Wikipedia will black out the English language version of its website Wednesday to protest anti-piracy legislation under consideration in Congress, the foundation behind the popular community-based online encyclopedia said in a statement Monday night.
The website will go dark for 24 hours in an unprecedented move that brings added muscle to a growing base of critics of the legislation. Wikipedia is considered one of the Internet’s most popular websites, with millions of visitors daily.
“If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States,” the Wikimedia foundation said.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Protect Intellectual Property Act under consideration in the Senate are designed to crack down on sales of pirated U.S. products overseas.
Supporters include the film and music industry, which often sees its products sold illegally. They say the legislation is needed to protect intellectual property and jobs.
Critics say the legislation could hurt the technology industry and infringe on free-speech rights. Among their concerns are provisions that would weaken cyber-security for companies and hinder domain access rights.
The most controversial provision is in the House bill, which would have enabled federal authorities to “blacklist” sites that are alleged to distribute pirated content. That would essentially cut off portions of the Internet to all U.S. users. But congressional leaders appear to be backing off this provision.
Tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, eBay, AOL and others have spoken out against the legislation and said it threatens the industry’s livelihood. Several online communities such as Reddit, Boing Boing and others have announced plans to go dark in protest as well.
The Obama administration also raised concerns about the legislation over the weekend and said it will work with Congress on legislation to help battle piracy and counterfeiting while defending free expression, privacy, security and innovation in the Internet.
Wikipedia’s decision to go dark brings the issue into a much brighter spotlight. A group of Wikipedia users have discussed for more than a month whether it should react to the legislation.
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One Response
SOPA (HR 3261) was shelved yesterday after the White House came out against the bill, causing concern that the bill may be vetoed. Shelving a bill does not mean that the bill has been killed and it can come back into play at any time.
SOPA’s twin in the senate (PIPA) is still alive, and may be passed
To any webmasters reading this you can find the code to blackout YOUR site tomorrow by doing a quick google search, if you run a wordpress blog there is a plugin available as well. If sites as large as facebook, twitter, and google (Which would all be affected by this bill) would blackout even for a few minutes tomorrow, that would have a large impact, and bring pubic awareness to this issue. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that any of them would take such drastic measures.