The Internet Defense League is an organization and network launched in March 2012 with the aim of organizing protests and other responses to perceived threats to

Internet freedom Internet freedom is an umbrella term that encompasses digital rights, freedom of information, the right to Internet access, freedom from Internet censorship, and net neutrality. Some believe that Internet freedom is not a human right. They think t ...

and the open Internet. It was formed following the

protests against SOPA and PIPA On January 18, 2012, a series of coordinated protests occurred against two proposed laws in the United States Congress—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). These followed smaller protests in late 2011. Protests we ...

. It had 30,000 members as of 2013, consisting of organizations, websites, and individuals.

History

The Internet Defense League site is a creation of the

Fight for the Future Fight for the Future (often abbreviated fightfortheftr or FFTF) is a nonprofit advocacy organization, advocacy group in the area of digital rights founded in 2011. The group aims to promote causes related to copyright legislation, as well as onl ...

nonprofit, a group noted for its participation in the anti-SOPA protests of 2011, and Reddit co-founder

Alexis Ohanian Alexis Kerry Ohanian ( hy, Ալեքսիս Քերի Օհանյան; born April 24, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is best known as the co-founder and executive chairman of the social media site Reddit along with Stev ...

. The IDL officially launched on 19 July 2012. It held launch events in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, and

Ulaanbaatar Ulaanbaatar (; mn, Улаанбаатар, , "Red Hero"), previously anglicized as Ulan Bator, is the capital and most populous city of Mongolia. It is the coldest capital city in the world, on average. The municipality is located in north ce ...

. The IDL received early support from the

Mozilla Foundation The Mozilla Foundation (stylized as moz://a) is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...

the Cheezburger Network I Can Has Cheezburger? (abbreviated as ICHC) is a blog-format website featuring videos (usually involving animals) and image macros. It was created in 2007 by Eric Nakagawa (Cheezburger), from Hawaii, and his friend Kari Unebasami (Tofuburger ...

, 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 ...

Public Knowledge Public Knowledge is a non-profit Washington, D.C.-based public interest group. Founded in 2001 by David Bollier and Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge is primarily involved in the fields of intellectual property law, competition and choice in the digita ...

, OpenCongress,

Grooveshark Grooveshark was a web-based music streaming service owned and operated by Escape Media Group in the United States. Users could upload digital audio files, which could then be streamed and organized in playlists. The Grooveshark website had a sea ...

Imgur Imgur ( , stylized as imgur) is an American online image sharing and image hosting service with a focus on social gossip that was founded by Alan Schaaf in 2009. The service has hosted viral images and meme, particularly those posted on Reddit. ...

Fark Fark is a community website created by Drew Curtis that allows members to comment on a daily batch of news articles and other items from various websites. The site receives many story submissions per day and approximately 100 of them are public ...

, the

Tor Project Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to conc ...

La Quadrature du Net La Quadrature du Net ('' Squaring the Net'' in French) is a French advocacy group that promotes digital rights and freedoms for its citizens. It advocates for French and European legislation to respect the founding principles of the Internet, ...

, and the

Center for Democracy and Technology Centre for Democracy & Technology (CDT) is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation that advocates for digital rights and freedom of expression. CDT seeks to promote legislation that enables individuals to use the internet for pur ...

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

considered joining the IDL. At launch, it received endorsements from members of

U.S. Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is Bicameralism, bicameral, composed of a lower body, the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives, and an upper body, ...

, including

Darrell Issa Darrell Edward Issa ( ; born November 1, 1953) is an American businessman and politician who has served as the U.S. representative for California's 50th congressional district since 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served i ...

Ron Wyden Ronald Lee Wyden (; born May 3, 1949) is an American politician and retired educator serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States Senate, United States senator from Oregon, a seat he has held since 1996 United Stat ...

, and

Jerry Moran Gerald Wesley Moran ( ; born May 29, 1954) is an American lawyer and politician who is the senior United States senator from Kansas, a seat he has held since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he was chair of the National Republican Senat ...

. The IDL opposes CISPA, and in 2013, the IDL was active in organizing against it. Over thirty thousand websites joined their call to oppose it. After the death of

Aaron Swartz Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. A prolific programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS, the tech ...

, they also supported reforming the

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA) is a United States cybersecurity bill that was enacted in 1986 as an amendment to existing computer fraud law (), which had been included in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. The law pr ...

. In July 2013, they organized the "Restore the Fourth" campaign, in reference to the

fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. In addition, it sets requirements for issuing warrants: warrants must be issued by a judge or ...

, to protest

government surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as ...

. Thousands of websites participated in the event. They called for laws governing surveillance to be amended, and for Internet users to contact members of U.S. Congress to investigate

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

surveillance programs. They also called for websites to publish the full text of the fourth amendment. In 2015, the organization again protested NSA surveillance.

Website

According to Tiffiniy Cheng, co-founder of Fight for the Future, the aim of the Defense League site is to sign up thousands of websites, from large organizations to bloggers, who can be mobilized quickly if needed for future anti-piracy legislation protests. They use a "cat signal", inspired by the

Bat-Signal The Bat-Signal is a distress signal device appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, as a means to summon the superhero, Batman. It is a specially modified searchlight with a stylized emblem of a bat affixed to the light, allowi ...

. Speaking to CNN about why they chose a cat as their symbol, Cheng said, "There's this academic theory ... that talks about if you ban the ability of people to share cat photos, they'll start protesting en masse". The digital signal is added to supportive websites as a

web widget A web widget is a web page or web application that is embedded as an element of a host web page but which is substantially independent of the host page, having limited or no interaction with the host. A web widget commonly provides users of the ...

, drawing attention to current protests supported by the IDL. The site's slogan is "Make sure the Internet never loses. Ever."

References

External links

* {{Official, http://internetdefenseleague.org
Fight for the Future
Internet properties established in 2012 Political activism Civil liberties advocacy groups Digital rights organizations Intellectual property activism Internet privacy organizations Internet-related activism Internet-based activism

History

Website

See also

References

External links