Wikipedia to go dark Wednesday for 24 hours

By Dot Matrix
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Grand Master

Dot Matrix

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Jimmy Wales has announced via Twitter that the English version of Wikipedia will go dark on Wednesday, for 24 hours (EST Time) in protest of SOPA and PIPA.

Wikipedia will join Reddit, WordPress, Mozilla and the Cheezburger network in Wednesday?s protest against the draft bill.

More soon.

(Ugh. Made a double post. Can someone delete the other thread, please?)

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Grand Master

4CxbqFxVnstmA Veteran

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No longer necessary? :p

I disagree because it is necessary to follow through. This is to scare those SOPA freaks, who will try again, back into their shells for longer.

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Grand Master

Tech Star

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No longer necessary? :p

It may not be necessary, even though Protect IP has not been shelved (the Senate version of SOPA), but they are doing it still to get their point across. This will happen if you pass these laws.

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Sylar0

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Thats what this go dark this is about for the love of god it does more damage to the world being offline... its an american only law and they want to shut down the whole of english wikipedia world wide am I missing somthing...

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Grand Master

OrangesOfCourse

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What does go dark mean?

According to Jimmy Wales it will have a letter from the community and a call to action. I'm guessing a way to get in touch with your congressperson via email/phone.

@jimmy_ wales: A letter from the community and a call to action - to call and write Congress. My goal is to melt switchboards! :-)

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Grand Master

Roger H. Veteran

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Well some of these companies have american owners so they might be affected or even upset by the nature of it. It's all to bring awareness. Even though you are in the UK, you might hate SOPA so much that you end up talking to you american friends that might not even know about it then they get involved and stop it.

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pack34

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Second question what is this law in the USA only thats so bas as to warrent shutting down a WORLD WIDE not America only website?

The law would have blocked access to illegal sites in the US. Not shut them down. So people wouldn't have been able to download pirated media from a computer in the US.

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Sylar0

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I use it every day, I still dont see the issue whats wrong with an anti illegal downloading bill being from the UK I dont see the issue nor for americans its good isnt it?

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Grand Master

Quillz

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Good I support it then I dont see the problem?

Because it's censorship. And who decides what is and isn't illegal? It completely throws away the fair use laws, and it sets a dangerous precedent. What if next year, lawmakers decide they also want to block all access to sites that they "simply don't like?"

The Internet should remain free. Acts such as this one are taking away that freedom.

Like anything else, SOPA may seemingly have good intentions, but the potential of abuse far outweighs any positives it might have.

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Grand Master

+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹

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The law would have blocked access to illegal sites in the US. Not shut them down. So people wouldn't have been able to download pirated media from a computer in the US.

Not true, SOPA would require that US-based payment and advertisment systems stop serving any foreign sites. Considering that Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Google AdSence/AdWords are all US companies... you can see why this is an attack on the rest of the world.

Not to mention the issues around revoking domains that are administered from the US...

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Grand Master

I am Reid

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It would have been best if all these sites talked amongst themselves without going public of when they were doing this, that way it would just hit people much better. I had no idea craigslist was going to do anything, and I went to their site and was greeted by that black screen and my first though was "ahhhhhhh ****", its much more effective if you do it without notice.

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