Emily Stewart

The Senate — following a grueling vote-a-rama on March 5-6 — has finally approved a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill, bringing it one step closer to becoming law. The House is slated to take up the Senate version of the bill shortly and send it to President Joe Biden for his signature. Included in the bill is a provision that establishes a $7.6 billion Emergency Connectivity Fund, to be implemented by the Federal Communications Commission, to expand internet connectivity to students and teachers during the pandemic.

Getting the internet to everyone is not just about tech: It’s even more a policy question, one tied up in politics.

A trend that all Americans should be aware of — and angry about: Across industry after industry, sector after sector, power and market share have been consolidated into the hands of handful of players. In 2019, New York University economist Thomas Philippon did a deep dive into market concentration and monopolies in 

A Q&A with Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR).

The law in question is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, written by Sen Wyden and former Rep Chris Cox (R-CA). It protects internet companies from being held liable for the content posted by their users and says they’re platforms, not publishers. It also gives them the space to police their sites and restrict and take down material as they see fit. 

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) joined the 2020 Democratic race, separating herself from the pack by talking up her efforts to take on big tech. “We need to put some digital rules into law when it comes to people’s privacy. For too long the big tech companies have been telling you ‘Don’t worry! We’ve got your back!’ while your identities are being stolen and your data is mined,” she said during her launch. “Our laws need to be as sophisticated as the people who are breaking them.” Sen.

In April, Washington lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a narrow bill that seeks to crack down on sex trafficking online. To most, it seemed like a no-brainer: Sex trafficking is obviously bad. The law, however, changed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a 20-year-old communications law that is the basis of the free internet as we know it.

As Mark Zuckerberg appears before Congress, a look at what lawmakers can and can’t do about Facebook.

One reason why network neutrality is such a big deal is that competition among broadband providers is more limited in the United States than it perhaps has to be. Other countries have found a way to create competition: forcing big internet service providers to sell access to the “last mile” of their infrastructure to other internet service providers.

While many agree the government does have a legitimate antitrust case against the megamerger between AT&T and Time Warner — the combined, vertically integrated company could potentially freeze out competitors, withhold or increase the price of premium content, and in turn harm consumers — President Donald Trump's ongoing public battle with Time Warner’s CNN has cast a heavy political shadow over the deal and the government’s objection to it. I reached out to eight experts on antitrust matters and megamergers to find out whether they think Trump’s public comments, specifically when it co