Wikipedia 24 hour black out – a protest against SOPA and PIPA

January 17th, 2012 by Lloyd Gofton

Wikipedia has announced that it will be holding a 24 hour blackout for its English language site from 05.00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18. You can read the statement from the Wikimedia foundation here and press release here.

The statement confirms: “In an unprecedented decision, the Wikipedia community has chosen to blackout the English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours, in protest against proposed legislation in the United States - the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and PROTECTIP (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States.”

This means that on Wednesday any visitors to Wikipedia (There are believed to be around 100 million English-speaking Wikipedia users) will only have access to an open letter encouraging them to contact the U.S. Congress (or local authority outside of the U.S.) in protest.

Some have said that the blackout is unnecessary because a major target of the protest, SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act), has already been halted by opposition from the White House, but Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, said the blackout would go ahead anyway, by tweeting: “PIPA is still extremely dangerous,”

PIPA (or the Protect Intellectual Property Act), is still under consideration by the Senate, and has stirred many of the Web’s vocal commentators into action. Jimmy Wales also tweeted.

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

“My goal is to melt switchboards!,”

“We have no indication that SOPA is fully off the table. We need to send Washington a BIG message.”

The user-generated news site Reddit and the blog Boing Boing have also said they will take part in the blackout.

So why such a response to the acts? Well, SOPA and PIPA plan to impose responsibilities on websites such as Wikipedia to check that no material they host infringes copyright. Under current laws if websites remove pirated content when they are notified by the copyright holder they are not liable for damages.

The proposed laws also make it easier for American copyright holders to cut off access to foreign websites hosting unlicensed copies of films, music and television programs, which has recently been evidenced by the case of an English student, Richard O’ Dwyer, who is accused of creating a website that provided links where people could illegally access film and documentary material.

He now faces 10 years in jail for operating a website that U.S. authorities say hosts links to copyrighted material after a judge ruled that the 23 year old can be extradited to the US.

He is arguing that under the so-called dual criminality rule, since he has not been charged for an offence in the UK, the US has no right to extradite him.

The U.S. SOPA and PIPA legislation has been backed by major media owners, including Rupert Murdoch, and opposed by the giants of Silicon Valley, including Google and Facebook.

On Friday the White House said it would not approve key parts of the SOPA bill, which means it will need to be re-written and proposed. A statement from the Whitehouse said the provisions for blocking foreign websites “pose a real risk to cyber security“. And later confirmed : “Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small,”

This brought a reaction from Rupert Murdoch over the weekend, who called Google a ‘piracy leader‘ and suggested ‘Barack Obama had thrown his lot in with Silicon Valley Paymasters’, to which Google replied:

“This is just nonsense. Last year we took down 5 million infringing web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads.

“Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking US companies to censor the Internet.”

Further information on the Wall Blog.

Jimmy Wales has urged us to take action: “Today Wikipedians from around the world have spoken about their opposition to this destructive legislation.

“This is an extraordinary action for our community to take - and while we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world.

“We urge Wikipedia readers to make your voices heard. If you live in the United States, find your elected representative in Washington (https://www.eff.org/sopacall). If you live outside the United States, contact your State Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs or similar branch of government. Tell them you oppose SOPA and PIPA, and want the internet to remain open and free.”

There is an argument to say Wikipedia should remain impartial, but this is very difficult when its core focus will be so badly affected by the proposed legislation, and I support its stand to raise awareness of the issues.

To get further detail, pleased read the Telegraph’s overview of the story: 

Or the BBC has a good round-up.

Mashable also offers a good run down of the U.S. Government’s position.

      

Tags: Copyright, google, Legislation, Murdoch, PIPA, Piracy, SOPA, Wikipedia

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 at 11:39 am and is filed under Blog, Blogging, Content, Digital media, Useful resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.