Wikipedia Blackout: Jimmy Wales Announces Protest Of SOPA, PIPA On January 18

[qanda]

Wikipedia has apparently joined the ranks of several high-profile websites that are planning a blackout on Wednesday, January 18, in protest of Congress' proposed anti-piracy legislation.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales took to Twitter on Monday to announce that the English-language version of Wikipedia will go dark on Wednesday for 24 hours -- from midnight EST on January 18 until midnight EST January 19. He noted in a later tweet that "Final details [are] under consideration but consensus seems to be for 'full' rather than 'soft' blackout!"

(More at Link)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/16/wikipedia-blackout-jimmy-wales-sopa_n_1208947.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended from a great fan of Wikipedia.

Thanks for the thread, qanda.

[qanda]

4. No problem

So glad they are doing this!

[Jackpine Radical]

2. I love the idea of the cyber-strike.

Takes protest action into a whole new realm.

[qanda]

6. Sure enough

Hopefully, this will wake some folks up.

[bathroommonkey76]

3. All major sites should go "black" n/t

[qanda]

5. Right!

Apparently, Hollywood is going to stop production for a day to protest President Obama being against SOPA/PIPA. I wonder which would be missed more, Hollywood or our favorite internet sites?

[AlecBGreen]

15. wait, wut?

I thought its GOOD that Obama is against this bill? Isnt this a bad bill?

[quakerboy]

19. It is

I think by Hollywood, they mean RIAA and MPAA.

Although there may well be smaller players and individuals who are only looking at their own direct livelyhood and piracy, and not caring about the larger effect of the bill.

It seems to me that anything that NewsCorp and Walmart can agree is great, I can get behind opposing.

[Matilda]

17. I don't get this ...

Why would Hollywood be against SOPA?

[quakerboy]

18. Because it would give the owners

of copyrights a great deal of power to directly shut down anything they happen to be bothered by. If they can claim it violates copyright, they can shut a website down immediately, and without the owners having a chance to respond, to challenge the claim or fix the issue.

The actors and workers may or may not care overly much, but can see why the big groups that own content would love to see it pass.

Craigslist put up a bit of a primer on the topic, with some useful links

http://www.craigslist.org/about/SOPA

Wikipedias is more of a statement

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

[starroute]

7. You can do the same with your own website or blog

Last edited Mon Jan 16, 2012, 08:34 PM - Edit history (1)

https://github.com/SaraJo/SOPA-PIPA-Protest-Page

If you have access to the HTML in your homepage, between the two HEAD tags, you can drop in this bit of code. This will send your visitors to a protest page here: http://protestsopa.com.

(The code follows, but better to get it from that site to be sure of having the exact formatting.)


http://www.zdnet.com/blog/seo/hate-sopa-and-want-to-join-the-jan-18-blackout-theres-a-wordpress-plugin-for-that/4490

For example, searching the WordPress plugins page for “SOPA” yields a number of WordPress plugins like “Simple Stop SOPA”. This particular plugin will black your site out and display the following message in white text:

This site has been blocked in protest of the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) two bills which will allow the government censor the intenet. Find out more at americancensorship.org or the video below. This website will return at 8pm.

[mdmc]

8. kick

[qanda]

9. Excellent!

Thanks for sharing this information.

[i_sometimes]

10. Reddit and others are in too.

Though I read a few subs will be up.

[qanda]

11. Yes, here is a list that keeps growing

http://operationsopa.blogspot.com/2012/01/list-of-companiesorganizations-that-are.html

[47of74]

12. Good

[Kalidurga]

13. That is really weird...

I didn't see a single site that looked even remotely conservative.

[RobertBlue]

14. k&r n/t

[Celebration]

16. Wonder what Google will do that day?

I know they won't boycott, but maybe a black curtain or something, or Stop Sopa around it's search?

[BrendaBrick]

20. K&R

[qb]

21. I promised Wikipedia a donation if they did a blackout, so I'll be paying up on Thursday.