English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

Daveski17 · Jan 17, 2012

To: English Wikipedia Readers and Community
From: Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Date: January 16, 2012

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.

siljaline · Jan 18, 2012

Microsoft says it opposes SOPA

Microsoft took the chance to oppose SOPA on Tuesday, just hours before a Wikipedia blackout. The controversial bill has attracted a lot of attention this week as Google and Wikipedia both pledged to ensure web users stay fully informed of the sweeping changes that SOPA could bring. Microsoft says it opposes SOPA "as currently drafted," but doesn't reveal if the company plans to take any protest action. The software maker issued the following statement:

"We oppose the passage of the SOPA bill as currently drafted. We think the White House statement points in a constructive way to problems with the current legislation, the need to fix them, and the opportunity for people on all sides to talk together about a better path forward."
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Article

Those that use Twitter may find much more using hashtags #SOPA | #blackout | #PIPA | #Blacklist | #SOPABlackout | #J18

Countless more sites expected to go dark: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/17/google_sopa/ • SOPA | PIPA Learn more

trismegistos · Jan 18, 2012

A list of participants, and HTML and JavaScript code for anyone who wants to participate, can be found here.

Dermot7 · Jan 19, 2012

"Wikipedia hails blackout protest as success" : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/9024927/Wikipedia-hails-blackout-protest-as-success.html

On Twitter, Mr Wales said the page explaining the blackout and urging Americans to contact their congressmen had been viewed 162 million times. On a normal Wednesday at this time of year Wikipedia would register up to 30 million page views, he added.
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Wikipedia: SOPA initiative/Learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more

Was the blackout successful?

The English Wikipedia joined thousands of other web sites in protesting SOPA and PIPA by blacking out its content for 24 hours. The purpose of the blackout was twofold: to raise public awareness, and to encourage people to share their views with their elected representatives.

During the blackout:

* More than 12,000 people commented on the Wikimedia Foundation's blog post announcing the blackout. A breathtaking majority supported the blackout.
* More than 162 million saw the Wikipedia blackout page.
* More than eight million looked up their elected representatives' contact information via the Wikipedia tool.
* Anti-SOPA and PIPA topics began trending globally on Twitter immediately after the blackout began. Hashtags included #factswithoutwikipedia, #SOPAstrike, and #wikipediablackout. At one point, #wikipediablackout constituted 1% of all tweets, and SOPA accounted for a quarter-million tweets hourly during the blackout.
* A quick search of “SOPA blackout” on Google News produced more than 8,000 links as of this writing.
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Edit: added above info.

Dermot7 · Jan 19, 2012

"After Historic Protest, Members of Congress Abandon PIPA and SOPA in Droves" : https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/...members-congress-abandon-pipa-and-sopa-droves

Yesterday, in the largest online protest in Internet history, more than 115,000 websites altered millions of web pages to stand in opposition to SOPA and PIPA, the Internet blacklist bills. Some sites — Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing, Craigslist and others — completely shut down for the day, replacing their sites with material to educate the public about the bill’s dangers. Others, like Google and Mozilla, sent users to a petition or action center to express their concerns to Congress.
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English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

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