It was late last year that the anti-piracy act SOPA, which is currently under consideration in the U.S House of Representatives, evoked strong response from Internet crusaders and free speech activists. The act would give the US lawmakers enhanced powers to act against anyone that they find enabling/facilitating copyright infringement. While the act received support from many quarters – mostly the entertainment sector, it has been mostly opposed by proponents of Internet freedom who say that it will cripple the Internet and is a form of censorship which the Internet can do without.
Wikipedia, the popular online website too is in opposition of the act and as a mark of protest, has decided to shut down the English language version of the website for a period of 24 hours on Wednesday, January 18, 2012. Other language versions of the site would be available though. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced the decision in the form of a Tweet. An official explanation on how and why this move was decided upon can be found here . Wikimedia has also issued a press release announcing the impending blackout.
The blackout will commence from 05:00 hours UTC, January 18 and will continue for 24 hours. In India, the protest would commence at 10:30 am on January 18 and continue till the next day. All you school and college project makers , please note this!
The decision to blackout the site for 24 hours was taken after prolonged discussions amongst Wikipedia members. There were differences amongst the members whether to make the protest limited to the US or take it at a global level. Eventually, the decision was to take it global because there are similar anti-piracy acts elsewhere too.
As for SOPA, thanks to this kind of protests happening all over the world, the Obama administration has raised concerns about the act and has clarified that it would be looking in to this and would ensure that freedom of expression on the Internet is not curtailed – while, at the same time, Intellectual Property rights are not misused as well.
The global opposition of SOPA comes at a time when we here in India too are seeing the Judiciaries as well as the Indian Government trying to clip the wings of Internet freedom by asking social networks to ensure their platforms are not used to spread offensive material.
Asking Facebook or Google to remove what is essentially user generated content is one of the most absurd things I have ever come across in recent times. As someone pointed out on Twitter yesterday, It is like penalizing the soundman because someone made an offensive speech using his systems. Yes. That’s absurd.
