Wikipedia, Google protest U.S. antipiracy proposals
January 18 is a date that will live in ignorance, as Wikipedia started a 24-hour blackout of its English-language articles, joining other sites in protesting pending U.S. legislation aimed at shutting down sites that share pirated movies and other content.
Reddit.com shut down its social news service for 12 hours. Other sites made their views clear without cutting off surfers. Google blacked out the logo on its home page, directing surfers to a page where they could add their names to a petition against the bills.
Local listings site Craiglist took a middle route, changing its local home pages to a black screen directing users to an anti-legislation page. After 10 seconds, a link to the main site appears on the home page, but some surfers missed that and were fooled into thinking the whole site was blacked out.
The Internet companies are concerned that the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect Intellectual Property Act under consideration in the Senate, if passed, could be used to target legitimate sites where users share content.
The 24-hour Wikipedia blackout is an unprecedented move for the online encyclopedia. The decision was reached after polling the community of contributors, but dissenters say political advocacy undermines the site's mission as a neutral source.
However, it's not complete: the block can be bypassed by changing browser settings to disable JavaScript, or by using the version of the site designed for cellphone screens.
There's also a "mirror" or copy, of Wikipedia called The Free Dictionary, but it's not up to date.
The SOPA bill in the House and a similar Senate bill are backed by the movie and music industries as a way to crack down on online content theft. Internet companies including Google and Facebook are waging a campaign against the legislation, which they say will encourage censorship of Web content and harm technology innovation.
News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch called Google a “piracy leader” in a Jan. 14 post on Twitter, saying that it streams movies for free and sells advertisements around them. A day later he wrote in his Twitter account that Google is a “great company doing many exciting things. Only one complaint, and it's important.”
Miranda Higham, a News Corp. spokeswoman, declined to comment.
The Obama administration won't back legislation to combat online piracy if it encourages censorship, undermines cybersecurity or disrupts the structure of the Internet, three White House technology officials said Saturday. The statement marks the administration's most significant foray into a fight between content creators and Web companies that has been playing out in Congress. The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote Jan. 24 on starting debate on an anti-piracy bill.
Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, called the decision to shut the website an “extraordinary” action in response to the proposed laws, which “endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world.”
Wikipedia, available in 282 languages, contains more than 20 million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of more than 100,000 people.
Spokespeople at Wikipedia and Wikimedia weren't immediately available to comment. Ollie Rickman, a Google spokesman, and Sophy Tobias, a Facebook spokeswoman, didn't immediately return calls seeking comment.