Wikipedia blackout in less than 15 hours

Will-O'-The-Wisp

Will-O'-The-Wisp

Cardcaptor
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2398943,00.asp

Wikipedia has pledged to go dark this Wednesday for 24 hours in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

The blackout will begin at midnight on Wednesday and run all day, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales confirmed on Twitter. It will be a global protest, but will only affect the English version of Wikipedia. The German site, however, will include a SOPA-related banner and "other languages will make their own decisions," Wales tweeted.

According to comScore data, the English Wikipedia receives 25 million average daily visitors globally, though with the press that Wednesday's protest receives, that could jump to 30 to 40 million, Wales speculated today.

"This is going to be wow. I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!" Wales tweeted.

SOPA and its Senate counterpart, PIPA, would allow the Justice Department to obtain court orders and go after overseas "rogue" Web sites that traffic in countefeit goods, from purses to prescription drugs. Initially, SOPA authorized the DOJ to block the offending Web sites, but amidst backlash, bill sponsor Rep. Lamar Smith recently stripped Domain Name System (DNS) blocking from his bill. Sen. Patrick Leahy, author of PIPA, meanwhile, said he wanted to study DNS blocking before implementation.

Without DNS blocking, SOPA would still allow officials to "follow the money" and cut off payment options to foreign illegal sites, like credit-card processing or PayPal accounts. Search engines like Google and Bing would also still be required to remove infringing Web sites from their search results. Copyright holders could also still bring claims against foreign Web sites that steal their technology, products, or IP.

As a result, detractors are concerned that SOPA and PIPA are too far-reaching and could hurt legitimate Web sites.

"We have no indication that SOPA is fully off the table. PIPA is still alive and kicking," Wales tweeted. "We need to send Washington a BIG message."

Wales stressed that the decision for a Wikipedia blackout was not his own; he put it to the community for a vote. "I'm proud to be able in some small way to have a leadership role against censorship. But the community gets the credit here," Wales tweeted.

Wikipedia is not the only site going dark on Wednesday; Reddit.com has also pledged to shut down for the day. Wales said that he "canvassed opinion long before Reddit's announcement [but it] takes us a long time to decide things."

On Saturday, the White House stepped into the SOPA/PIPA debate, pushing for legislation that respects the freedom of the Web. That prompted criticism from News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch, who recently became a vocal Twitter participant.

The Senate is scheduled to take up PIPA later this month; there is no set schedule for when SOPA will be considered. In the wake of Smith stripping DNS blocking from his bill, meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa, who has proposed the rival OPEN Act, said he would postpone a Jan. 18 hearing on the topic.
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I think it's overkill for it to go on for an entire day, but it's all for a good cause

It's not just Wikipedia! A few other sites are also fighting the good fight:
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Sucks to be those who have tests/essays to complete before the next few days, mwahaha
 
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I don't think it's overkill enough. Were I Jimbo, I'd make it public that I'd shut down Wikipedia forever if SOPA/PIPA became law.

That would get people mobilized. Like a proper, old-fashioned, hold-the-country-to-ransom strike.
 
Hmm, I'll sit aboard my pirate ship and watch what happens but the idea of wiki or even google going down for a full 24hours is a crazy thought. Gutted that i can't spend a few minutes of the day enjoying pokememe's too.

In fairness doesn't this mean that these websites are in league with anonymous to an extent? Being that both Anonymous and the aformentioned websites are trying to keep the internet "free of administration/red tape"
 
Why is Wiki shutting down for one day such a crazy thought? Your telling me, people can't go one short day without feeling the need to be mis-educated by some wiki article....remember all those many years ago when we didn't have wikipedia, but real books?
 
While I do have several hundred books, I don't remember ever having a library the size of an Amazon distribution depot containing close to the entire sum of human knowledge, no.

Wikipedia is a lot more reliable than it used to be. And if you're not looking at incredibly polarising controversial things you hold a strong opinion on, it's very informative (rightly or not, I don't imagine the Britannica rates Homoeopathy highly either). Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know the difference between Diesel hydraulic and Diesel electric locomotives and what Harold Wilson studied at university. I didn't know either of those things this morning.
 
Fairplay, I guess. But at least before the days of wiki and cohorts, if you wanted to know about something you actually had to do some real digging, and that would usually turn up some genuinely knowledgeable and balanced sources. I mean, I wouldn't have even relied on the Britannica alone either, I would have looked for some actual specialised books too. But now people just seem happy to take wiki's word for it. Don't me wrong there are some good articles on there, but I would never consider it a proper source.
 
And the same people who just "take Wiki's word for it" are just as likely to believe everything they read in their tabloid of choice, or even take your word for it if you sound convincing enough. I long ago realised that 90% of the population are gullible and easily controlled as f*ck and that statistic has never and is never going to change. I think that was the point I officially abandoned Socialism for Libertarianism, but that's a story for another time.
 
Hang on... I can still access Wikipedia...

There is an advert mentioning "imagine a world without free speech" or something like that though.
 
Well, what's really happening is most of them are going offline for america, and we being outwith the US get the same cover-ups, but can still go past and access certain sites. Twitter was actually saying they will go and blackout, so did facebook. Google is to a extent, you can still do some searches, but their logo on the front of the search engine is now covered with a black bar, which clicking on goes to a page on SOPA and PIPA. Everyone is doing something.

It should be noted, SOPA has been shelved indefinitely already, it was done about a day or so ago. So we won't see it for a year, but PIPA(Protect IP) is still a danger, so they are still going to blackout because of that, and i guess also because SOPA could have certain elements sneak into other acts they try to get out. It's worth it, it really is. I can live without most of those services for a day, and it can help prevent more censorship. So yeah.

@Tach: No, they aren't in any ways connected to Anonymous for this. They are going dark as well, true, but it wasn't them that pushed everyone else to do so. The only thing Anonymous have really done in this whole affair is tell Sony, you keep backing SOPA, we hack you worse than last time. Now Sony(and Nintendo) no longer back it. Unless you mean are people now viewing them in the same light because of this? Then the answer is still no.
 
Arbalest said:
@Tach: No, they aren't in any ways connected to Anonymous for this. They are going dark as well, true, but it wasn't them that pushed everyone else to do so. The only thing Anonymous have really done in this whole affair is tell Sony, you keep backing SOPA, we hack you worse than last time. Now Sony(and Nintendo) no longer back it. Unless you mean are people now viewing them in the same light because of this? Then the answer is still no.
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No i meant more in the stances they are now in, before wikipedia was entirely neutral in the whole "red taping the internet" vs "keep the internet open and free to all" however they are more towards the "keep the internet free" side, which is where Anonymous have always been.

The way i see it, this is doomed to fail. Think back to the days of pirate radio, the government tried to stop that and what happened? We now have hundreds of radio stations; Thats progress. So with abit of luck the main websites like google or microsoft (including all affiliated websites, MSN and so on) should shut down for 24hours and things will probably be taken very seriously.
 
You can still access the website perfectly fine on a portable device (phone/tablet) and if you still need to access the website on a normal PC, just go onto the link on that black page and it'll show you how to disable java.

or just disable it if you already know about your add ons
 
vashdaman said:
But now people just seem happy to take wiki's word for it.
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This is, of course, a bad idea. The real benefit of wikipedia is easy access to the bibliographies for the better articles.

Wiki being down for a day really *is* that big though, as far as statements of intent go. It would be like a newspaper not being printed for a day.
 
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