Wikipedia makes unprecedented protest. Blacks out world for a day.

Protesting Obama’s new copyright laws, Wikipedia plans to black out the world starting at midnight Zulu.

As this law will apply to pretty much everyone and everything, it is clearly meant for selective enforcement. This would mean that the normally left leaning wikipedia has far less to fear than, say for example, anyone critical of the teachings or effects of Islam might. So please read as many articles here as you can. Copy them for emails whatever you can do if you believe that opposition to the largest social experiment of all time should be allowed an opposing voice. Ours I wager, will be removed sometime quite soon.

Another fine example of soft totalitarianism?

 

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate — that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.

This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made. Here’s how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:

It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.
Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.
On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations. 
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About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

3 Replies to “Wikipedia makes unprecedented protest. Blacks out world for a day.”

  1. More people need to protest the anti-free speech bill, the bill was written to allow Obama to shut down the blogs and web papers critical of his actions.

  2. to be fair, most of these speech & freedom suppressing, civil liberties surrendering, totalitarian measures are being pushed even more by neoconservative (i.e., not conservative) Republicans in the name of security, plus Independent Joe Lieberman. This is so stupid on so many levels.

  3. to be fair, this & other speech suppressing, civil liberties surrendering, totalitarian measures are being pushed by neoconservative (i.e., NOT conservative!) Republicans, plus Independent Joe Lieberman in the name of security.