2017: Annie Game, Mike Masnick, Chelsea Manning

2016: Malkia Cyril, Max Schrems, Authors of Keys Under Doormats, and Senators Mark Leno and Joel Anderson

2015: Caspar Bowden, The Citizen Lab, Anriette Esterhuysen and the Association for Progressive Communications, and Kathy Sierra

2014: Trevor Paglen, Frank LaRue, Zoe Lofgren

2013: Aaron Swartz, James Love, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras

2012: Andrew 'bunnie' Huang, Jérémie Zimmerman, the Tor Project

2011: Ron Wyden, Ian Goldberg, Nawaat.org

2010: Steven Aftergood, James Boyle, Pamela Jones and the Groklaw Website, Hari Krishna Prasad Vemuru

2009: Limor "Ladyada" Fried, Harri Hursti, Carl Malamud

2008: The Mozilla Foundation and Mitchell Baker, Michael Geist, Mark Klein

2007: Yochai Benkler, Cory Doctorow, Bruce Schneier

2006: Craigslist, Gigi Sohn, Jimmy Wales

2005: Mitch Kapor, Edward Felten, Patrick Ball

2004: Kim Alexander, David Dill, Aviel Rubin

2003: Amy Goodman, Eben Moglen, David Sobel

2002: Dan Gillmor, Beth Givens, Jon Johansen and Writers of DeCSS

2001: Bruce Ennis, Seth Finkelstein, Stephanie Perrin

2000: "Librarians Everywhere," Tim Berners-Lee, Phil Agre

1999: Jon Postel, Drazen Pantic, Simon Davies

1998: Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Barbara Simons

1997: Hedy Lamarr, Johan Helsingius, Marc Rotenberg

1996: Robert Metcalfe, Peter Neumann, Shabbir Safdar and Matthew Blaze

1995: Philip Zimmermann, Anita Borg, Willis Ware

1994: Ivan Sutherland, Bill Atkinson, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, Murray Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Lee Felsenstein, the WELL

1993: Paul Baran, Vinton Cerf, Ward Christensen, Dave Hughes, the USENET software developers

1992: Douglas C. Engelbart, Robert Kahn, Jim Warren, Tom Jennings, Andrzej Smereczynski