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 PROTECT IP 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:
As interesting as this is to me (I’ve only written my House Rep. ~a dozen times about SOPA)…I do not see how it can be spun for very long as a technical discussion before it becomes a political one.
+1…nice, but futile. The very people who are Pro-SOPA probably never use Wiki…in essence, they are depriving the very people who would go against it.
What I worry about also is I feel there will be an inevitable counter-campaign by hackers, and this will only further the gap in knowledge that makes this an issue to begin with, and further support For the bill, not Against it.
Remember that there are always 2 sides to every coin.
Usually 3 for every story.
What one side considers good for security the other side views
as an infringement of free speech.
It all depends on how it’s interpreted and how, if passed, it’s enforced.
In my humble opinion, copyright laws are already stringent enough.
Yep, signed it myself. Another drop in the pond, for what its worth. I’ve been firmly against SOPA since it had a name, been tracking its progress for a while now.
Once any Government starts sticking their nose in on the internet you can guarantee they will use laws that advantage them.
This is the one place they cannot suppress our views.They,or big business that Government represents already own all other avenues on the media.It comes as no surprise that China filters their citizens.
Keep Big Government out of it from any country.We all suffer when they start.It will start with piracy but work its way around to privacy.
The internet helped the Arab spring.We Police the internet ourselves with thins like WOT,anti spam,anti malware etc.Leave us to it.I don,t want a Government using laws to there own ends as they usually do.
If you censor information, it is forced to go underground and out of sight. In case of good content mixed within, the good content is also being blocked. It is not about the apple, but the ones that ate of it. It now seems the easiest is to take the box of apples away,
“Simply put, S. 968 and H.R. 3261 would require ISPs to block access to foreign websites that infringe on copyrights. Online piracy from China and elsewhere is a massive problem for the media industry, one that costs as much as $250 billion per year and costs the industry 750,000 jobs, according to a 2008 statement by Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). But how exactly the bills would counter piracy has many up in arms.”
I’m all for fighting the crime of scum-sucking lowlife’s making a living off other’s work, but how it’s done can be concerning. Time will tell.
The worst part is that if this goes through and the copyright holders are given the power they want they would be able to shut down any site whether justified (in their eyes) or not. It would also require a lot of monitoring by every ISP and wind up driving the cost of internet access up for everyone. I haven’t really looked it up but I would imagine that the ISP companies are not thrilled with the prospects either.
The industry loses jobs because of greedy bosses who refuse to take a pay cut…greedy unions who do the same…Hollywood was for a long time, THE entertainment establishment.
Then things get globalized a little, and they realize they have more competition now. They also act like the now-flaky economy has nothing to do with this…fact was, people where buying an overpriced product because there was no alternatives, and they had the spare money. Now they will try to blame everything on online piracy, which of course plays its part, but is not the magic pill to fix what ails them.
I bet other industries who have similarly lost capital during our economic downturn wishes they had the luxury of blaming piracy.
BTW: If this passes…Avast! will have sold at least one of its VPNs
If this passes, the forum is in danger of being shut down at someones whim.
There are many times that some Spammer posts links to pirated stuff.
Who’s to say if the time it takes for someone to remove it is quick enough or,
if this site is in violation. >:(
Yes, the way it’s worded a site does not have to be actively hosting pirated material but simply have a link to a site that does. It’s very disturbing to say the least.
Its weird without wikipedia I usually go there to find some stuff… Today i can’t since it is blackedout. days like this makes me wish i could read other languages and understand what they say… ;D
