View source for Black World Wide Web protest

{{Short description|1996 online activism action}}
{{about|the original Web blackout protesting "online indecency" legislation|2011–2012 actions against "online piracy" legislation|Protests against SOPA and PIPA}}
The '''Turn the Web Black''' protest, also called the '''Great Web Blackout''',<ref name="Mitchell">{{Cite magazine |url=https://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/02/1947 |title=Remembering the Great Web Blackout |magazine=Wired |last=Mitchell |first=Dan |date=February 8, 1997 |accessdate=2010-05-15}}</ref> the '''Turn Your Web Pages Black''' protest,<ref name="CDT">[https://web.archive.org/web/20080117200241/http://www.cdt.org/speech/cda/960203_48hrs_alert.html Initial announcement] from [[Center for Democracy and Technology]], retrieved from the [[Internet Archive]]</ref> and '''Black Thursday''',<ref name="Mitchell" /> was a February 8–9, 1996, [[online activism]] action, led by the Voters' Telecommunications Watch and the [[Center for Democracy and Technology]], paralleling the longer-term [[Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign]] organized by the [[Electronic Frontier Foundation]].  It protested the [[Communications Decency Act]] (CDA), a piece of [[Rider (legislation)|rider legislation]] for [[Internet censorship]] attached to the [[Telecommunications Act of 1996]], and passed by the [[United States Congress]] on February 1, 1996. Timed to coincide with President [[Bill Clinton]]'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]]. 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)|''Time'' magazine]] and ''[[The New York Times]]''.<ref name=Collings>{{cite news|last=Collings|first=Anthony|title=Home pages to go black in protest|url=http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9602/cyber_censors/index.html|accessdate=20 November 2013|newspaper=CNN|date=February 9, 1996}}</ref><ref name=Lewis>{{cite news|last=Lewis|first=Peter H.|title=Protest, Cyberspace-Style, for New Law|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/08/us/protest-cyberspace-style-for-new-law.html|accessdate=20 November 2013|newspaper=New York Times|date=February 8, 1996}}</ref>

== 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.<ref name=Henderson>{{cite book|last=Henderson|first=Harry|title=Library in a book : power of the news media|year=2004|publisher=Facts On File|location=New York|isbn=9780816047680|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/powerofnewsmedia0000hend}}</ref> 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.<ref name=Murray>{{cite book|last=Murray|first=Andrew D.|title=The regulation of cyberspace : control in the online environment|year=2006|publisher=Routledge-Cavendish|location=Milton Park, Abingdon, UK|isbn=9781904385219|edition=1st}}</ref>

The Communications Decency Act was stuck down as [[unconstitutional]] by the [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]] in a 9–0 vote on June 26, 1997, upholding an earlier [[United States federal district court|federal district court]] ruling. The majority of [[United States Supreme Court Justice|Justices]] found the CDA violated adults' [[First Amendment]] free speech rights with its [[Overbreadth doctrine|overbroad]] suppression and [[Vagueness doctrine|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]] 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.<ref name=Flagg>{{cite journal|last=Flagg|first=Gordon|title=Supreme Court strikes down Communications Decency Act|journal=American Libraries|date=May 1997|volume=28|pages=11–12}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Protests against SOPA and PIPA]], also undertaken to oppose a proposed law.

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*Dibbell, Julian (May 1996). [https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.05/scans.html Town Criers for the Net]. ''Wired Magazine'', Issue 4.05.
*[http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/speech.html Copy of Yahoo! homepage] on [[xarch]]
*[http://www.opus1.com/www/jms/iw-may96.html Too Little, Too Late] by Joel Snyder
*[http://www.well.com/~hlr/texts/rant24hrs.html Rant on the Occasion of the Signing of the Communications Decency Act] by [[Howard Rheingold]]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/19980121045936/http://www.bababooey.com/monkey/study.html How Many Sites Went Dark?: An Educated Guess] by Michael A. Norwick, retrieved from the [[Internet Archive]]

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