Free Speech

Email allows groups to grow from a dozen friends to a hundred hobbyists to a huge, national organization. Meanwhile, blogging is transforming journalism, and websites like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive are part of a new Library of Alexandria being built online.

In countless ways, the Internet is radically enhancing our access to information and empowering us to share ideas with the entire world. Speech thrives online, freed of limitations inherent in other media and created by traditional gatekeepers.

Preserving the Internet's open architecture is critical to sustaining free speech. But this technological capacity means little without sufficient legal protections. If laws can censor you, limit access to certain information, or restrict use of communication tools, then the Internet's incredible potential will go unrealized.

The government has time and again tried doing just that—indeed, censorship laws have often aimed at speech that could not be similarly restricted offline. And when old laws are not properly adapted to this medium, it's all too easy for the government, companies, and individual litigants to undermine your rights.

EFF defends the Internet as a platform for free speech and believes that when you go online, your rights should come with you. Learn more below and consider supporting our efforts.