1996 Telecommunications Act Delivered an Unregulated Internet to Techno-Libertarians
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Aug 18
1996 Telecommunications Act Delivered an Unregulated Internet to Techno-Libertarians
1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Aug 18
Summary
Bill Clinton’s 1996 bipartisan Telecommunications Act cemented what the article calls an almost entirely unregulated internet, marking techno-libertarians’ decisive policy victory.
That outcome followed Newt Gingrich’s 1995 closure of the Office of Technology Assessment, which removed a federal body meant to assess the implications of new technologies as internet policy opened up.
The report argues liberal democracy enabled this shift by failing to curb corporate power or act on decades of warnings that data-driven computing could evolve into an “automated state.”
Alternative visions existed in the mid-1990s, including Michael Hauben’s call for low-cost universal access and protection of the internet as a public commons, but they lost out to libertarian ideas championed by figures like John Perry Barlow.
Set against predictions dating back to 1958, the piece frames today’s internet as a contingent political choice rather than an inevitable result of technological progress.