Wiki goes offline
January 18th, 2012 | by Web Hosting |
Wikipedia goes Offline in protest at PIPA and SOPA bills
Today the English version of Wikipedia is down (Wednesday 18th January), for the first time ever, in protest at the SOPA/PIPA bills.
Visitors to http://en.wikipedia.org today will see a message explaining the reasons behind the blackout, which says:
“For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.”
A ‘Learn More’ button further explains that “Wikipedia is protesting against SOPA and PIPA by blacking out the English Wikipedia for 24 hours, beginning at midnight January 18, Eastern Time. Readers who come to English Wikipedia during the blackout will not be able to read the encyclopedia: instead, they will see messages intended to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA, and encouraging them to share their views with their elected representatives, and via social media.”
Click the Learn More link to see how you can help stop SOPA.
Demonoid.me is also down today in protest - http://www.demonoid.me/
Reddit.com will also be down for 12 hours - http://www.reddit.com/
Google has blacked out its logo and added a Take Action link - https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
WordPress.com has censored its homepage - http://wordpress.com/
TuCows.com is protesting through its homepage - http://www.tucows.com
MIchaelMoore.com also down - http://www.michaelmoore.com/
As are countless other less known sites as you can see from the list of blackout sites found on Etsy.com, many aren’t black yet but are likely to go down later on in the day - http://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/business-topics/discuss/9631420/page/1/
As responsible netizens we strongly believe that although we are a UK Web Hosting provider we feel that it is our duty to inform the wider web community and allow them to take the actions that they see fit.
Do you agree with these organisations or do you feel that this issues are valid and Congress should implement these laws?
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Tags: netizens, PIPA, SOPA, UK Web Hosting, Wikipedia
