Skip to main content
Podcast Episode: About Face (Recognition)

The online world offers the promise of speech with minimal barriers and without borders. New technologies and widespread internet access have radically enhanced our ability to express ourselves; criticize those in power; gather and report the news; and make, adapt, and share creative works. Vulnerable communities have also found space to safely meet,  grow, and make themselves heard without being drowned out by the powerful. The ability to freely exchange ideas also benefits innovators, who can use all of their capabilities to build even better tools for their communities and the world.

In the U.S., the First Amendment grants individuals the right to speak without government interference. And globally, Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) protects the right to speak both online and offline. Everyone should be able to take advantage of this promise. And no government should have the power to decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t.

Government threats to online speakers are significant. Laws and policies have enabled censorship regimes, controlled access to information, increased government surveillance, and minimized user security and safety.

At the same time, online speakers’ reliance on private companies that facilitate their speech has grown considerably. Online services’ content moderation decisions have far-reaching impacts on speakers around the world. This includes social media platforms and online sites selectively enforcing their Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, and similar rules to censor dissenting voices and contentious ideas. That’s why these services must ground their moderation decisions in human rights and due process principles.

As the law and technology develops alongside our ever-evolving world, it’s important that these neither create nor reinforce obstacles to people’s ability to speak, organize, and advocate for change. Both the law and technology must enhance people’s ability to speak. That’s why EFF fights to protect free speech - because everyone has the right to share ideas and experiences safely, especially when we disagree.

Free Speech Highlights

Free Speech is Only as Strong as the Weakest Link

From Mubarak knocking a country offline by pressuring local ISPs to PayPal caving to political pressure to cut off funding to WikiLeaks, this year has brought us sobering examples of how online speech can be endangered. And it’s not only political speech that is threatened – in the United...

A person holding a megaphone that another person speaks through

Section 230

47 U.S.C. § 230The Internet allows people everywhere to connect, share ideas, and advocate for change without needing immense resources or technical expertise. Our unprecedented ability to communicate online—on blogs, social media platforms, and educational and cultural platforms like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive—is not an accident. Congress recognized that...

Free Speech Updates

Creativity and Innovation issue banner, a colorful graphical representation of a light bulb

Auerbach v ICANN

EFF fought for open, transparent governance of the domain name system. Karl Auerbach began asking for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers's (ICANN) corporate records in November 2000, shortly after he was voted as the North American Elected Director of ICANN. ICANN management proceeded to obstruct his access to...
Free Speech banner, an colorful graphic representation of a megaphone

Intel v. Hamidi Archive

Email Is Free Speech, Not Trespass When former Intel employee Ken Hamidi sent email messages to Intel employees complaining about the company's allegedly unfair labor practices, Intel brought suit. The company won an injunction on a "trespass to chattels" theory, arguing that Hamidi's emails had harmed Intel's computers. EFF stepped...

Felten, et al., v. RIAA, et al.

Recording Industry Cannot Gag Computer Scientists The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) threatened security researchers from Princeton and Rice to stop them from publishing their study of a weak technological protection scheme for CDs called SDMI. EFF filed a lawsuit to protect the researchers' First Amendment right to publish...
Free Speech banner, an colorful graphic representation of a megaphone

DVDCCA v Bunner and DVDCCA v Pavlovich

Code == Speech: Defending Publishers of DVD Descrambling Code The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA), a mouthpiece of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), sued dozens of people in venues across the country and around the world for publishing DeCSS, software code that decrypts the data on commercial DVDs...

Pages

Back to top

JavaScript license information