[5] In 1994, Mark Ockerbloom created Banned Books On-Line in response to the censoring of usenet newsgroups on Carnegie Mellon's servers.

[1] A number of organizations including Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union were opposing the Communications Decency Act around that time and took note of Banned Books On-Line, linking to it from their websites.

[1] In 1998, Mark Ockerbloom joined as a plaintiff along with columnist Rob Morse of the San Francisco Examiner, the ACLU and others in a federal lawsuit against a library using web filtering software.

[1][6] The Loudoun County Library in Virginia installed X-Stop filtering software created by Log-On Data Corporation.

He has said the Copyright Term Extension Act can have a chilling effect on websites that provide readers easy access to books online and is concerned about the conflict between the public good and the interests of for-profit enterprises.