On January 18th, 2012, CDT joined thousands of innovators, technologists, advocates, and individuals from across the political spectrum in an online blackout and protest demonstrating broad opposition to the two bills, which had the potential to wreakhavoc on the Internet. The bills failed in the face of that unprecedented online revolt, which marked a watershed moment for the politics of Internet policy.
In the year since, this loose-knit and diverse Internet freedom coalition has successfully:
Helped achieve unprecedented bipartisan support to secure the same privacy protections for Internet communications as postal mail and phone calls by updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).
The year ahead promises more fights for individuals’ rights and the freedom to innovate on the Internet. Chief among these will be the effort to finish what was started in 2012 by passing ECPA privacy reform out of both Chambers of Congress.
But a pall is cast over this day by last week’s suicide of Aaron Swartz, a co-author of the RSS 1.0 specification, an early builder of Reddit, a founder of Demand Progress, and a stalwart advocate of an open Internet who played a key role in the victory that we celebrate today.
At the time of his death, Aaron was facing the possibility of years in federal prison for alleged violations of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a dangerously vague and overbroad law that CDT has long urged Congress to reform. In the wake of Aaron’s tragic death, Representative Zoe Lofgren has posted to Reddit a draft bill to begin that process of reform. In the spirit of the open Internet that Aaron championed, CDT has been collaborating and will continue to collaborate with allies like EFF, ACLU and Stanford’s Center for Internet & Society in an open process on Reddit to provide suggestions on how that draft can be improved and expanded before it’s introduced. Fixing the CFAA is long overdue, and we hope that this tragedy will at the very least spur Congress to finally enact these much needed reforms.
Those who fought to stop SOPA and PIPA last year, Aaron included, represent a diverse range of Internet users and organizations, opinions and tactics, but we were united by the simple vision of an Internet that is open, not closed; favors innovators, not incumbents; is a tool of freedom, not control. And though we mourn the loss of Aaron, CDT celebrates this day and looks forward to 2013 with a sense of renewed purpose and determination to continue working with our allies in the pursuit of that shared vision: a global network that is open, innovative and free.
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.
