Wikipedia will blackout its entire English site today as a means of protesting to SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) bill which is about to head to Senate vote in the U.S.
The landmark bill (along with PIPA or ‘Protect IP Act’), which seeks to make site owners responsible for illegal hosting of content rather than the users themselves, is being hotly debated right across the world. With America the centre for much of the globe’s entertainment (particularly Hollywood), whichever way the Senate votes will have huge ramifications and flow-on effects worldwide. In practice, nobody is safe; YouTube, Reddit, Wikipedia all host shared content and could find themselves targeted. Hell, even local bros Brown Cardigan could well find themselves starning down a lawsuit in future. Also, we’re not in 2000 anymore and this isn’t Napster. It’s time to be grown up. Wiki’s big bosses had this to say:
Although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not…
We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it.
But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.
All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.
Similar blackouts are expected to take place across the web today, reaching as far as the Dons, Google. Boing Boing, Reddit and Imgur are all taking part. Shit goes down in about 6 hours, or 5pm AEST. President Obama has already signalled that unless changes are made, he will not support the bill.
So stay with us today, because it’s going to be a long 24 hours of cold turkey.
2011: Hollywood pays, but YouTube makes the world go round.
via Wikimedia
