Black World Wide Web protest
The Turn the Web Black protest, also called the Great Web Blackout,freedom of expression. Thousands of websites, including a number of major ones, joined in the protest. The campaign was noted by major media outlets such as CNN, Time magazine and The New York Times.[3][4]
Background
The legislation which gave rise to the protest threatened fines or imprisonment for those accused of distributing "indecent" or "patently offensive" materials without providing some way of blocking access to minors.[5] Opponents of the bill compared this to demanding librarians assess the age of library users before allowing them access to a particular book in the collection.[6]
The Communications Decency Act was stuck down as
William H. Rehnquist, argued that the law might have been constitutional if limited to situations concerning an intent and knowledge to provide indecent materials to children.[7]
See also
- Protests against SOPA and PIPA, also undertaken to oppose a proposed law.
References
- ^ a b Mitchell, Dan (February 8, 1997). "Remembering the Great Web Blackout". Wired. Retrieved 2010-05-15.
- ^ Initial announcement from Center for Democracy and Technology, retrieved from the Internet Archive
- ^ Collings, Anthony (February 9, 1996). "Home pages to go black in protest". CNN. Retrieved 20 November 2013.
- ^ Lewis, Peter H. (February 8, 1996). "Protest, Cyberspace-Style, for New Law". New York Times. Retrieved 20 November 2013.
- ISBN 9780816047680.
- ISBN 9781904385219.
- ^ Flagg, Gordon (May 1997). "Supreme Court strikes down Communications Decency Act". American Libraries. 28: 11–12.
External links
- Dibbell, Julian (May 1996). Town Criers for the Net. Wired Magazine, Issue 4.05.
- Copy of Yahoo! homepage on xarch
- Too Little, Too Late by Joel Snyder
- Rant on the Occasion of the Signing of the Communications Decency Act by Howard Rheingold
- How Many Sites Went Dark?: An Educated Guess by Michael A. Norwick, retrieved from the Internet Archive