Wikipedia Still Set For Full Blackout Wednesday

symbolset writes "Jimmy Wales confirms that the entire English language Wikipedia will be on blackout January 18th from midnight to midnight, Eastern Standard Time. The site's 25 million daily users will redirected to an education page with a call to action. Votes are still being taken on the exact implementation." Despite a small victory against SOPA in the House, Wikipedia still feels the blackout is necessary due to the looming Senate vote on PROTECT IP, and as a deterrent to future attempts to revive a similar law under a new name.

Comments

Chicken!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut it down for a week and you'll be able to almost hear the roar of a billion college students having their term papers failed!

Re:Chicken!

[delinear]

You don't think SOPA/PIPA will affect you if you live outside the USA? This kind of policy has a tendency to spread to other countries with like-minded politicians. I'm in the UK and my only wish was that more big tech companies would follow suit (imagine if Twitter, Facebook, even Google all turned their services off for the day). We hear it time and again that the ordinary man in the street doesn't know or understand about these issues - well maybe this is the best way to get the message across.

Re:Chicken!

[rudy_wayne]

For the love of all that is coffee, there are people outside the US that use wikipedia. Some of us rely on it for work/school.

Apparently you haven't heard about the person in the UK who was just ordered to be extradited to the United States for "copyright infringement" despite the fact that neither he nor his website were located in the U.S.

If Wikipedia, Facebook, Google, etc. were really serious about protesting these bad laws they would completely shut down their systems for at least a week in order to really demonstrate what the effects would be.

They wont be deterred.

[unity100]

Theyll try to buy a new law when the dust settles. the only way to fix this, is to go on constant offensive, and buy lawmakers and laws FOR the internet, and to prevent content industry from buying laws AGAINST it.

Re:They wont be deterred.

[schitso]

Even if every one of the bottom 90% put all the money they could towards bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H "contributions" for our lovely leaders, we wouldn't even come close to what interested corporations/conglomerates "contribute".

Re:They wont be deterred.

[SuricouRaven]

No, the public opposition was greater than expected. Too much to try for a new law so openly. I predict a sneakier approach: An attempt to sneak something SOPA-like through as an obscure amendment to some apparently unrelated piece of legislation, likely something too popular to oppose easily. Using riders to get unpopular laws through before potential opposition even notices is a time-honored tradition in politics.

Re:They wont be deterred.

[SirGarlon]

No, if you play the money game against the "content industry" you will lose. What we need to do is take back our republic from the 1%.

Re:They wont be deterred.

[Daniel_Staal]

It would be the proper solution, however: It's not possible. The current problem isn't really that lawmakers are being bought, it's that they have no way to do their jobs without being bought. It takes money to get known enough to win elections, and votes themselves are an almost uselessly imprecise tool to judge preferences, leading to lawmakers needing to listen to some group to understand what their voters want. In the absence of any better system, that tends to be the loudest group with money on an issue. Which is almost invariably a corporation lobbying for it's own benefit. (Or a PAC lobbying for a sub-group of the populations' benefit, typically a sub-group that has money to fund the PAC.)

The system is operating as designed: Broken.

Re:Yeah, thanks Jimmy.

[damicatz]

The primary reason for creating SOPA and PIPA is to get around the pesky inconvenience of having to deal with all those other countries and their own sets of laws. Because the US controls .com, .net, and .org as well as having both IANA and ICANN, big media could simply use the courts they have bought here in the US without having to deal with that annoying inconvenience of other sovereign nations and their own sets of laws.

Murdoch

[Tim4444]

I suppose now Murdoch will accuse Wikipedia of being a "piracy leader" along with Google. After all, Wikipedia just serves up other people's content and takes money (what they call "donations") for it.

Political reality

[EmperorOfCanada]

Politicians, welcome, I would like you to meet reality. His name is the Sheep With Gun and he is going on strike.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

yes

[unity100]

that's why google, amazon et al need to do it.

Donation Catchup Opportunity

[Bob9113]

I haven't given any money to Wikipedia in a long time. This seems like a good opportunity to catch up on my donations. I figure to do it while the blackout is in progress, if the donation page is up, or right after if they have donations blacked out.

It is easy to find examples of people getting paid to do things that harm society. Here's a chance to pay a company, which has earned the money, for doing the right thing. They even make the first show of good faith -- every day -- by existing, not charging, and not accepting advertisements.

Will Slashdot Be Joining The Blackout?

[assertation]

If not, please consider it.

Re:Thanks a buttload, Chet...

[Andy Dodd]

No, a few clicks through of inconvenience won't convince users just how bad the situation is.

They need to be given a "taste" of post-SOPA life to truly understand it.

Re:Thanks a buttload, Chet...

[smagruder]

You can take out your anger on me. I'm one of the Wikipedians who said Strong Support for a hard global blackout. I'm sorry that you're inconvenienced, but THAT'S THE POINT.

make it impossible for the MSM to ignore blackout

[TaoPhoenix]

"Best yet, it would make it nearly impossible for the MSM to ignore the blackout/SOPA/PIPA. Then watch as they tiptoe around the elephant in the living room: why they haven't been covering SOPA/PIPA up until this point."

Hey everyone, between the post above and the slightly typo'ed article below, they just told us how to really beat these bills.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/putting_sopa_on_a_shelf034765.php

Key quote:

"The legislation ran into an even more significant problem yesterday when the White House announced its opposition to the bills. ...
Until now, the Obama administration had not taken a position on the issue. ...
Though the administration did not issue a formal veto threat, the White Houseâ(TM)s opposition signaled the end of these bills, at least in their current form."

So (sorta) forget your fifth-grade teacher's advice to write to congress. (Mods, that's rhetoric, not literal.) Though the exact timing is a little fuzzy, here's how it really worked:

1. Mainstream Media ignores the issue, because the bill is in its favor.
2. Grassroots movement to excite the Big Players.
3. Big Players excite the general public.
4. Listen to what the President is *not saying*.
5. Tell the *President* (via staff etc) that *he or his party* will not get re-elected if he signs the bill!
6. President issues veto threat. MainStream Media *has to report on the President* (usually!)
7. Bill dies because it's a dare that it would require an Over-ride.