January 18th, 2012 is the largest online protest in history, to stop the internet censorship bills, SOPA & PIPA. Join in by blacking out your site and urging everyone you can reach to contact Congress now.
Wikipedia's
English home page says, in part, "Right now, the U.S. Congress is
considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open
Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out
Wikipedia."
Updated at 5:05 a.m. ET:
Any student burning the midnight oil Tuesday may have been disappointed
as what has become a primary research tool, Wikipedia, blacked out its
Web pages as part of a global protest against anti-piracy legislation
making its way through Congress.
"Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!," warned Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on Twitter, and with that, one of the most heavily visited websites began a 24-hour "blackout."
Google
slapped a virtual black tape across the word "Google" on its home page,
as if it were muffled, although it continued to be available for
search. Social news site Reddit said it will be blacked out for 12
hours, starting at 8 a.m. ET. The metaphor by the protesting sites: To
shutter and silence the Internet the same way many in the tech world say
will happen if the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect
IP Act in the Senate move forward.
Google's protest of proposed anti-piracy legislation includes blacking out its own name on its home search page. |
You
could still access Wikipedia in Spanish, or French, or German or
Russian or many other languages; just not English. "This is going to be
wow," Wales said on Twitter. "I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems
in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!"
However, it
emerged there was a way to access Wikipedia pages. They briefly show
normally before being replaced by a notice explain the action. Pressing
the escape button, prevents this from happening, although it must be
done for every individual page.
The two bills, supported supported
mainly by the entertainment industry, are aimed at stopping illegal
downloading and streaming of movies and TV shows. But many in the tech
world — including giants Google and Facebook — say the legislation would
let federal authorities shut down portions of the Internet without due
process, and fundamentally alter the Internet's ability to provide a
platform for free speech.
(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of
Microsoft and Comcast/NBC Universal. Comcast/NBC Universal is listed as a
supporter of SOPA on the House Judiciary Committee website. On Tuesday,
Microsoft itself said it opposes SOPA as it is "currently drafted.")
"This
is an extraordinary action for our community to take," Wikipedia's
Wales said earlier in the week about the blackout, adding, "...we simply
cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in
the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of
Internet censorship for the world."
Wales said the English version of Wikipedia gets about 25 million visits a day, according to comScore.
The
site has become almost a staple of daily Web surfing, whether it's
directly sought out or cited on search engines like Google.
It's
not just desperate students looking to it for information on their way
to getting a degree; it' about 53 percent of all adult Internet users in
the U.S., said the Pew Internet & American Life Project last year.
"The
percentage of all American adults who use Wikipedia to look for
information has increased from 25 percent in February 2007 to 42 percent
in May 2010," Pew said.
It also noted that Wikipedia is "more
popular than sending instant messages ... or rating a product, service,
or person ... but is less popular than using social network sites" or
watching videos on sites like YouTube.
Tech website Boing Boing
also went black, saying in part: "Boing Boing is offline today, because
the US Senate is considering legislation that would certainly kill us
forever. The legislation is called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), and would
put us in legal jeopardy if we linked to a site anywhere online that had
any links to copyright infringement."
Boing Boing's home page as of Wednesday. |
Several
other sites plan to go dark Wednesday to protest the legislation. Among
them: icanhazcheeseburger sites (those goofy ones you visit to see cats
on the Internet or serial killers) including Know Your Meme and The
Daily What).
A list of websites participating in the protest is available here.
The
Internet Archive, a non-profit site that works with the likes of the
Library of Congress and the Smithsonian to catalog and make documents,
audio and video available to the public, plans to be dark from 6 a.m. to
6 p.m. PT.
"Legislation such as this directly affects libraries
such as the Internet Archive, which collects, preserves, and offers
access to cultural materials," the Internet Archive said on its blog.
"These bills would encourage the development of blacklists to censor
sites with little recourse or due process. The Internet Archive is
already blacklisted in China — let’s prevent the United States from
establishing its own blacklist system."
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