The Turn the Web Black protest, also called the Great Web Blackout, the Turn Your Web Pages Black protest,
from

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

, retrieved from the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

and Black Thursday, was a February 8–9, 1996,

online activism Internet activism involves the use of electronic-communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen social movement , movements, the deliv ...

action, led by the Voters' Telecommunications Watch and the

, paralleling the longer-term Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign organized by the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties. It provides funds for legal defense in court, ...

. It protested the

Communications Decency Act The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case '' Reno v. ACLU'', the United States Supreme Court unanimously stru ...

(CDA), a piece of rider legislation for

Internet censorship Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as ''Wikipedia.org'', for example) but exceptionally may ...

attached to the

Telecommunications Act of 1996 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is a United States federal law enacted by the 104th United States Congress on January 3, 1996, and signed into law on February 8, 1996, by President Bill Clinton. It primarily amended Chapter 5 of Title 47 of ...

, and passed by the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...

on February 1, 1996. Timed to coincide with President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

's signing of the bill on February 8, 1996, numerous websites had their background color turned to black for 48 hours to protest the CDA's perceived curtailment of

freedom of expression Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The rights, right to freedom of expression has been r ...

. Thousands of websites, including a number of major ones, joined in the protest. The campaign was noted by major media outlets such as

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

, ''Time'' magazine and ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''.

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. 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. The Communications Decency Act was stuck down as

unconstitutional In constitutional law, constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applic ...

by the

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...

in a 9–0 vote on June 26, 1997, upholding an earlier

federal district court The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district. Each district covers one U.S. state or a portion of a state. There is at least one feder ...

ruling. The majority of

Justices ''Justice'' (abbreviation: ame ''J.'' and other variations) is an honorific style and title traditionally used to describe a jurist who is currently serving or has served on a supreme court or some equal position. In some countries, a justice ma ...

found the CDA violated adults'

First Amendment First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...

free speech rights with its overbroad suppression and vague language, despite any legitimate interest of the government in protecting children from "harmful materials". A concurring minority opinion, penned by Justice

Sandra Day O'Connor Sandra Day O'Connor (March 26, 1930 – December 1, 2023) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, O' ...

and Chief Justice 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.

References

{{reflist

External links

*Dibbell, Julian (May 1996)
Town Criers for the Net
''Wired Magazine'', Issue 4.05.

on xarch
Too Little, Too Late
by Joel Snyder

by

Howard Rheingold Howard Rheingold (born 1947) is an American critic, writer, and teacher, known for his specialties on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities. B ...

How Many Sites Went Dark?: An Educated Guess
by Michael A. Norwick, retrieved from the

1996 protests 1996 in the United States 1996 in politics History of the Internet February 1996 Internet-based and online protests Internet censorship in the United States

Background

See also

References

External links