English Wikipedia blacking out to protest SOPA/PIP

[stormeus]

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 PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate -- that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

And on January 19th, many American students will fail their essay assignments.

In all seriousness, I have to applaud them. Only by blacking out the project would people understand how catastrophic such a bill can be. As for concerns about U.S. holy veneration (thanks for that bit, JDC :p), they make another fair point that

although Wikipedia's articles are neutral, its existence is not.

Your thoughts?

[Aldo]

._.

[Matt Murdock]

Dude, I had to make my Geography assignment. FML -.-

[Teddy]

Its more than wikipedia
Its intended to be one of the largest online protest in history, but it may not be.

sopastrike.com is one of the groups leading the protest for today! Many sites have taken action.

For those not in the USA google has placed this logo for today:



Anyways, its a pretty serious deal.  :P

and my thought is that its bogus and illegal for this act to pass and exist.

[Aimzz]

Looked at sopastrike.com, looks like shitloads of websites are participating in this, including minecraft.net. :o

[Aldo]

http://www.aldo-aldo.com/

http://www.sf-ds.info/

 

[JayL]

Terribly easy to bypass the blackout.

[stormeus]

Terribly easy to bypass the blackout.

That's intentional, apparently. Wikipedia promised to make the website available in some way in the event of an "emergency." :roll:

Even if you do get in, the entire wiki is locked for the day.

[Janicch]

This is serious business, gentlemen.

First of all,
Anonymous SOPA

And few days after - Nintendo, Sony Stop Supporting SOPA After Anonymous Threats

Applause.

[Reece]

These two bills, if passed could be the most damaging things to ever occur to the internet.

The impacts would be vast and so devastating to the world the internet will simply no longer be free.

Oh and if you want to read a wikipedia article, just add ?banner=none to the end of the URL.

[Get Murked]

Google chrome translates, you failed Wikipedia.

[Alsatian]

Terribly easy to bypass the blackout.

Yeah, just press ESC before it redirects. The amount of people I know crying because they can't plagiarize for their assignments and what not was... well, sad.

Looked at sopastrike.com, looks like shitloads of websites are participating in this, including minecraft.net. :o

PIPA + SOPA? HOW ABOUT NOPA!

[Julio.]

Personally I went for the 'Disable Javascript' approach. 

[CharlieKasper]

I've had read about this in the newspaper. However, I'm perplexed, will it only affect USA or the entire world after the bill is passed?

P.S. Reece's idea of adding ?banner=none had worked yesterday!

[Alsatian]

I've had read about this in the newspaper. However, I'm perplexed, will it only affect USA or the entire world after the bill is passed?

P.S. Reece's idea of adding ?banner=none had worked yesterday!

It won't have that much of an affect on people outisde of the US. If you're concerned about the future of sites such as YouTube, then don't - they'll just move their servers to another country where they can't touch them. Still, that's not the point: this bill is absolute bullshit.