Today, Wikipedia are acting in protest at the US Congress' consideration of legislation to impose bans on piracy and 'free knowledge'. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) are proposing "badly drafted legislation" according to Wikipedia; who are concerned that this will cause bloackage of smaller or foreign sites, and cause major issues with 'user-owned' content sites.
The 'blackout' is lasting 24 hours, however in 'emergent cases', users are able to access the site via smartphones or by disabling JavaScript on their web browers.
I think that in their core proposal, what SOPA and PIPA are trying to do is right; by stopping piracy within things like the music industry, however if it has a knock-on effect to bodies such as Wikipedia then the millions of hours spent updating and editing the site will have been completely wasted. The great thing about Wikipedia is that it's 'owned' by the people; and personally, I wouldn't like to see that freedom be taken away.
The 'blackout' is lasting 24 hours, however in 'emergent cases', users are able to access the site via smartphones or by disabling JavaScript on their web browers.
I think that in their core proposal, what SOPA and PIPA are trying to do is right; by stopping piracy within things like the music industry, however if it has a knock-on effect to bodies such as Wikipedia then the millions of hours spent updating and editing the site will have been completely wasted. The great thing about Wikipedia is that it's 'owned' by the people; and personally, I wouldn't like to see that freedom be taken away.
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