SOPA & PIPA Protests
Jan 17th, 2012 | 9 responses
Wikipedia is shutting down its English language site tomorrow to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales tweeted the announcement yesterday, “Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!”
“The whole thing is just a poorly designed mess,” Wales said in an email to The Associated Press.
“I am personally asking everyone who cares about freedom and openness on the Internet to contact their Senators and Representative,” Wales said. “One of the things we have learned recently during the Arab Spring events is that the Internet is a powerfully effective tool for the public to organize and have their voices heard.”
“This is going to be wow,” Wales tweeted. “I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday.”
The Wikipedia move, a decision of the Wikipedia community, follows reddit which announced last week that it will go offline for 12 hours on the same day.
Twitter will not be going dark.
Over the weekend President Obama said he would not support SOPA. And key sponsors are edging away from the bills’ most controversial features.
Meanwhile, the law’s lesser-known relation, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), is still scheduled for a vote in the Senate next week.
9 Responses to “SOPA & PIPA Protests”
Would have been nice if someone had done this before we got our rights to a trial stripped from us by Obama signing the defense bill act. Call for this too by all means, but while you’ve got your Senators and Congressmen on the phone, bitch about the fact we and they can be legally arrested in the middle of the night without trial on trumped up charges.
Little by little we are the frog in the pot of water. Where the temperature rose until it cooked and it was unaware what was happening, so to our we losing our freedoms one small bit by bit daily.
This is just one more little bit the government is stripping from our freedoms.
Americans wake up before you are the frog!!
Maybe we are due for an Arab spring ourselves?
I thought Eric Cantor effectively killed SOPA yesterday. I know PIPA is still alive but why would Wikipedia shut down to protest SOPA?
This seems a mixed thing, given that there are serious concerns about the legislation (including what power it grants to favored private parties, effectively) but of course we have the silly childish pouting we can always expect from the “no limits” crowd (that wants corporations attacked so much).
I’m not sure if this legislation is sinister, rewarding big campaign contributors, enabling the power-hungry, or just another example of government’s reverse Midas touch, or what combination.
As for RP’s remark, the warnings have been derided for seventy and more years, and they will continue to be derided.
An educated and well informed citizenry is critical to the health of this country. The founders knew this and wrote about it often. Today’s “leaders” (and their minions) act as though citizens with access to knowledge are a threat.
Don’t these guys have IT people in their staff that could explain what’s wrong with the approaches that these bills use?
Prof… that would assume that our politicians actually read the bills that lobbyists make them pass.
This is just terrible….SOPA is the equivalent of curing a headache with a guillotine. It may stop piracy, but it would shut down our economy and unconstitutionally erode our most basic freedoms in the process.
I just hope that everyone realizes how important this is and does their part to save the internet & our economy! …here is another good video that explains the consequences of SOPA pretty well:
http://www.peeje.com/peeje-goes-strike-stop-web-censorship-bills-congress-209/
1,000s of more websites have joined the force and went dark today, we need EVERYONES help!!!!