Categories: Web

Wikipedia community has spoken, global anti-SOPA blackout protest begins Wednesday

The Wikipedia community has spoken. A 24-hour anti-SOPA blackout protest will begin on Wednesday, January 18 at 5pm Western European Time (WET). During this 24-hour period, English language Wikipedia articles will be unavailable globally – a unprecedented move never before seen in the crowd-sourced encyclopedia’s 11-year history.

On Wednesday, all English language entries will be made unavailable. Instead, a letter from the Wikipedia community will be presented, calling users to action against both the Stop Online Piracy Act (#SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (#PIPA).

Reddit and the Cheezburger network of sites already have similar protest plans in place, as well as software download site Tucows and gaming phenomenon Minecraft, who recently announced it had reached 20 million registered players.

Wikipedia is by far the most influential element to Wednesday’s planned protest. On an average day, English language articles receive 25 million hits.

With Wikipedia now strongly on board, the fight against SOPA appears to be strengthening. Even the Whitehouse somewhat criticised both bills, calling for more “sound legislation” against content piracy.

Our guide to SOPA explains the bill in more detail and describes why it’s so controversial.

Albizu Garcia

Albizu Garcia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gain -- a marketing technology company that automates the social media and content publishing workflow for agencies and social media managers, their clients and anyone working in teams.

View Comments

Recent Posts

With pet market projecting to grow to $500 billion, Dosty looks to become industry’s super app

Sometimes pets can be a mystery to their parents. What do they feel, what symptoms…

13 hours ago

Transforming Insurance: The Impact of Technology and AI on the Industry

A Q&A with Glenn Humphrey, VP at the Insurance Office of America In this insightful…

18 hours ago

Op-Ed: Leveraging AI to elevate logistics workforce productivity and address job security concerns

A typewriter in the 80s wrote around 60 words a minute. Forty years later, the…

4 days ago

The ‘Give and Take’ that Companies Must Face with Automation

Guest author: Shagun Malhotra, Founder of SkyStem LLC Nowadays, automation technologies are an indispensable part…

4 days ago