Comments of CDT with ARL and ALA to the Department of Commerce on Free Information Flow Online
The Center for Democracy & Technology (“CDT”) respectfully submits these comments in response to the Commerce Department’s Notice of Inquiry regarding the free flow of information on the Internet. CDT is a nonprofit public interest organization dedicated to preserving and promoting openness, innovation, and freedom on the global Internet. The Association of Research Libraries and the American Library Association endorse these comments.
Restrictions on the free flow of information on the Internet take a number of forms. Government policies assigning liability to online intermediaries for the content their users post serve as one of the most significant barriers to the free flow of information online. In Part I of these comments, we highlight the importance of liability protections for online intermediaries and the way these protections serve to maintain the Internet as a robust platform both for the free flow of information and for trade. In Part II, we discuss additional restrictions while addressing many of the specific questions outlined in the Notice.
On September 15, 2026, the Center for Democracy & Technology and Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus brief along with the Wikimedia Foundation in Meta Platforms v. Bonta, challenging California’s SB 976.
Not All Guardrails Are Created Equal: Comparing Content Safety and Copyright Filtering
As courts and policymakers work through questions about chatbot liability, they should be wary of analogies that flatten meaningful technical differences. Copyright filtering and safety intervention share real challenges around ambiguity and evasion, but they diverge in what each control must assess, how each manifests over the course of a conversation, and how much can be verified from the outside.
Op-Ed: France’s Constitutional Council Ruling Tests the Limits of Social Media Bans
Read our analysis the legal and policy significance of the Constitutional Council’s decision on ongoing social media age restriction and age assurance debates ahead of the most-anticipated EU-wide approach on child online safety due by December 2026.
The brief explains that Section 230’s liability protections are essential to enable free expression online and they extend to the use of automated systems to engage to rank and order content as part of traditional publishing activities.
