Blue Ribbon Campaign

Display the Blue Ribbon to support the essential human right of free speech, a fundamental building block of free society, affirmed by the U.S. Bill of Rights in 1791 and by the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Here at EFF, we continue to fight for the right to free speech. Our latest campaign revolves around the legal rights of bloggers and citizen journalists.

EFF is a donor-funded nonprofit group of passionate people—lawyers, technologists, volunteers, and visionaries - who depend on your support to continue successfully defending your digital rights. Litigation is particularly expensive; because two-thirds of our budget comes from individual donors, every contribution is critical to helping EFF fight —and win—more cases.

You Have the Right to Blog Anonymously. EFF has fought for your right to speak anonymously on the Internet, establishing legal protections in several states and federal jurisdictions, and developing technologies to help you protect you identity. With your support, EFF can continue to defend this right, conducting impact litigation to establish strict standards to unmask an anonymous critic in more jurisdictions.

You Have the Right to Keep Sources Confidential. In Apple v. Does, EFF is fighting to establish the reporter's privilege for online journalists before the California courts. With your support, EFF can defend news bloggers from subpoenas seeking the identity of confidential sources in more jurisdictions.

You Have the Right to Make Fair Use of Intellectual Property. In OPG v. Diebold, Diebold, Inc., a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, had sent out copyright cease-and-desist letters to ISPs after internal documents indicating flaws in their systems were published on the Internet. EFF established the publication was a fair use. With your support, EFF can help fight to protect bloggers from frivolous or abusive threats and lawsuits.

You have the Right to Allow Reader's Comments Without Fear. In Barrett v. Rosenthal, EFF is working to establish that Section 230, a strong federal immunity for online publishers, applies to bloggers. With your support, EFF can continue to protect bloggers from liability for comments left by third parties.

You Have the Right to Protect Your Server from Government Seizure. In re Subpoena to Rackspace. EFF successfully fought to unveil a secret government subpoena that had resulted in more than 20 Independent Media Center (Indymedia) news websites and other Internet services being taken offline. With your support, EFF can hold the government accountable for investigations that cut off protected speech.

You Have the Right to Freely Blog about Elections. EFF has advocated for the sensible application of Federal Election Commission rules to blogs that comment on political campaigns. With your support, EFF can continue to protect political blogs from onerous campaign regulations.

You Have the Right to Blog about Your Workplace. EFF has educated bloggers on their rights to blog about their workplace and developed technologies to help anonymous whistle bloggers. With your support, EFF can help shape the law to protect workplace bloggers from unfair retaliation.

You Have the Right to Access as Media. EFF has educated bloggers on their right to access public information, attend public events with the same rights as mainstream media, and how to blog from public events. With your support, EFF can fight for bloggers right to access as media.

Know Your Rights and Prepare to Defend Them. EFF has created the Legal Guide for Bloggers to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger and a guide on How to Blog Safely. With your support, EFF can expand and update these guides.

Support EFF by Becoming a Member Today!

Become a Blue Ribbon Site

EFF encourages you to place a Blue Ribbon Campaign icon (below) on your servers and web pages to support the campaign (described at the top of the right column of this page).

Copy and paste this text into your HTML web page where you want the Blue Ribbon icon to appear:

<div style="text-align:center"><a href="https://www.eff.org/pages/blue-ribbon-campaign"><img src="https://www.eff.org/files/br.gif" alt="Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign" /><br/>Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!</a></div>

And it will look like this:

Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!

There is also a PNG version, as well as this animated GIF version.

Or if you would like a small non-animated gif, copy and paste this text into your HTML web page where ever you want the Blue Ribbon icon to appear:

<div style="text-align:center"><a href="https://www.eff.org/pages/blue-ribbon-campaign"><img src="https://www.eff.org/files/brstrip.gif" alt="Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign" /><br/>Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!</a></div>

And it will look like this:

Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Please be sure to load OUR copy of the image (https://www.eff.org/files/br.gif) on your page, rather than using a local copy of if on your own site, unless your site gets more than 30K hits per day. This allows us to replace the "usual" Blue Ribbon icon with an "ALERT!" version (which you may or may not be seeing above, right now) during action alerts, and have that change appear on thousands of campaign participants' pages instantly, with no need for you to change your web page. (Heavy-use sites should use their own copy, and check ours periodically to see if it has changed.)

Please also make sure your link points to the EFF Blue Ribbon home page at https://www.eff.org/pages/blue-ribbon-campaign (as in the above example). Feel free to adjust image alignment and positioning, etc., to suit your page design needs.

If you are in another country and want to point to a localized alternate Blue Ribbon page please feel free to do so, and let us know where it is. We hope to work with our non-US counterparts to set up more Blue Ribbon pages for online free speech, globally.

Regional Campaigns: