http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Eng ... A_blackout

To: English Wikipedia Readers and Community
From: Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Date: January 16, 2012

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 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. 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 intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt 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

bit late for that, theyve stopped it til they think of somethin' else.

is jimmy the narcissist's face blacked out too? if so , thats one plus.

i note a lot of folk opposing it are people who've already made their money from old world "copyright", which is kinda ironic.

Jealous?

Last thing the internet needs is Chinese style government interferaece

What the heck is wrong with trying to stop 'piracy' - on-line or otherwise? Stealing some other person's intellectual property is theft, pure and simple. I wonder, 2399, how you'd feel should you be, by pure luck and a lot of hard work, part of a band which became very popular around the pub and club circuit and then found that your very first CD compilation was being flogged around the country with no remuneration to you and your band members? Don't bother to answer that, I can guess.

I must admit that I know nothing of the proposed SOPA and PIPA guidelines (I don't live in the U.S. of A.). I did though chuckle at the quoted missive when it stated that the so called 'action' (which seems to be nose/spite/face knee jerk) is based on a poll of an incredible 1800 Wikipedia participants. Whoopydo! All hail the minority. Sheesh.

theyve stopped it already. the black out is PR bollox.

anyway .. whats to stop wikipedia (or wherever else "going dark") from being copied and re-upped on torrents or the cloud on "blackout" day ?

plus this shit only affects Canada's Arse , well, it would if it werent already cancelled.

its all FUD . folk copy shit illegally , they also buy shit from shops.

the last thing the internet needs is hippies or/and politicians tellin' it it has to be bothered either way.

:/

It's still available here (with a note there is less than two hours to go at 11.15 pm EST). a1, since you have a CFL logo and mention Canada's Arse, are you a resident of the true north not altogether strong and free?

I get what you are saying Dujon


The only Music I download is Bootlegs that can't be bought, and EPs that are out of print and thus not for sale.


Other than that I buy my Music as CDs!

Mad Max (hoboh2o)

8 minutes ago


Myke Baish wrote;



The simple answer would be to keep your copyrighted intellectual property to your self then and not go public trying to rip cash off folk for all time!

I'll tell you what will shaft the Yanks behind this bill (no doubt they are "God fearing Christians" lol)

God wanting royalty's for the bible.

It seems to me anyway that most of the "Artists/intellectual copyright holders are the has beens of the industry they once were a part of or the greedy companies who smell a fast buck from back catalogues. The best solution would be a time frame on how long copyright can exist for anything, this would also help the development of the human race not just line someone's pocket.

My thoughts on this from else where

I think people are worried that information will be censored, like conspiracy stuff and so on.


I am more worried that I won't be able to watch the UK Version of Big Brother.
And Brits/Yanks are worried that they won't be able to watch the New Aussie Big Brother in August

no . neither. the canada cfl thing is just a laugh.

its this "Something on the Internet"- if youre not against it , youre for it assumption with everything- piracy, money, voting, , freedom, whatever . most folk arent bothered.

shit load of " Generation i-ers " worryin' about nowt.

there miles too much bias on everything on the internet just coz its on the internet. the last Voluntary blackout i remember pissed me off too , which iirc, were the US election in 2004 which seemed to say to me "youve not voted for john kerry yet". urgh.

the last paragraph of the statement -

"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 intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt 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. "

is , to use a wikipedia term, 'weasel wordy' and needs a few 'citations needed'. and WTF is an "online freedom" ?

.. a vague buzzword ?

Google dont seem keen , but yet (i think) they blacklisted an entire top level domain from its searches once, still.

and they like down marking certain stuff they dont like , like that daniel brandt conspiracy theorist guy. his wikipedia-watch site wont even load up for me (his google-watch one does, though)

Big Content Hippies oppressing me from being a Narc , probably.

:/

WTF?

It wasn't just me then ??

Bloody colonials ... speak English A1 !!!

Can anyone put all of this into either layman's terms or into simple bullet points for the benefit of those of us that don't understand the first thing about it, please?

Releived to see that. I put it down to my age and just being out of touch with it all. I even went to the language translation pages and got a "WTF" on the Russian one.

• No
• Sorry
• Don’t understand

Er...he's not a colonial....the Canada stuff was a joke, he said. He is clearly one of yours, you Big Content Clown!

To the extent I understand these things:

• People who create a “work” (fiction, non-fiction, art, music, etc.) consider it their intellectual property
• If there is a market for the “work” some hope to get paid
• Conversely the free access to everything types make these works available to all at no cost
• Governments legislate to protect intellectual property doubtless so they can collect tax from those who sell their intellectual property
• Sites like Wikipedia quote others’ intellectual property (whether properly attributed or not) and make it freely available
• Both sides have strong adherents
• The free access to everything types have created a new religion – the Missionary Church of Kopimism – which now has state recognition in Sweden and elsewhere. Their creed obliges them to disseminate “works” for free which they hope will prevent them from being prosecuted under piracy laws because of religious beliefs.

It should be fun watching it all unfold. As an academic all my “works” are distributed for free on the institutional archive (I did receive some small royalties for the books which I donated to a registered charity).

Thank you, Monty!

theyre saying that if these laws pass, they can just pull a site for copyright infrigement with no warning. without going through due process or whatever. not even attempt to contact the alleged infringer, just moan at the government and they'll pull it. so if youve not broke the rules, you'd have to prove so after theyve pulled it.

the scaremongers are saying it will go further than that, they take that law, then when they get that one , they'll ask for a worse one. etcetera.

they (these protesters, sites, whoever) didnt care anything like as much when austrailia were going to build a big chinese style firewall, or when lord mandelson pushed on with his "mandybill" (edit: Digital Economy Bill) about 5 days before the last election. its (this blackout) is all very americo-centric bias to me.

my point is that google , wikipedia , et al, have a vested interest in it failing , google adwords are sometimes on these sites, say..
wikipedia has its own agenda, i assume it runs as a business and makes money, if some user upload a copyrighted picture or something, possbly the whole site could be downed by copyright holders using this 'law', maybe the wikipedia owners will be libel, i dunno..

google themselves have censored the .co.cc (keeling islands, looks like a official TLD kinda thing , but its apparantly not) for being to 'spammy' . that to me looks hypocritical.

the daniel brandt dude i mentioned , i can go into (might be risky) , its a bit crazy, the wiki related site got pulled (properly no archive or nowt) , was pretty bizzarre what were on it, if it were anything like true- it'd be crazy, his google related site is still up, however. he's a tin foil hatter , kinda.

its miles blown out of proportion , everyones being hypocritical, and its not gonna come in anyway they stopped it last week, or rather the white house sed they were against it , and i assume Big Baz has a veto if the politicans vote it thru (they wont, too much of a vote loser) , so its all a waste of time yet.

I feel quite strongly about online piracy being bad, but this probably isn't the right answer.

If something is hosted in somewhere like the UK/US you can do things to take it down. A big problem is stuff hosted in China/Russia and P2P, not sure that'd be effected but not sure.

No-one's mentioning DMCA any more. What happened to that?