information Technology Industry Council; the National Association of Manufacturers; the Semiconductor Industry Association; and the Telecommunications Industry Association, some of which were developers for Amazon.com, Google, and Microsoft. The full concept of "net neutrality" was developed by regulators and legal academics, most prominently law professors Tim Wu, Lawrence Lessig and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell often while speaking at the University of Colorado School of Law Annual Digital Broadband Migration conference or writing in the Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law.
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.