Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Site Statement: English Wikipedia to go dark January 18 in opposition to SOPA/PIPA
By Susan Duclos
English Wikipedia to go dark January 18 in opposition to SOPA/PIPAReports of Wikipedia going dark were added as an update to a different post with the list of sites going dark in protest of SOPA (House bill- Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Senate version- Protect IP Act). More on those lists here and information here).
The official notification, via Wikimedia, is out:San Francisco -- January 16, 2012 -- On January 18, 2012, in an unprecedented decision, the Wikipedia community has chosen to blackout the English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours, in protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and PROTECTIP (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. 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.
Wikipedia administrators confirmed this decision Monday afternoon (PST) in a public statement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Action#Summary_and_conclusion):
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....
Go read the rest of this important column, here.
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