Wikipedia goes dark on piracy bill protest day

Wikipedia goes dark on piracy bill protest day

technolog.msnbc.msn.com

By Suzanne Choney

Updated at 5:05 a.m. ET: Any student burning the midnight oil Tuesday may have been disappointed as what has become a primary research tool, Wikipedia, blacked out its Web pages as part of a global protest against anti-piracy legislation making its way through Congress.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Blackout begins, and google homepage, and ATS are doing the same things. I bet lots of congressmen will get a ton of emails and phonecalls. Maybe they will get the message and stop messing with our only bastion of free information.

Not only do we need to do it like this, we need to worry about our upcoming elections and email and call all the MSM sites and organize a similar protest

technolog.msnbc.msn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Wikipedia provides a search function for your representative:



While google does not:

when i came to ATS a while ago i got that "what if......CENSORED" page not allowing me in the site and it freaked me out.
what the heck happen to ATS



i think a few people are posting this, someone else posted it a few minutes after you and here it is again...
abovetopsecret.com

sorry, but i completly disagree!

first, i am from the uk but completly Support the people in the opposition of SOPA / PIPA.

This protest is just not fit for purpose and the only people that are feeling the brunt of this protest are the reegular citizens of the internet.

The initial plan to black out the web was all well and good, but the thing is the sites that are taking up the cause will do absolutely nothing to sway the opinion of the politicians who are trying to have SOPA/PIPA passed as law.

As we all know, the people who are trying to bring about SOPA/PIPA dont know much, if anything about how the internet actualy works as all they really go online for is twitter, email , maybe some facebook and most likely some news/sports news. This is where the protest becomes pointless, the sites which have been blacked out really have no bearing on the lifes of these politicians... does anyone really think that wiki or reddit, biong being down for a day will even be noticed by the politicians!?!? As no, it will not.

A fact of the matter is that many, if not all of the web admins who have "blacked" out their pages, are living in a complete dream world where they seem to think that everyone in the world will be effected by the blackouts, when really, its just the usual users who know of their sites...

im starting to rant, fact is that protests are meant to cause some sort of hassle, negative reaction, slow down the people who are making decisions as a way to make them think ... the problem here is these politicians dont have a clue about the internet, so taking a few sites down for a day is not going to make the slightest bit of difference!

now, if it was twitter, cnn, facebook, msn, google and so forth that was blacked out it would be a completly different story and a protest that actualy makes an impact on the decision makers... but sadly it is not!

A small piece of the movie running on the blacked out Raw Story homepage.

Brilliant!

reply to post by DancedWithWolves


its funny how ironic that single frame from the video is!

most of the world except the usa have a clue what SOPA is, now the sites are blanked out because of this protest and people cant actualy find out what sopa is from their usual scorce >.<

wiki should have at least left up the sopa page... well, i guess its still on mobile lol

www.infowars.com...

But don’t take our word for it, listen to what Joe Lieberman, co-sponsor of PIPA, SOPA’s sister version in the Senate, said about the purpose of behind the US government’s efforts to control the Internet under the guise of cybersecurity.

and:

Lieberman characterized fears that the US government would use such powers to censor political content as “total misinformation,” yet goes on to admit that the purpose behind the agenda is to mimic China’s ability to “disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war,” adding, “we need that here too”.

continued..

The ultimate end game of SOPA is not merely about handing the federal government the power to shut down websites. Once such powers are granted, the only way to police such a system would be to require all website owners, and eventually anyone who posts any form of content on the Internet, to require permission from the state to do so. This will take the form of an individual Internet ID for every user – again part of Lieberman’s favored Chinese-style system – which can be granted or revoked at the discretion of the authorities.

They want us to have an internet ID so that they can monitor and link all information to a single user if need be. Do you realize how dangerous this is!

seriously dude ... most stories ive seen from infowars comes back to the fact that we are all going to end up with ID cards, RFID chips implanted and so on ... take what ever alex jones and his cronys say with a major pinch of salt. (mainly because he is a complete sensationalist who makes his money by being sensationalist.)

reply to post by THE_PROFESSIONAL


Here is a compilation of images from sites who are doing this:

www.bbc.co.uk...

Peace.

reply to post by Corruption Exposed


Good stuff, thanks for the montage, I bet those congressmen will be getting calls up the wazoo today, their secretaries will be running round like crazy

Something funny just happened...I went to the break room for a bite to eat and a colleague of mine instantly went on a rant about SOPA, Wikipedia, and how Harper should stop kissing Obama's behind, especially about our Internet freedoms. I nodded in agreement and let him know I agree.

Also, the local paper wasn't issued today. There are no new stories since yesterday on their website either. The person in the break room blames this on the whole SOPA thing. I'm not sure if it's related but he did raise some good points.

I'm just glad I don't depend on the local news since it's all garbage anyways.

Political Fallout

Originally posted by boaby_phet
The initial plan to black out the web was all well and good, but the thing is the sites that are taking up the cause will do absolutely nothing to sway the opinion of the politicians who are trying to have SOPA/PIPA passed as law.

The protest actions may not sway the legislators involved directly, but they will definitely affect users of the Internet who may not have been aware of SOPA/PIPA and the threats they pose.

Money is the mother's milk of politics, and is what is driving SOPA/PIPA in the first place, but politicians who don't get elected have no power, and with U.S. elections coming up in November, anyone who supports these bills against the wishes of their constituencies risks losing office.

Granted, not everyone involved is up for re-election this year, but even those who aren't will find themselves feeling awful lonely if opposition to SOPA/PIPA finds its way into the polls.

Whether it does or not is an open question, but as enticing as all that MPAA/RIAA lobbying money is, it loses a lot of its appeal if it comes at the price of losing office.

Time will tell.