The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is an independent nonprofit research center established in 1994 to protect privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic values in the information age. Based in Washington, D.C., their mission is to "secure the fundamental right to privacy in the digital age for all people through advocacy, research, and litigation."
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce that serves as the President's principal adviser on telecommunications policies pertaining to the United States' economic and technological advancement and to regulation of the telecommunications industry.
William Earl Kennard is an American attorney and former government official. Kennard served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton, and was the first African American to lead the agency. In 2009, Kennard was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as Ambassador to the European Union, serving until 2013.
Gigi Beth Sohn is an American lawyer who is the co-founder of Public Knowledge. She previously worked for the Ford Foundation. In 2013, Tom Wheeler hired her into a senior staff position at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC). She left there shortly after Donald Trump's election in 2016. In July 2017, she held fellowship positions with Georgetown Law's Institute for Technology Law & Policy, Open Society Foundations, and Mozilla.
The James H. and Mary B. Quello Center for Telecommunication Management & Law is a research center at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. Part of the Department of Media and Information at the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, the Quello Center is dedicated to original research on issues of information and communication management, law and policy. It is named for former Federal Communications Commission chairman James H. Quello.
In the United States, net neutrality, the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate, has been an issue of contention between network users and access providers since the 1990s. With net neutrality, ISPs may not intentionally block, slow down, or charge money for specific online content. Without net neutrality, ISPs may prioritize certain types of traffic, meter others, or potentially block traffic from specific services, while charging consumers for various tiers of service.
Free Press is a United States advocacy group that is part of the media reform or media democracy movement. Their mission includes, "saving Net Neutrality, achieving affordable internet access for all, uplifting the voices of people of color in the media, challenging old and new media gatekeepers to serve the public interest, ending unwarranted surveillance, defending press freedom and reimagining local journalism." The group is a major supporter of net neutrality.
The Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) is one of several research centers for Columbia Business School, focusing on strategy, management, and policy issues in telecommunications, computing, and electronic mass media. It aims to address the large and dynamic telecommunications and media industry that has expanded horizontally and vertically drive by technology, entrepreneurship and policy.
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.
Kevin Werbach is an American academic, businessman and author. In 2002, he founded the Supernova Group, a technology analysis and consulting firm. Since 2004, Werbach is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He writes about business, policy, and social implications of emerging Internet and communications technologies.
Stuart N. Brotman is an American government policymaker; tenured university professor; management consultant; lawyer; author and editorial adviser; and non-profit organization executive. He has served in four Presidential Administrations on a bipartisan basis and taught students from 42 countries in six separate disciplines — Communications, Journalism, Business, Law, International Relations and Public Policy. He also has advised private and public sector clients in more than 30 countries in five continents.
Colin Crowell is an American policy expert active the telecommunications and Internet sector. He is currently the head of the Crowell Group. Crowell is the former Vice President of Global Public Policy and Philanthropy at Twitter, where he was the company's first public policy hire. Crowell was initially brought on board to build out this function globally for Twitter.
The Media Access Project was a non-profit group that promoted the public's interest before Congress and the US court system. MAP grew out of a 1960s lawsuit against the United Church of Christ and was eventually formed in 1972 in order to advance the rights of the public wanting to participate in the democratic process. Some of their first cases involved two TV stations in Mississippi not catering to the African American Community, resulting in the stations almost being shut down. From that era and cases came the thought "that members of the viewing and listening public have the legal right, derived from the First Amendment, to participate in FCC proceedings." Their most common way of fighting cases was through lobbying. The group suspended operations on May 1, 2012.
Broadband universal service, also known as "universal service obligation" (USO) or "universal broadband service", refers to government efforts to ensure all citizens have access to the internet. Universal voice service obligations have been expanded to include broadband service obligations in Switzerland, Finland, Spain and the UK.
The Center for Copyright Information (CCI) is an American organization focused on advocacy and initiatives in support of copyright law. The CCI aims to educate the public about copyright law; coordinates with copyright owners and Internet service providers (ISPs) about issues related to online copyright infringement; assists with the design, implementation, review, and promotion of an online infringement notification and mitigation system ; collects and disseminates online infringement data; and promotes lawful means of obtaining copyrighted works. The organization was created as a partnership between industry associations, including the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and five major American Internet service providers.
On March 20, 2011, AT&T announced that it would purchase T-Mobile USA. On August 31, 2011, the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice formally announced that it would seek to block the takeover, and filed a lawsuit to such effect in federal court. The bid was abandoned by AT&T on December 19, 2011.
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.
The Internet Must Go is a 2013 independent docufiction short web film about net neutrality, directed by Gena Konstantinakos.
Nick Sinai is a venture capitalist, adjunct faculty at Harvard Kennedy School, author, and a former senior official in the Obama Administration.
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.
