Wikipedia: Dark On Wednesday in the US

Wikipedia is going dark -- the English version -- on Wednesday, in protest of the SOPA - PIPA acts in Congress.

In a nutshell, the government will be deciding what sites, if this passes, you can visit. It will open a door that essentially won't be able to be closed again.

This, on its face, pisses me off on general principle. In this instance, I stand BIG Libertarian.

From the LATimes.com:

Wikipedia is among hundreds of websites that will be showing just how they feel about SOPA by going dark Wednesday.

The English-language version of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, will be shut down for 24 hours in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, now working their way through Congress.

Jimmy Wales, site co-founder, told the BBC's Martha Kearney on Tuesday morning that "tomorrow from midnight Washington D.C. time until midnight the entire day of Wednesday, we're going to blank out" the English version of Wikipedia and post a message of protest.

He told Kearney that the legislation makes "something like Wikipedia essentially impossible ... if the provider has to police everything that everyone is doing on the site."

Websites taking part in the so-called SOPA Strike include Mozilla, Reddit, WordPress and Boing Boing.

That said, check some of the revealing comments:

-If these bills are, in fact, enacted, users who stream copyrighted content 10 times in 6 months may face up to five years in prison. Ridiculous
Read & Decide: Are you for or against SOPA/PIPA? bit.ly/w0E1ar

-They left out one word In protect intellectual property... That would be...Corporate Intellectual Property. They can't stop the Chinese from Piracy: but they want to jail US citizens for downloading... Open Source!

-When corporations outsource OUR jobs and we go around them and stream copyrighted material we're the bad guys? HAHAHA This country is the laughing stock of the world for a reason, no wonder nobody likes us!

-These companies need to realise their business model must change. Nothing will stop the internet and the "sharing" of files. This reminds me of the buggy whip manufacturers who said cars would never catch on. Time for a change in thinking...

My two cents? Don't touch the internet. It's mean and corrupt, but it's also truthful and honest and wide open.

From CNNPolitics:

Washington (CNN) – The growing Internet protest–including a planned blackout by some websites Wednesday– against an online anti-piracy bill moving through Congress is "daunting," a Senate Democratic aide said Tuesday. The aide said the protest may be powerful enough to keep senators from voting to even take up the bill that until recently commanded rare bipartisan support.

I'll choose free speech over regulations darned near any time.

BZ