Digging on the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to see how it could be made applicable to an Internet Freedom Act (you can have that name, Q, if you want it - just sayin).
Found this:
https://
www.mitel.com/articles/telecommunications-act-1996
Copy Pasta:
Background
The precursor to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the Communications Act of 1934. This Great Depression-era legislation had established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate all of the sectors within the communications industry. The FCC initially regulated telegraph, radio, and telephone communications, but expanded its oversight into the cable television and satellite industries as new forms of media technology developed. Some of its responsibilities included issuing broadcasting licenses, ensuring that communications signals did not cross with each other, and fining broadcasting companies that violated rules. Over time, the FCC began taking a more active role in preventing explicit content from being broadcast on the radio and on television. The FCC still maintains most of these responsibilities today. As a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC lost some regulatory abilities even as it gained others. Previous deregulation-minded measures, including the breakup of the Bell telephone monopoly in the 1980s, were the inspiration behind the Act. At the same time, however, the government felt that it was necessary to keep some regulations in place to ensure that free competition could flourish.
Goals of the Act
The main goal of the Telecommunications Act was to free up the market in the communications industry. President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and a majority of the members of Congress supported the Telecommunications Act because it would give members of the public more choices in terms of the telephone services and media they could enjoy at home. This increase in choices would in turn allow Americans to subscribe to various communications services at prices they could afford. Since the Internet had become an important part of many Americans’ lives by this time, federal leaders also wanted to place regulations on it that would protect children from stumbling upon pornographic material. In addition, they hoped to make television more family-friendly by giving parents advanced warnings about the types of content programs might contain.
Major Provisions of the Act
Although its primary goal was to deregulate the communications industry, the Telecommunications Act introduced some new regulations as well. These regulations were mainly introduced to prevent companies from becoming monopolies. The Act specified that a parent company could not reach more than thirty-five percent of the national television audience with its stations. It should be noted, however, that this number had previously been just twenty-five percent. The Act also kept certain predetermined rules in place; for example, it stated that a parent company could still not own both a newspaper and a broadcasting station in a single market. These stipulations were meant to ensure that different ideologies remained well-represented in the media. Although it encouraged competition among cable companies, the Telecommunications Act set out some new television-related rules as well. The FCC would ensure that new televisions contained “V-Chips,” devices that enabled parents to keep their children from accessing offensive content. Television stations were also encouraged to display on-screen ratings for their programs. The Telecommunications Act also laid out a plan for all schools, libraries, and hospitals to have Internet access by the year 2000 so that more Americans would be able to use the web as a learning tool. In addition, it set rules against child pornography and other objectionable content on the Internet. Out of all the sectors in the communications industry, telephone services saw the most deregulation. The Telecommunications Act eliminated a number of old laws that had kept these companies from fully competing with one another.
Oh - and the icing on the kek is that this was enacted in large part by one William Jefferson Clinton.