All companies participating. Can we get a list of all the websites confirmed to go dark? : SOPA. Reddit goes black Jan. 18 to protest SOPA & PIPA — Who else will join? Community news sharing site Reddit is planning to shut down its website January 18 in protest of proposed legislation the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) as well as the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), the company announced via a blog post today. SOPA gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. Should SOPA (or PIPA) pass, it could drastically change the way the Internet operates. For instance, if a website is accused of containing copyright-infringing content (such as a song, picture or video clip), the site could be blocked by ISPs, de-indexed from search engines and even prevented from doing business online.
Reddit’s blackout will run from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The black out is definitely a bold move for Reddit, but the site’s organized protest is also very significant. Who else should join the blackout? Websites Confirmed for the Jan 18 Blackout Protesting SOPA | NLB Creations. Stop SOPA - Google+ - Blackout: Updated List We now have 56 confirmed websites… STRIKE AGAINST SOPA. Anonymous - Google+ - *STOP #SOPA #SOPAblackout #J18 * The internet is gearing… *STOP #SOPA #SOPAblackout #J18 * The internet is gearing up for a fight, several sites have pledged to go dark on January 18 in protest of SOPA and PIPA, the internet blacklist legislation currently making their way through Congress.
Below is a list of confirmed sites joining in : 1. Reddit.com 2. Tucows.com 3. Firefox Users Engage Congress: SOPA Strike Stats. Yesterday, we blacked out the default start page in Firefox and redirected visitors to the Mozilla sites to a special action page. We also sent direct messages to members of the Mozilla community through multiple online channels. All these steps were aimed at informing and mobilizing millions of people on the poorly drafted anti-piracy legislation – SOPA and PIPA – pending in Congress. The result: Mozilla reached over 40 million people who, in turn, generated 360,000 emails sent to Senators and Representatives in Congress.
Here’s the breakdown of the stats from yesterday’s remarkable campaign: Approximately 30 million people in the US who use the default start page in Firefox received the blacked out page with our call to actionWe sent messages out to almost 9 million people via Facebook, Twitter and our Firefox + You newsletterOur messages were retweeted, shared and liked by over 20,000 people (not counting MC Hammer’s tweet to his 2.4 million followers!) The debate is far from over. Pearltrees goes on strike. Reddit Black Out. The freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables is in jeopardy. Congress is considering legislation that will dramatically change your Internet experience and put an end to reddit and many other sites you use everyday. Internet experts, organizations, companies, entrepreneurs, legal experts, journalists, and individuals have repeatedly expressed how dangerous this bill is. If we do nothing, Congress will likely pass the Protect IP Act (in the Senate) or the Stop Online Piracy Act (in the House), and then the President will probably sign it into law.
There are powerful forces trying to censor the Internet, and a few months ago many people thought this legislation would surely pass. However, there’s a new hope that we can defeat this dangerous legislation. We’ve seen some amazing activism organized by redditors at /r/sopa and across the reddit community at large. We’re as addicted to reddit as the rest of you.
. — the reddit team Learn More Get Involved. Blackout. Wikipedia goes nuclear against SOPA: founder confirms site blackout. After hinting at a site-wide blackout to combat the SOPA anti-piracy bill, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales confirmed today that the English version of the free encyclopedia will go offline on Wednesday, January 18. Channeling the energy of an excited teenager, Wales (pictured) tweeted this morning, “This is going to be wow. I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!” The announcement comes on the heels of Congress’ decision today to shelve the SOPA vote, as well as the White House’s weekend smackdown of SOPA and any other similar anti-piracy measure, like its sister PIPA bill in the Senate. A Wikipedia blackout seemed inevitable, especially since 87 percent of the site’s polled members said that they opposed SOPA.
If passed, SOPA and PIPA would give the government and copyright holders the ability to block websites with content they deem to be infringing or pirated. Wikipedia’s community calls for anti-SOPA blackout January 18. 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 PROTECTIP 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: But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. That’s less true of other sites. Twitter's Dick Costolo calls Wikipedia SOPA blackout 'foolish' Updated with more information below the post. We’ve already reported on Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales announcing that the site will be going dark, effectively closing up for business, for 24 hours on Wednesday in protest of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act).
Well, after being goaded about whether Twitter would be joining in protest with a blackout as well, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo responded by saying that the decision was foolish. @digiphile @jayrosen_nyu that’s just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.— dick costolo (@dickc) January 16, 2012 Costolo was replying to a Tweet from Radar correspondent Alex Howard that queried whether Twitter’s Costolo, Google’s Eric Schmidt or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg would have the ‘cojones’ to follow in Wikipedia’s protesting footsteps.
@digiphile @anildash We have been very active and will continue to be very active. Watch this space.— dick costolo (@dickc) January 16, 2012. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales defends SOPA protest blackout. After Protest, Wikipedia Says 'We're Not Done Yet' The (day)long national nightmare is over. After midnight on Thursday, 24 hours after Wikipedia’s blackout began as part of a protest against two online piracy bills, the site returned to normal. Gone was the spooky black-and-white Web page from Wednesday with an accompanying message: “Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge.”
Across its banner on Thursday, Wikipedia thanked visitors for “protecting” the site. “We’re not done yet,” a new message read, parenthetically. The Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate are intended in large part to curb illegal downloading of TV shows and movies online. According to Wikipedia, more than 162 million people saw the site’s protest on Wednesday. And about eight million visitors, Wikipedia said, looked up their elected representatives’ contact information Wednesday using a tool provided on the site.
“You shut down Congress’s switchboards,” the site said. Google Joins Anti-SOPA protest by "Censoring" Its Logo. Although it didn't black out any of its sites entirely, Google has joined the anti-SOPA protest by putting up a censored version of its logo, visible only to users from the U.S. Google's David Drummond explained the company's views on SOPA/PIPA in an official blog post. PIPA and SOPA will censor the web, stifle innovation and hurt web businesses, says Drummond, and it won't even help the fight against piracy. "These bills would grant new powers to law enforcement to filter the Internet and block access to tools to get around those filters (...) These bills would make it easier to sue law-abiding U.S. companies. SEE ALSO: Why SOPA Is Dangerous "These bills wouldn’t get rid of pirate sites. Google Slows Web Crawlers To Help Blackouts Sites. Flamsmark: @binarybits On Weds, @mozi...
Blacked out in protest of SOPA / PIPA. Benhuh: All Cheezburger sites will... Boing Boing will go dark on Jan 18 to fight SOPA & PIPA. On January 18, Boing Boing will join Reddit and other sites around the Internet in "going dark" to oppose SOPA and PIPA, the pending US legislation that creates a punishing Internet censorship regime and exports it to the rest of the world. Boing Boing could never co-exist with a SOPA world: we could not ever link to another website unless we were sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site.
So in order to link to a URL on LiveJournal or WordPress or Twitter or Blogspot, we'd have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site. Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren't in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits.
But you know what? Screw that. The contempt for human rights on display with SOPA and PIPA is more than foolish. Thank you. This Is the Internet After SOPA. Today, many popular websites are going "dark" in protest of Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The consensus among many experts, Internet users, web companies and even the White House, is that SOPA is too restrictive, too dangerous, too complicated and too big of a threat to our privacy. In a way, today's blackout shows what the Internet might look if some of the principles in SOPA start being enforced as law. Do you like seeing big "CLOSED" signs on your favorite websites? Neither do we. SEE ALSO: Why SOPA Is Dangerous We've gathered the screenshots of sites that are protesting SOPA with a blackout in the gallery above, and will be adding additional pics as more sites join in.
SOPA blackout leads co-sponsors to defect - Jennifer Martinez and Tony Romm. Google says 4.5 million people signed anti-SOPA petition today. When Google speaks, the world listens. And today, when Google asked its users to sign a petition protesting two anti-piracy laws circulating in Congress, millions responded. A spokeswoman for Google confirmed that 4.5 million people added their names to the company's anti-SOPA petition today. Not too shabby. The petition, which was available via a link from Google's homepage, states that although fighting online piracy is important, the plan of attack described in the SOPA and PIPA bills would be ineffective. PHOTOS: Sites on strike "There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs," the petition reads.
The search engine frequently delights users by toying with its homepage logo, but on Wednesday it did something it had never done before: it blocked out its logo completely. A link below the blackout read "Tell Congress: Please don't censor the web! " With Today's Protests, SOPA Becomes a Mainstream Issue. Something big is happening on the Internet today, as you may have noticed. Yes, the English version of Wikipedia is blacked out, as are Craigslist, Reddit, Boing Boing and O'Reilly Radar. Google, Mozilla, Wired.com and Wordpress all have put up some kind of anti-SOPA graphic or statement. Many of those that aren't blacking out text or turning their sites off are nonetheless posting updates expressing sympathy for the movement. All of this is significant, but what is perhaps most interesting is the collective effect these protests are having: Today, SOPA becomes a mainstream issue.
A few days ago, I wrote about Wikipedia's plans to black itself out in protest of SOPA. I don't often flood my Facebook Timeline with my own tech writing, but I decided to share that story, given the broad impact the story was likely to have beyond the technology community. From Reddit to the New York Times: SOPA Goes Mainstream Today, things are palpably different.