{"id":10489,"date":"2011-12-13T18:00:04","date_gmt":"2011-12-13T23:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/watchwomanonthewall\/?p=10489"},"modified":"2012-01-20T19:45:19","modified_gmt":"2012-01-21T00:45:19","slug":"wikipedia-could-soon-go-dark-in-protest-of-house-internet-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/watchwomanonthewall\/2011\/12\/wikipedia-could-soon-go-dark-in-protest-of-house-internet-bill.html","title":{"rendered":"WIKIPEDIA COULD SOON GO DARK IN PROTEST OF HOUSE INTERNET BILL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted on December 13, 2011 at 4:00pm by\u00a0\"Liz Liz\u00a0Klimas<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The House set to vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) this Thursday, a bill that\u00a0depending on who you are<\/a>\u00a0is seen as either protecting intellectual property or censoring the Internet. The bill seeks to remove \u201crouge\u201d websites hosting unauthorized copyrighted material, but in the process, as the bill is written, could take down sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter as collateral damage.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. (Photo: Wikipedia)<\/div>\n

Groups advocating freedom on the Internet have worked to get their message across, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has lambasted the bill, among other actions to raise awareness, but Wikipedia is stepping up with a threat of its own.<\/p>\n

As an opponent to the bill, Wikipedia is considering blanking out all pages. This has not happened yet and a timeframe for when or if it will happen is unknown, but\u00a0Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has posed the idea to the Wikipedia community.<\/p>\n

He\u00a0wrote over the weekend<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A few months ago, the Italian Wikipedia community made a decision to blank all of Italian Wikipedia for a short period in order to protest a law which would infringe on their editorial independence. The Italian Parliament backed down immediately. As Wikipedians may or may not be aware, a much worse law going under the misleading title of \u2018Stop Online Piracy Act<\/a>\u2018 is working its way through Congress on a bit of a fast track. I may be attending a meeting at the White House on Monday (pending confirmation on a couple of fronts) along with executives from many other top Internet firms, and I thought this would be a good time to take a quick reading of the community feeling on this issue. My own view is that a community strike was very powerful and successful in Italy and could be even more powerful in this case. There are obviously many questions about whether the strike should be geotargetted (US-only), etc. (One possible view is that because the law would seriously impact the functioning of Wikipedia for everyone, a global strike of at least the English Wikipedia would put the maximum pressure on the US government.) At the same time, it\u2019s of course a very very big deal to do something like this, it is unprecedented for English Wikipedia.<\/p>\n

So, this is a straw poll. Please\u00a0!vote either \u2018support\u2019 or \u2018oppose\u2019 with a reason, and try to keep wide-ranging discussion to the section below the poll.<\/div>\n

To be clear, this is\u00a0NOT\u00a0a vote on whether or not to have a strike. This is merely a straw poll to indicate overall interest. If this poll is firmly \u2018opposed\u2019 then I\u2019ll know that now. But even if this poll is firmly in \u2018support\u2019 we\u2019d obviously go through a much longer process to get some kind of consensus around parameters, triggers, and timing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some who support this action say it would gain publicity for the cause and get their point across to lawmakers while others, even Wikipedia supporters, don\u2019t think the content on the site should be blacked out. Here are some comments from the Wikipedia community:<\/p>\n

\n