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53-801: The Act is the short name of Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 , as specified in Section 501 of the 1996 Act. Senators James Exon and Slade Gorton introduced it to the Senate Committee of Commerce, Science, and Transportation in 1995. The amendment that became the CDA was added to the Telecommunications Act in the Senate by an 81–18 vote on June 15, 1995. As eventually passed by Congress, Title V affected

106-475: A "disguised internet censorship bill" that weakens the section 230 safe harbors, places unnecessary burdens on internet companies and intermediaries that handle user-generated content or communications, with service providers required to proactively take action against sex trafficking activities, and requires lawyers to evaluate all possible scenarios under state and federal law (which may be financially unfeasible for smaller companies). Online sex workers argued that

159-710: A community leader and was frequently quoted in the Los Angeles Times during his 10-year effort as leader of the Ivar Hawks Neighborhood Watch to reduce the high rate of violent crime in Hollywood during the 1990s. LAPD officials hailed the group as a "national model" for Neighborhood Watch and credited the group with at least 16 citizen's arrests of drug dealers. In 2001, Shea was hailed for his leadership by Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks in an LAPD press release. In addition, Shea

212-654: A dangerous neighborhood in Hollywood, California were praised by authorities as a national model for Neighborhood Watch . His defiance of the Clinton Administration on the censorship law was featured in "A Day In the Life of The Internet". Shea was born in Goshen, New York , to Mr. & Mrs. John S. Shea, Jr., of Monroe and New York City. His grandfather John S. Shea was elected Sheriff of New York in 1909,

265-464: A drastic decline in the number of radio station owners, even as the actual number of stations in the United States increased. This decline in owners and increase in stations has resulted in radio homogenization , in which local programming and content has been lost and content is repeated regardless of location. Activists and critics have cited similar effects in the television industry. In

318-659: A major change in that law, because it was the first time that the Internet was added to American regulation of broadcasting and telephony . The primary goal of the law was to "let anyone enter any communications business – to let any communications business compete in any market against any other." Thus, the statute is often described as an attempt to deregulate the American broadcasting and telecommunications markets due to technological convergence . The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has been praised for incentivizing

371-705: A panel of federal judges in Philadelphia blocked part of the CDA, saying it would infringe upon adults' free speech rights. The next month, another federal court in New York struck down the portion of the CDA intended to protect children from indecent speech as too broad. On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court upheld the Philadelphia court's decision in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union , stating that

424-544: Is a United States federal law enacted by the 104th United States Congress on January 3, 1996, and signed into law on February 8, 1996 by President Bill Clinton . It primarily amended Chapter 5 of Title 47 of the United States Code . The act was the first significant overhaul of United States telecommunications law in more than sixty years, amending the Communications Act of 1934 , and represented

477-571: The Los Angeles Times , San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Daily News , where he contributed op-ed articles. He was the executive speech writer consultant at Lockheed Corp. in 1977 as the company sought to make the $ 800-million "Deal of the Century" for the L1011 passenger jet with Pan Am . He wrote three speeches, including one broadcast nationally on Town Hall and one to

530-658: The Village Voice where it was selected by editor Ross Wetzsteon over 18 other submissions from New Left writers including Dave Dellinger and Michael Harrington . He worked for the Village Voice as a freelance war correspondent in Northern Ireland, India, Vietnam and the Philippines, and was responsible in 1976 for the withdrawal of President Gerald Ford 's nomination of Patrick Delaney to

583-663: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency assigned to implement and administer the economic regulation of the interstate activities of telephone companies (then dominated by the AT&;T monopoly ) and the licensing of spectrum used for broadcasting and other purposes. Starting in the 1970s, a combination of technological change, court decisions, and updates to American policy goals enabled competitive entry by new companies into some telecommunications and broadcasting markets. In this context,

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636-739: The First Amendment . Portions of Title V remain, including Section 230 , which shields Internet firms from liability for the speech of their users, and has been widely credited for enabling the growth of the Internet and social media . Some smaller telecommunications companies and consumer groups stated their opposition to the new statute during Congressional hearings. For example, smaller firms predicted that they would experience difficulty in competing financially even if they faced fewer barriers to entry, and this would result in market consolidation in favor of incumbent firms. This prediction

689-561: The Securities Exchange Commission after the Village Voice published his article revealing inconsistencies in Delaney's resume. Shea also wrote an article linking Nelson Rockefeller , then Governor of New York , to a Bolivian diplomat, Victor Andrade , whom the U.S. Office of Strategic Services had identified as a "front for Nazis" in the cabinet of Bolivian President Paz Estenssoro . He later worked on

742-507: The 1996 Act required incumbent telecommunications companies to interconnect their networks with new competing companies, and to provide wholesale access to materials and components as those smaller companies build their networks. The act also clarified intercarrier compensation rates for communications requests that are handled by multiple firms. Regional Bell Operating Companies , who were previously subjected to strict regulations to provide only local telephone service, were allowed to enter

795-462: The 1996 Telecommunications Act was designed to allow smaller companies to enter those markets and for existing companies to operate across market sectors, via the relaxation of cross-ownership rules, multi-sector prohibitions, and other barriers to entry . One specific provision empowered the FCC to preempt all attempts by state or local governments to prevent telecommunications competition. A report by

848-558: The 2003 edition of his book A People's History of the United States , historian Howard Zinn named the act as a significant factor in the loss of alternative and community media, and possibly the loss of public control of information: the Telecommunications Act of 1996...enabled the handful of corporations dominating the airwaves to expand their power further. Mergers enabled tighter control of information...The Latin American writer Eduardo Galeano commented..."Never have so many been held incommunicado by so few." There have been attempts by

901-915: The American Society of Financial Analysts for Lockheed Chairman Roy Anderson, and one for Lockheed President Larry Kitchen, an address to the National Aeronautic Association . The sale of the L10ll to Pan Am saved the company. As a community activist, Joe Shea served for 13 years as president of the Ivar Hill Community Association and was the subject of numerous television documentaries by Fox News and CNN, among others. The association provided fresh meals and hand-wrapped Christmas gifts for more than 7,000 of Hollywood's poorest children during his years as president. He appeared frequently on television as

954-535: The CDA imposed criminal sanctions on anyone who knowingly (A) uses an interactive computer service to send to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or (B) uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs. It further criminalized

1007-578: The CDA to remove the indecency provisions struck down in Reno v. ACLU . A separate challenge to the provisions governing obscenity, known as Nitke v. Gonzales , was rejected by a federal court in New York in 2005. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed that decision in 2006. Congress has made two narrower attempts to regulate children's exposure to Internet indecency since the Supreme Court overturned

1060-539: The CDA. Court injunction blocked enforcement of the first, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), almost immediately after its passage in 1998; the law was later overturned. While legal challenges also dogged COPA's successor, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) of 2000, the Supreme Court upheld it as constitutional in 2004. Section 230 of title 47 of the U.S. Code, a codification of

1113-684: The Communications Act of 1934 (added by Section 9 of the Communications Decency Act / Section 509 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) was not part of the original Senate legislation, but was added in conference with the House , where it had been separately introduced by Representatives Christopher Cox and Ron Wyden as the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act and passed by a near-unanimous vote on

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1166-485: The Communications Decency Act's section 230 safe harbors (which make online services immune from civil liability for their users' actions) to exclude enforcement of federal or state sex trafficking laws from immunity. The intent is to provide serious legal consequences for websites that profit from sex trafficking and give prosecutors tools to protect their communities and give victims a pathway to justice. The bills were criticized by pro-free speech and pro-Internet groups as

1219-685: The House of Representatives stated that the goal of the new legislation was to "provide for a pro-competitive, de-regulatory national policy framework designed to accelerate rapidly private sector deployment of advanced information technologies and services to all Americans by opening all telecommunications markets to competition". One purpose of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was to foster competition among companies willing to provide multiple communications services (such as voice calls and Internet connectivity) within network technologies that has previously been confined by law to one type of service. Therefore,

1272-506: The Internet (and online communications) in two significant ways. First, it attempted to regulate both indecency (when available to children) and obscenity in cyberspace . Second, Section 230 of title 47 of the U.S. Code, part of a codification of the Communications Act of 1934 (Section 9 of the Communications Decency Act / Section 509 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) has been interpreted to mean that operators of Internet services are not publishers (and thus not legally liable for

1325-563: The United States Congress to update the 1996 Telecommunications Act or address some of its shortcomings, such as the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Bill of 2006 and Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 , but neither became law. Federal documents Joe Shea Joe Shea (February 7, 1947 – October 19, 2016) was editor-in-chief of The American Reporter ,

1378-522: The Westec stock fraud, chose not to run for office again. His seat was won by Geraldine Ferraro , who became the first major-party female nominee for vice president just two years later. The article had the effect of preventing the appointment of an SEC member who might be open to blackmail and of producing a vacancy that was filled by a history-making candidate. In addition, he wrote for Bert Sugar 's Argosy Magazine and many other publications, including

1431-529: The act created precise regulatory regimes based on type of network architecture, with companies subjected to different regulations depending on whether they operated in telephone, cable television, or Internet networks. The act makes a significant distinction between providers of telecommunications services and information services, with the different regulations to be followed by companies in each sector leading to confusion when those sectors technologically converged in later years. In order to enable competition,

1484-403: The act has failed to enable the competition that was one of its stated goals. Instead, it may have inadvertently exacerbated the ongoing consolidation of the media marketplace that had commenced in the decades before the act's passage. The number of American major media content companies shrank from about fifty in 1983 to ten in 1996, and to just six in 2005. An FCC study found that the act led to

1537-661: The act incentivized upgrades to telecommunications infrastructure and new construction, despite increased industry concentration. In the long term, this helped to spread broadband access to more of the country. Critics have maintained that many of the purported goals of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 did not come to fruition in the years and decades after its passage. The act's structure of regulations based on type of network infrastructure failed to predict technological convergence and created awkward regulatory burdens for companies operating in multiple segments of media and telecommunications markets. This may prohibit innovation or make

1590-414: The bill would harm their safety, as the platforms they use to offer and discuss their services (as an alternative to street prostitution ) had begun to reduce their services or shut down entirely because of the bill's threat of liability. Since FOSTA-SESTA passed, sex workers have reported economic instability and increases in violence, as had been predicted. In Jane Doe No. 14 v. Internet Brands, Inc. ,

1643-562: The bill would have a chilling effect on the availability of medical information. Online civil liberties organizations arranged protests against the bill, such as the Black World Wide Web protest , which encouraged webmasters to make their sites' backgrounds black for 48 hours after its passage, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation 's Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign . On June 12, 1996,

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1696-517: The criminal and civil immunity in section 230 be removed. The ACLU wrote of the proposal, "If Section 230 is stripped of its protections, it wouldn't take long for the vibrant culture of free speech to disappear from the web." Ann Wagner introduced the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) in the U.S. House of Representatives in April 2017. Rob Portman introduced

1749-638: The day when minors were supposedly least likely to be exposed, and violators could be fined and lose their licenses. But the Internet had only recently been opened to commercial interests by the 1992 amendment to the National Science Foundation Act and thus had not been taken into consideration by previous laws. The CDA, which affected both the Internet and cable television , marked the first attempt to expand regulation to these new media . Passed by Congress on February 1, 1996, and signed by President Bill Clinton on February 8, 1996,

1802-488: The early 2010s. In the media and broadcasting sector, most media ownership regulations were eased, and the cap on radio station ownership was eliminated. The act also attempted to prohibit indecency and obscenity on the Internet, via a section that was separately titled as the Communications Decency Act , though most of this section was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court for violating

1855-417: The expansion of networks and the offering of new services across the United States, though it is often criticized for enabling market concentration in the media and telecommunications industries. Previously, the Communications Act of 1934 was the statutory framework for American communications policy, covering telephony , broadcasting , and (via later amendments) cable television . The 1934 Act created

1908-736: The first Republican to be elected in Manhattan since Reconstruction and the last until his uncle, William F. Shea , was elected to the bench in 1954. Joe Shea also started the Committee to Draft U.S. Senator John Kerry which sought to get the Massachusetts senator into the 1988 Presidential race. Joe Shea started out in journalism by covering the 1968 New York City riot the night of the April 4 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. , submitting his first article in longhand to

1961-485: The first daily Internet newspaper, started on April 10, 1995. Shea was the named plaintiff in the landmark First Amendment case, Shea v Reno , which ended with the Communications Decency Act and its proposed censorship of the Internet declared unconstitutional in Manhattan Federal Court and affirmed in the U. S. Supreme Court in 1997. He is a noted community activist whose efforts to clean up

2014-461: The floor. It added protection for online service providers and users from actions against them based on third-party content, stating in part, "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." Effectively, this section immunizes both ISPs and Internet users from liability for torts others commit on their websites or online forums, even if

2067-490: The indecency provisions were an unconstitutional abridgement of the First Amendment because they did not permit parents to decide for themselves what material was acceptable for their children, extended to non-commercial speech, and did not carefully define the words "indecent" and "offensive". (The Court affirmed the New York case, Reno v. Shea , the next day, without a published opinion.) In 2003, Congress amended

2120-463: The law unable to handle evolving market conditions. The law also fails to provide a guideline for regulating previously separate network technologies that have since converged (e.g. voice calls can now be delivered over Internet networks via services like VoIP ). According to some critics, this situation has in fact created re-regulation of the marketplace with contradictory and inconsistent rules for companies to follow. Critics have also claimed that

2173-475: The long-distance market. The 1996 Act also introduced more precise and detailed regulations for the funding of universal service programs via subsidies generated by monthly customer fees. This was intended to reduce the tendency of smaller telephone firms to charge above-market rates for underserved users, and to provide more transparency of fees charged to customers. However, universal service subsidies were only used to build landline telephone networks until

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2226-531: The plaintiff filed an action alleging that Internet Brands, Inc.'s failure to warn users of its modelmayhem.com networking website caused her to be a victim of a rape scheme. On May 31, 2016, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Communications Decency Act does not bar the plaintiff's failure to warn claim. Telecommunications Act of 1996 The Telecommunications Act of 1996

2279-401: The provider fails to take action after receiving notice of the harmful or offensive content. Through the so-called Good Samaritan provision, this section also protects ISPs from liability for restricting access to certain material or giving others the technical means to restrict access to that material. On July 23, 2013, the attorneys general of 47 states sent Congress a letter requesting that

2332-535: The public airwaves. The act was also unpopular with early Internet activists, and was named specifically in EFF founder John Perry Barlow 's essay, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace , as an act "which repudiates your own [American] Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis." On the other hand, a Brookings Institution study concluded that

2385-464: The similar Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) in the U.S. Senate in August 2017. The combined FOSTA-SESTA package passed the House on February 27, 2018, with a vote of 388–25 and the Senate on March 21, 2018, with a vote of 97–2. President Donald Trump signed the package into law on April 11, 2018. The bill makes it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking, and amends

2438-484: The staff at Esquire Magazine , where he was responsible for a suggestion that became a regular feature of the magazine called "Reckless Advice", which became a book by Lee Eisenberg . Shea rolled a coin across his fingers on both hands while tap-dancing and singing " The Impossible Dream " on the Gong Show in 1978, and also wrote about the experience for the Village Voice . His most important investigative article

2491-415: The transmission of "obscene or indecent" materials to persons known to be under 18. Free speech advocates worked diligently and successfully to overturn the portion relating to indecent, but not obscene, speech. They argued that speech protected under the First Amendment , such as printed novels or the use of the " seven dirty words ", would suddenly become unlawful when posted online. Critics also claimed

2544-461: The words of third parties who use their services). The act's most controversial portions were those relating to indecency on the Internet. The relevant sections were introduced in response to fears that Internet pornography was on the rise. Indecency in TV and radio broadcasting had already been regulated by the Federal Communications Commission : broadcasting of offensive speech was restricted to hours of

2597-566: Was a cover story for the L.A. Weekly in Nov., 1989, describing the large influx of monied Iranians into Beverly Hills, where they altered the economic and sociocultural underpinnings of one of the world's wealthiest cities. In a Village Voice article, "Are Delaney & Son A New Washington Partnership?", Shea told of an extensive stock fraud in which President Gerald Ford's nominee to the Securities Exchange Commission

2650-443: Was a leading member of the group that put Hollywood's secession on the 2001 Los Angeles city ballot, and was a candidate for the proposed city's city council whose eloquent speech to the county Board of Supervisors in support of cityhood was aired on National Public Radio. In addition, Shea ran in 2000 as a candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles supporting the secession movement. Joe's collection of Shakespearean sonnets, "A Native Music",

2703-521: Was correct, and by 2001 concentration of the American telephone market had increased with four major companies owning 85% of all network infrastructure, rather than the increased competition that the act intended. Critics warned that the same would happen in the media content industry. Consumer activist Ralph Nader argued that the act was an example of corporate welfare spawned by political corruption, because it gave away to incumbent broadcasters valuable licenses for digital broadcasting frequencies on

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2756-472: Was involved. Patrick Delaney was the son of the ranking bipartisan-endorsed member of the House Rules Committee , Rep. John Delaney . The article exposed the pair's profit from the fraud and that the younger Delaney had lied about a degree from Georgetown. The article led to the withdrawal of Delaney's nomination, and the elder Delaney, who admitted to Shea that he "may have" made $ 100,000 in

2809-745: Was published in 1989, and he appeared at the Zephyr Theater in Los Angeles for a three-week run reading a selection of them. He won the Greater Los Angeles Press Club's First Prize for the Best Internet News Story of 2000, in which he revealed the inside secrets of a pyramid scheme and was instrumental in securing seven no-contest pleas from perpetrators of the infamous multimillion-dollar "Family & Friends" fraud. Shea appeared as The Tourist in

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