English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

wikipedia ^ | 16 Jan 2012 | Sue Gardner

[smokingfrog]

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate—that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.

This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made. Here’s how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:

It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations.

In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That’s a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.

But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. As Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing lists recently,

We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it.

But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or, if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.

The decision to shut down the English Wikipedia wasn’t made by me; it was made by editors, through a consensus decision-making process. But I support it.

Like Kat and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, I have increasingly begun to think of Wikipedia’s public voice, and the goodwill people have for Wikipedia, as a resource that wants to be used for the benefit of the public. Readers trust Wikipedia because they know that despite its faults, Wikipedia’s heart is in the right place. It’s not aiming to monetize their eyeballs or make them believe some particular thing, or sell them a product. Wikipedia has no hidden agenda: it just wants to be helpful.

That’s less true of other sites. Most are commercially motivated: their purpose is to make money. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a desire to make the world a better place—many do!—but it does mean that their positions and actions need to be understood in the context of conflicting interests.

My hope is that when Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will understand that we’re doing it for our readers. We support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA –and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States– don’t advance the interests of the general public. You can read a very good list of reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA here, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Why is this a global action, rather than US-only? And why now, if some American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat on SOPA?

The reality is that we don’t think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation seeking to regulate the internet in other ways while hurting our online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.

  Make your voice heard!

On January 18, we hope you’ll agree with us, and will do what you can to make your own voice heard.

Sue Gardner,
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

[dayglored]

...or more accurately, there are multiple candidates but no exact match.

[BenKenobi]

Last check 4.7k edits.

“Care to enlighten us?”

Sure. Wikipedia’s strength is that it is perceived as nonpartisan. Wikipedians would be better off as individuals to set up their own dedicated campaign to defeating SOPA, rather then using Wikipedia as their vehicle.

Taking a hands-off approach, but recruiting people through wikipedia accomplishes the same thing - without cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Boycotts are only effective when they have an impact on their target. Dr. King’s bus boycott was effective, because the bus companies were dependent on their patronage. Wikipedia:

1, does not patronize the government or influence the government in such a way that the government would be dependent on them.

2, it raises the question. If SOPA is serious enough to merit ‘intervention’, then why not lefty cause of the day. This isn’t an argument that Wikipedia wants to go down.

3, with the existence of the mirror sites, which are going to be still up, Wikipedia isn’t actually depriving anyone of access to their content. In short, they are adopting the tactics of their enemies and the goal of their enemies, to censor the web.

That’s why it has to be a collaborative, grassroots effort by wikipedians, everyone who has a stake. This, just damages the core purpose of wikipedia.

[BenKenobi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Catholic_dioceses_(structured_view)

[dayglored]

Okay, fair enough, your activity level far exceeds mine and I will defer to your greater stake. :)

What you wrote makes sense, and I could get behind your suggestion.

Not sure about the link. Heck of a long page, once I added the closing parenthesis missing from the URL. I checked the revision history but didn’t become enlightened... Could you tell me what you meant by the link? Thanks!

[Cronos]

This is not a blackout for a political reason but for something that would shut down wikipedia’s way to operate. The problem is that if you want this resource, there is no other good way to get it — knowledge is what wikipedia deals in, collective knowledge, collective consciousness if you will. There is no other viable alternative of this scale.

[TheOldLady]

"US Crackdown On Web Piracy 'Shelved'"

...until after the election.

[BenKenobi]

The problem is that a strike won’t accomplish what they set out to do.

[pyx]

... proposed legislation in the United States—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate—that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet

The SOPA and the PIPA are products of Chris Dodd, Democrat.

Hey Mommyment ! Keep your hands off the Internet.

[Democrat_media]

It’s not shelved. They are lying. For months the mainstream media has hidden these bills. These bills will allow government to censor and kill the Internet.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2834125/posts?q=1&;page=51

[Democrat_media]

These politicians always say bills are about protecting some rights or to save the children or some other moral reason.They lie. What this is about: Government gaining much more power and government censoring and shutting down the Internet.

These bills are the worst attack against freedom I’ve ever seen .To think that anyone with any sense supports these bills boggles the mind.

These politicians and the mainstream media hate the Internet because people like us and sites like Freerepublic expose the truth. These bills would effectively censor and shut down the Internet which is what government wants.

The mainstream media hates this protest and the media have been hiding these bills.

How did that save the children welfare state turn out? That save the world global warming EPA crackdown? Shall I go on?