THE PHILIPPINES, JANUARY 19, 2012: In protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), crowd-sourced online encyclopedia Wikipedia has stopped the operations of its English pages for 24 hours, which began 1pm Philippine time yesterday, January 18. The Wikipedia main page is displayed for a few seconds, with a notice of the protest at the top of the page, and then reverts to a black page that tells online visitors to “Imagine the world without free knowledge.”
The website, which attracts millions of unique hits everyday, is opposing the SOPA and PIPA currently being debated at the US Congress, which are meant to strengthen protections against copyright infringement and intellectual property theft.
Crowd-sourced news site Reddit and online magazine and group blog Boing Boing joined in the protest and blacked out their sites. Meanwhile, blog host WordPress stylized their welcome page with “censored” blog previews. Other websites that joined in the protest with either blackouts or creative executions are Mozilla, the Cheezburger network, and The OatMeal.
Internet advocates and supporters say that provisions in both bills could and would curb freedom of expression in the World Wide Web. The legislation, said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, could possibly impact even things that have nothing to do with piracy at all.
If passed into a law, the SOPA would enable US law enforcement agencies, especially the Justice Department, and copyright holders to seek court orders against websites accused of allowing or organizing forms of copyright infringement. Depending on the party seeking the legal action, consequences may include blocking online advertisers and payment couriers from doing business with the accused website, preventing search engines from putting the website in their results, and outright blocking of access to the website.
Also included in the SOPA are provisions for criminal punishment for unauthorized streaming and sharing copyrighted content, which at the moment is five years in prison for ten violations within a six month period. Immunities will also be given to services that volunteer information or actions against websites that practice infringement.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of social network giant Facebook, where videos and photos are often shared by users, said in his latest status: “The internet is the most powerful tool we have for creating a more open and connected world. We can’t let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the internet’s development. Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the internet.”
“The bills contain overly broad definitions and create a new private cause of action against companies on the basis of those expansive definitions, which could seriously hamper the innovation, growth, and investment in new companies that have been the hallmarks of the Internet. In addition, we are concerned about provisions in the bills that could chill free expression or weaken the Internet’s architecture,” continued the social network’s official stand on the issue.
For a time in the past 24 hours, “Imagine a world without knowledge” trended number 1 worldwide in Twitter, while the hash tag #Wikipedia ranked ninth in local trending.
