Blog Posts

Great news. Last night, thanks to the rapid response of Free Press activists, Arizona State University lifted its blocking of student access to Change.org.

We hope ASU understands that it must put the free speech rights of its students first. Free Press has asked the university to scrutinize its Internet-use policies to ensure they don’t compromise these online freedoms. 

People inside the D.C. bubble often tell stories about lavish fundraisers and the use of campaign cash to shore up votes in Congress. Conspiracy theories about who uses their PAC money, or direct contributions, to bend the ear of powerful committee chairmen and party leaders circulate throughout the capital faster than the Metro.

Still, the stories are usually hard to substantiate, and publicly members of Congress and their staffs are quick to deny that money has any influence at all. Rarely is the systemic corporate capture of Washington, D.C., on display in such a transparent and ugly way as it was last week.

Yesterday was unbelievable. In an unprecedented show of strength, millions of Internet users rose up against the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate’s Protect IP Act, with Wikipedia, reddit, Boing Boing, SavetheInternet.com and thousands of other sites going black to join in the protest (even Google hid its logo behind a black bar for the day). Millions sent letters to Congress, and tens of thousands picked up the phone to urge their senators to vote “no” on PIPA, which is scheduled for a Jan. 24 vote.

Tomorrow you might be wondering who turned out the lights. Don’t worry — it will simply be one of the biggest days in the history of the open Internet.

Thousands of websites — including Wikipedia, reddit, BoingBoing, FreePress.net and SavetheInternet.com — will go dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), bills in the House and Senate that could open the door to widespread censorship online.