Online protest
January 18, 2012
Online encyclopedia Wikipedia shut down its English-language website for 24 hours starting midnight Tuesday Eastern Standard Time (0500 GMT) in an unprecedented move to protest two bills - the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are currently going through the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The legislation aims at curbing pirated material posted online by blocking access to websites offering stolen content and blacklisting companies accused of doing so, even if they merely provide links to copyrighted content.
Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, criticized the two bills on Tuesday, saying they "endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world."
Internet censorship
The act of protest was echoed by the Reddit news site, MoveOn, Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, the popular blog Boing Boing, and the blod service WordPress.
In an open letter published last month, founders of Google, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yahoo! and other Internet giants said the two bills would "give the US government the power to censor the Web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran."
But not all companies which have voiced criticism of the bills were participating in the blackout. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said shutting down a business in response to national politics was "foolish."
While the drafts of the two bills are supported by the US entertainment industry, which wishes to put a stop to pirated films and music, as well as by the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce, the White House in a blog entry last week indicated it will not "support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."
Author: Sarah Berning (AFP, dpa, Reuters, AP)
Editor: Nancy Isenson