The statutes database contains the full text of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended. Also included is a separate, unengrossed version of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and its legislative history, and several other broadcast-related statutes. Specifically, this service includes the folllowing statutes:
- Communications Act of 1934, as amended
- Telecomminications Act of 1996 (Conference Report with text of Act)
- Senate Report on the 1996 Act
- House Report on the 1996 Act
- Communications Satellite Act of 1962
- SHVIA (Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999)
- Criminal Provisions: Lottery Broadcasts
- Copyright Act (excerpts)
- Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1969
- Smokeless Tobacco Health Education Act of 1986
This feature allows you to browse a list of statutes and documents and their respective sections. To select a specific document and/or section, click browse and select statutes to search. Then, click on a document title to see a list of sections in that document. You may then click the section you wish to view or search.
To select one or more federal statutes or other documents to search, you may also check the box adjacent to the relevant documents and click SEARCH STATUTES.
Use this field to search for words or phrases within the statutes database, or within the document you chose using the browse or search fields described above. You do not need to use any special punctuation or commands to search for a phrase. Simply enter the phrase the way it ordinarily appears. If a phrase contains a noise word, your search will skip over that word when searching for it. Use connector, wildcard and stemming tools to fine-tune your results.
| Examples: | satellite | |
| competitive bidding | ||
| frequency or spectrum | ||
| application and fees |
Your search may consist of a group of words or phrases linked by connectors such as and and or that indicate the relationship between them.
| Examples: | apple and pear | « Both words must be present | |
| apple or pear | « Either word can be present | ||
| apple w/5 pear | « Apple must occur within 5 words of pear | ||
| apple not w/5 pear | « Apple must not occur within 5 words of pear | ||
| apple and not pear | « Only apple must be present |
If you use more than one connector, you should use parentheses to indicate precisely what you want to search for. For example, apple and pear or orange juice could mean (apple and pear) or orange, or it could mean apple and (pear or orange).
Noise words, such as if and the, are ignored in searches. » More about connectors
A search word can contain the wildcard characters * and ?. A ? in a word matches any single character, and a * matches any number of characters. The wildcard characters can be in any position in a word.
| Examples: | appl* | « would match apple, application, etc. | |
| *cipl* | « would match principle, participle, etc. | ||
| appl? | « would match apply and apple but not apples. | ||
| apple not w/5 pear | « Apple must not occur within 5 words of pear | ||
| ap*ed | « would match applied, approved, etc |
Note that use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word may slow search performance.
You may use the ~ character to extend or stem your search to cover grammatical variations on a word.
| Examples: | test~ | « would also find testing | |
| apply~ | « would also find applying, applies, and apply |
» More search tips
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