Wikipedia goes dark, for 24 hours to protest web piracy

Today, Wikipedia – that vast, crowd-sourced online encyclopedia – has gone dark, in a protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, two bills currently under consideration in the US House of Representatives and Senate, respectively. In a press release, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales railed against the legislation, which he said threatened the "free and open internet."


"Today Wikipedians from around the world have spoken about their opposition to this destructive legislation," Wales wrote. "This is an extraordinary action for our community to take – and while we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world."


SOPA, which was first introduced in October, and PIPA, first introduced last May, are both aimed at stopping Internet piracy and copyright infringement. But both bills have drawn the ire of a range of tech companies, including Yahoo, Twitter, and Google, who have argued – like Wales – that the legislation would be unnecessarily restrictive.


Since Wikimedia depends on a small army of volunteers who create and update articles, it's particularly concerned about a lack of exemptions in the bills for sites where users might contribute copyrighted content. Today, it has no obligation under U.S. law except removing that content if a copyright holder complains. But under the House version of the bill, it could be shut down unless it polices its own pages.
The plans for the protest were moving forward even though the bill's prospects appeared to be dimming. On Saturday, Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, said the bill would not move to the House floor for a vote unless consensus is reached. However, Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, said work on the bill would resume next month.
The White House raised concerns over the weekend, pledging to work with Congress to battle piracy and counterfeiting while defending free expression, privacy and innovation in the Internet. The administration signaled it might use its veto power, if necessary.
That the bill seems unlikely to pass is another reason Lawton opposes the blackout.
"I think there are far more important things for the organization to focus aside from legislation that isn't likely to pass anyway," he said. He's been contributing to Wikipedia for eight years.
Danny Chia, another contributor to the site, said he had mixed feelings about the blackout. The neutrality applies to the content, but a lot of people interpret it as being about the site as a whole, said the Los Altos, Calif., software engineer.
In an online discussion, others raised the same point about the blackout: Appearances matter, and if the audience sees Wikipedia taking a stand, it might not believe the articles are objective, either.
Wikipedia has seen a small decline in participation, from a peak of 100,000 active editors a year ago to about 90,000 now. Wikimedia Foundation blames this mainly on outdated editing tools, and believes it can get the number growing again with software upgrades.