Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign

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The Blue Ribbon Campaign for Online Freedom of Speech, Press and Association, or Blue Ribbon Campaign for short, is an online campaign for free speech on the Internet orchestrated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Web site owners are encouraged to place images of blue ribbons on their sites and link to EFF's campaign, to help spread awareness of the threats to unrestricted speech. The campaign was launched immediately after the passing of the Communications Decency Act in the United States on February 1, 1996, followed by the Black World Wide Web protest on February 8, 1996, and remained popular throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s.

The Communications Decency Act was ruled unconstitutional in large part by the Supreme Court on June 26, 1997, but EFF relaunched the campaign on June 15, 1998 to raise awareness of other legislation that they felt threatened freedom of expression online.

[edit] External links

• Help Us Protect Free Speech Online! Protest by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
• 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, Vol. 11, No. 9, Newsletter by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, June 15, 1998