Deeplinks

As 2012 comes to a close, I've been reflecting on the relentless series of campaigns, publications, and cases in which the dedicated lawyers, technologists, and activists of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have engaged in service of a better, freer digital future.  With help from supporters like you, we've been able to accomplish so much.

The year started off perilously as we fought back a pair of dangerous Internet censorship bills (popularly known as SOPA and PIPA) backed by copyright maximalists.  EFF played a critical role during the day-long website blackout protest by Google, Wikipedia, and others, as millions of Internet users were referred to EFF's website for an explanation of the dangers and an opportunity to take action.  Nearly two million emails were sent through EFF's action center to let Congress know how you felt, and together we were able to successfully de-rail the legislation.

A few hours after EFF and the ACLU of Northern California filed a class action lawsuit in San Francisco federal court challenging California's recently enacted Proposition 35, the court issued a temporary restraining order, blocking implementation of the initiative due to the existence of "serious questions" about whether it violated the First Amendment.

Censorship circumvention software is about to become very popular in Egypt. On Wednesday, the country’s Prosecutor General, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, ordered government ministries to enforce a ban on pornographic websites, based on a three-year old ruling by Egypt’s administrative court, which declared that “freedom of expression and public rights should be restricted by maintaining the fundamentals of religion, morality and patriotism” and denounced pornographic content as “venomous and vile.”

An anonymous government official claims that the order was a response to the ultraconservative Salafi “Pure Net” campaign, which staged a demonstration in front of the Cairo’s High Court on Wednesday, calling for an enforcement of the ban on Internet pornography on the grounds that such sites “violate Egyptian customs and values.”