Hey! Ho! We [The Internet] won’t go!
Well, we were hoping to have a normal Internet day tomorrow.
But it seems like the Internet is going to be unavailable because it is going on strike. Well, not all of the Internet but some very big players are voluntarily “going dark” to protest the SOPA bill. On January 24th, Congress will vote to pass the Internet censoring bill in the Senate. Until recently, it seemed like the bill was on the fast track for approval by Congress. But the White House criticized aspects of it over the weekend and now the Internet-wide SOPA strike is scheduled for Wednesday, January 18th. The big blackout is being spearheaded by Wikipedia.
According to the Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation, “[t]he [English Wikipedia] 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 PROTECT IP 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.”
Readers of IPLJ can choose to participate in the Anti-SOPA movement or simply prepare themselves since many popular websites are already on the blackout list. Twitter is not on that list, however, since “[i]n a tweet, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo called Wikipedia’s plans to pull the plug on its website ‘foolish’ and ‘silly’.” Others are calling the strike a publicity stunt. But maybe its best Twitter sticks around so folks can still protest through Twitter by tweeting about the #SOPASTRIKE throughout the day.
Oh, and just in case Internet surfers will be lost without their webpages, there is also an IRL rally planned for Wednesday afternoon.
