Wikipedia Shutting Down for 24hrs to Protest SOPA

[Gnnr]

Edit: Google and Reddit now confirmed to be joining.

To: English Wikipedia Readers and Community
From: Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Date: January 16, 2012

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate—that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.

This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made. Here’s how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:

It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations.

In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That’s a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.

But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. As Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing lists recently,

We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it.

But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or, if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.

The decision to shut down the English Wikipedia wasn’t made by me; it was made by editors, through a consensus decision-making process. But I support it.

Like Kat and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, I have increasingly begun to think of Wikipedia’s public voice, and the goodwill people have for Wikipedia, as a resource that wants to be used for the benefit of the public. Readers trust Wikipedia because they know that despite its faults, Wikipedia’s heart is in the right place. It’s not aiming to monetize their eyeballs or make them believe some particular thing, or sell them a product. Wikipedia has no hidden agenda: it just wants to be helpful.

That’s less true of other sites. Most are commercially motivated: their purpose is to make money. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a desire to make the world a better place—many do!—but it does mean that their positions and actions need to be understood in the context of conflicting interests.

My hope is that when Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will understand that we’re doing it for our readers. We support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA—and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States—don’t advance the interests of the general public. You can read a very good list of reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA here, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Why is this a global action, rather than US-only? And why now, if some American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat on SOPA?

The reality is that we don’t think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation seeking to regulate the Internet in other ways while hurting our online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.

Make your voice heard!

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On January 18, we hope you’ll agree with us, and will do what you can to make your own voice heard.

Sue Gardner,
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout - Wikimedia Foundation


Google, Facebook and Twitter also rumored to protest.

Top 10 Visited Websites Worldwide

1. Google
2. Facebook
3. Youtube
4. Yahoo
5. Baidu
6. Wikipedia
7. Window Live
8. Blogspot
9. Amazon
10. Twitter

Alexa Top 500 Global Sites

Maybe Zilvia should join in.

[keistyle]

These will be the death of the internet if it passes. :/

[keistyle]

Realistically, what would it take for these not to pass?

[Darren]

sweet, i would support that! This bill is nuts and will only hurt the people who are NOT pirating, not the people that are... Laws like this always do!

[BOROSUN]

amazon...i better order my stuff. ibtl!

[Darren]

Originally Posted by keistyle

Realistically, what would it take for these not to pass?

enough politicians to vote them down. just like any other bill...

[Gnnr]

Reddit has been confirmed to shut down.

Also how you can protest on FB:

If Facebook Won't Stop SOPA, We Can Do It For Them - Forbes

[DS562]

i blame Metallica.

[Matej]

It is somewhat unnerving that major internet providers such as Comcast and Time Warner support the bill.

[0100]

^of course they support it. They are a company that sells TV. Do you think they want any unauthorized content available for free, or even authorized entertainment for free. Trust me, they may provide internet, but they hate it. They have no control of it. With TV they have full control of what you view. The government of course hates the internet also. I am not a conspiracist, but shit like this make me think, what the land of the free will look like 10 years from now.

[dpak]

spreading the word.

[Gnnr]

Google will protest SOPA using popular home page

The tech sector is pulling out the big guns now.
(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)

Google, the Web's top search company and one of technology's most influential powers in Washington, will post a link on the company's home page tomorrow to notify users of the company's opposition to controversial antipiracy bills being debated in Congress.

Google confirmed in a statement that it will join Wikipedia, Reddit and other influential tech firms in staging protests of varying kinds against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are backed by big entertainment and media interests.

"Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet," a Google spokeswoman said. "So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our US home page."

In response to questions about how the protest link would appear, Google said it would not replace the company logo.

None of the protests are as dramatic as the one planned by Wikipedia. The English version of the Web encyclopedia is scheduled to go dark for 24 hours.

The past weekend will likely long be remembered as a turning point in the debate over how to fight online piracy in the United States. Supporters of SOPA and PIPA once could boast of wide bipartisan support but suffered a series of blows starting on Thursday to eliminate an important provision in PIPA.

By Friday, both houses of Congress had eliminated a requirement in each bill that would have required U.S. Internet service providers to cut off access to foreign sites accused of piracy.

Following that, a group of Senators--some who once supported PIPA--requested that a vote on the bill be delayed. It was denied but things kept getting worse for antipiracy proponents. On Saturday came word the House would delay a vote on SOPA and then finally the White House, considered an ally of the music and film industries, suggested in a statement that the president would not support several cornerstone provisions of the bills.

All of the news culminated in what may come to be known in the entertainment sector as Black Sunday. Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. and one of the world's preeminent media tycoons, displayed a rare public tantrum via Twitter. In his posts, he accused the president of taking his marching orders from "Silicon Valley paymasters." Murdoch suggested Google was whipping up the opposition and was a "piracy leader."

Murdoch's posts were startling. There was no hiding that copyright owners were alarmed. The tide of the legislation battle had reversed and the opposition appeared to have the upper hand.

More to come

Google will protest SOPA using popular home page | Media Maverick - CNET News

[KiLLeR2001]

lol one day of shutting down won't do anything...

[vehicle336]

^ it just made you and several others acutely aware of what's currently happening and how it will effect you.

I'd say it's working.

[Pro ViZIon]

There's no way this will pass. There's way to much publicity now.

[Fred Allen Burge]

Originally Posted by Pro ViZIon

There's no way this will pass. There's way to much publicity now.

Let's hope so. This along with the legislation about being able to detain people indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism is starting to really worry me.

[SimpleS14]

I think this act would only impact websites with a sole purpose of hosting/supplying copyright material AND reside in the US. If passed, the impact might be minimal (IMO) as the majority of certain websites are hosted outside the U.S.

[zerodameaon]

Originally Posted by SimpleS14

I think this act would only impact websites with a sole purpose of hosting/supplying copyright material AND reside in the US. If passed, the impact might be minimal (IMO) as the majority of certain websites are hosted outside the U.S.

I wish that was true but it gives ISPs free reign. Even craigslist is being targeted because selling used stuff takes away from companies selling stuff new. prepare to be like China.

[allntrlundrgrnd]

Can't believe this subject hasn't gotten more attention on Zilvia!

Here's a summary of how and why these bills will ruin the free internet as we know it.

blog.reddit -- what's new on reddit: A technical examination of SOPA and PROTECT IP

[BOROSUN]

Originally Posted by SimpleS14

I think this act would only impact websites with a sole purpose of hosting/supplying copyright material AND reside in the US. If passed, the impact might be minimal (IMO) as the majority of certain websites are hosted outside the U.S.

no free pronz for you!

[S14DB]

Originally Posted by SimpleS14

I think this act would only impact websites with a sole purpose of hosting/supplying copyright material AND reside in the US. If passed, the impact might be minimal (IMO) as the majority of certain websites are hosted outside the U.S.

Yah, and the TSA only affects terrorists...

[Gnnr]

[0100]

Ahh google grow some balls. I was hoping it would shut down today, it would have been a huge impact. At least wiki manned up.

[CleanAndLegit]

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

[BOROSUN]

without wiki i feel so stupid.

[KiLLeR2001]

Just disable JavaScript and wikipedia will work as normal.

[SimpleS14]

Originally Posted by zerodameaon

I wish that was true but it gives ISPs free reign. Even craigslist is being targeted because selling used stuff takes away from companies selling stuff new. prepare to be like China.

Yea, now I see that ISPs can block access to foreign sites :/

Other sites that blacked out:

Wired.com
http://xbmc.org/
http://n4g.com/

[zerodameaon]

Originally Posted by KiLLeR2001

Just disable JavaScript and wikipedia will work as normal.

Not the point. Sorry if some privatley ran publicly edited entity is protesting a subject that's just as important as Civil rights and you cant go to wiki for a day.

Theres another little bit to this that's hidden from the public about how the US can now extradite foreigners to the US to face trial for hosting copyrighted material on any .COM address because the US owns that web address ending. It doesn't matter if the servers are in Egypt and they do it they can still be extradited. Now if the country says no who knows what the US will do then.

[KiLLeR2001]

Originally Posted by zerodameaon

Not the point. Sorry if some privatley ran publicly edited entity is protesting a subject that's just as important as Civil rights and you cant go to wiki for a day.

I'm all for the blackout, the focus is to get the message across, which they are doing well. My method is for people who have already contributed in letting their voices be heard and need to continue about their wiki functions.

Also, if you press ESC while the page is loading it will stop the script from running and won't forward you to the blackout page.

[codyace]

Example #140408474 of a bill written on behalf of corporations, not constituents.

I'm glad wikipedia took the initiative with this, and I hope by that single screen, it helps spread the news about this happening. I would have loved to see google employ some sort of purposely scripted '30 second wait', with a warning about SOPA before showing results, like I had initially read, that would have been fantastic.