Telecommunications Act of 1996

What did he do after that? He passed welfare reform.

He passed the Telecommunications Act, and he passed the Balanced Budget Act.

The cops program.

He did.

So I think there's already building some opposition, but still below the political level so far.

Is there any independent media of any, you know, like in the United States in 1996, Bill Clinton passed the Telecommunications Act.

So we used to have 50 giant media companies.

They were already giant and consolidated.

It's a drought in the Pacific Northwest.

It's after effects of the Telecommunications Act.

And we all have computers that are using electricity.

Once the Enron tapes got into the public domain, it changed that debate overnight that we saw that a company intentionally created power shortages for the sole purpose of making electricity scarce to drive prices up so that they could make bigger profits.

Yet the parallels between Netscape and OpenAI extend into politics, Just like how the Trump administration has anchored its strategy to AI, the Clinton administration architected the information superhighway.

Through the 1991 High Performance Computing and 1996 Telecommunications Act, the federal government provided legal protection, waived regulation for dot-com companies, and mandated Netscape as the browser of choice for millions of students and government employees.

At the same time, the Clinton administration advocated for Netscape browsers, Cisco switches, and Sun servers abroad so that the U.S. could dominate this emerging web.

And when Microsoft began bundling Internet Explorer for free into Windows, the DOJ launched an antitrust lawsuit as a taxpayer-funded attempt to protect Netscape.

And so, 704 No More is an initiative that tries to sort of like slow down the uncontrolled rollout of cell tower infrastructure and 5G poles across the US.

And the reason it's called 704 No More is because Section 704 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 prohibits, expressly prohibits local authorities that have to deal with where to place these cell towers from considering the health and environmental impact of the radiation.

So when you, as a local zoning authority, are receiving an application from a telecom carrier, like, hey, I want to build a cell tower next to this school, or I want to build a cell tower in the right-of-way, in the public right-of-way in front of this home, and make no mistake, like, we are talking sometimes, we have clients where the cell tower is two feet away from their property line.

Oh, my God.

right, we got it.

So the Telecommunications Act of 1995 was a sweeping legislative effort that set the stage for modern telecommunications.

While introduced and heavily debated throughout 1995, it ultimately passed and was signed into law in 1996.

So, the core goals of the bill, the primary objective of the legislation was to foster competition, reduce government regulation, key elements included, let's go down, market integration, allowing long-distance carriers like AT&T, local phone companies, and cable operators to compete in each other's markets, deregulation, removing federal controls on cable TV pricing.

And then with the internet, that kind of vibe really finds a purchase in an alliance with the resurging conservative movement.

So Newt Gingrich, with his contract with America, is really behind the 1996 Telecommunications Act that Bill Clinton signs, but that says the Internet is basically beyond the realm of law.

This guy, John Perry Barlow, who is a very important counterculture figure, writes this Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.

He's like, you guys don't understand what we're building here, this cyberspace.