The Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign (officially the Blue Ribbon Campaign for Online Freedom of Speech, Press and Association) is an online advocacy campaign for

intellectual freedom Intellectual freedom encompasses the freedom to hold, receive and disseminate ideas without restriction. Viewed as an integral component of a democratic society, intellectual freedom protects an individual's right to access, explore, consider, and ...

on the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, orchestrated by the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...

(EFF).

Web site A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipe ...

owners are encouraged to place images of

blue ribbon The blue ribbon is a symbol of high quality. The association comes from The Blue Riband, a prize awarded for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by passenger liners and, prior to that from Cordon Bleu, which referred to the blue ribbon w ...

s on their sites and link to EFF's campaign. This is done so that they can help spread awareness of the threats to unrestricted speech in new media.

History

The campaign was launched immediately after the passing of the

Communications Decency Act The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case ''Reno v. ACLU'', the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck ...

(CDA) in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

on February 1, 1996, followed by the

Black World Wide Web protest The Turn the Web Black protest, also called the Great Web Blackout, the Turn Your Web Pages Black protest,unconstitutional Constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applicable constitution. When l ...

in large part by the

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

on June 26, 1997 in a joint

ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

/EFF suit. EFF relaunched the campaign on June 15, 1998 to raise awareness of other legislation that they felt threatened freedom of expression online, especially the CDA follow-up bill, the

Child Online Protection Act The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was a law in the United States of America, passed in 1998 with the declared purpose of restricting access by minors to any material defined as harmful to such minors on the Internet. The law, however, never ...

(COPA), also eventually overturned.

External links

;General information *.

, February 1, 1996. *.

, 1996.
"Help Us Protect Free Speech Online!"
– protest campaign by EFF
The campaign's launch message as archived from Usenet"EFF Urges Internet Users to Join a New Blue Ribbon Campaign to Oppose Current Attempts to Censor the Net"
''EFFector'' online newsletter, Vol. 11, No. 9;

, June 15, 1998.

References

{{reflist Ribbon symbolism Internet-based and online protests Internet-related activism Projects established in 1996 Electronic Frontier Foundation Communications Decency Act