Wikipedia – World’s encyclopedia – will go dark to protest against SOPA and PIPA

Wikipedia which is known as world’s encyclopedia joins the list of entities which are taking strong action to protest against US state bills SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). The Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced on Twitter that starting at midnight on Wednesday, January 18, the English language version Wikipedia (http://www.mensxp.com/technology/internet/3426-punes-gift-to-wikipedia-a-flickr-page-called-wikipuneri.html)  will go dark for 24 hours in protest of SOPA and PIPA.

Acts which are posed to come in power to stop online piracy and IP theft have come under criticism due to the hardball punishments directed towards suspected offenders. Websites found to offer pirated content, along with the services that they use, could be hidden from US internet users by being delisted on search engines and potentially on DNS servers themselves. These acts don’t hamper the right of freedom just of the US citizens but websites and surfers across the globecheck this for more details (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/2012115121928594335.html). Just for a point of view – if these acts would have been in action few years back like they are intended now, websites such as twitter, YouTube would have never come into existence.  In short Web2.0 would still have been Web1.0 till now.

So instead of being able to access the Wikipedia (English) data users will be greeted to a landing page which will have the message to inform them about the laws and a call of action. As of now this will be seen only on the English version of the site, while there is no official word as to how other parts of the website will handle the event.

Other sites will also go dark, including the popular blog Boing Boing, Mozilla, and WordPress and Reddit, all vocal opponents of the legislation. Even the popular game Minecraft plans to go dark. Fortunately or unfortunately Twitter has revealed that it will keep its server live during the black out while Google (http://www.mensxp.com/technology/internet/6153-twitter-and-google-fight-while-users-loose.html) and Facebook have kept themselves away from the protest.

All in all main aim of the protest from the Wikipedia’s point of view is to raise enough awareness amongst citizens as well as asking people to call up their state representative to block the bills in senate.

- Mitesh Kothari