Jimmy Wales Leads Charge Against SOPA with Blackout

You may want to wipe the dust off your old Encyclopedia Britannica as Wikipedia is officially blacked out.

"This is going to be wow," said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales via Twitter. "I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!"

Wales also added via his Facebook page yesterday, "Tomorrow = Epic!"

The online information super site decided to block access to protest against two bills - SOPA and its companion PIPA - aimed to stop online piracy. The Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act are both currently pending in the  House of Representatives. The entertainment industry has publicly supported the effort because they feel it will end the downloading of copyrighted material from torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and BT Junkie. Other supporters also include the pharmaceutical industry, which is already trying to combat counterfeit prescriptions sold on the Internet.  

Media mega mogul Rupert Murdoch blasted via Twitter, "Big bipartisan majorities both houses sold out by POTUS for search engines. How about 2.2 m workers in entertainment industry? Piracy rules."

The entertainment industry is certainly a powerful supporter, but other powerhouses' such as Google, Facebook and Tumblr have openly expressed their concern over the bill. A Google spokesperson told ABC News that "Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet."

While the said websites won't be shutting down in protest of the two bills, other online sites will be following Wikipedia's footsteps. The mini-blog / social site known as Reddit is also joining the movement. As is Boing Boing and about 7,000 other online sites.

Meanwhile, the hackers collective known as Anonymous threatened to hack video-gaming titans Nintendo, EA and Sony if they didn't withdraw their support for the two bills. In the end, all three backed down and withdrew their support.

Why is everyone up in arms?

One of the biggest concerns is SOPA will give police the authority to arrest, fine or jail someone for minor offenses such as uploading a copyrighted video on YouTube, for example.

Another example is if someone posted a "how to" video and has copyrighted music playing in the background. The language in the two bills would allow authorities to instantly shut down the site.  

Other concerns -

• Site owners are liable for everything their users post, regardless if users were given permission. Owners could face jail time, heavy fines and even blacklisting.
• An individual copyright or IP owner could shut down any website just on good faith assertion.
• Censorship of the Internet.

The Obama Administration said on Saturday that it doesn't support SOPA or PIPA as they currently stand right now, citing the language in both bills as a primary concern.

Aol, which owns Patch, partnered with several Internet and technology companies, including Ebay, Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Yahoo and Zynga, to voice concerns and opposition to both Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act. Here is an excerpt from the joint statement:

“We support the bills’ stated goals—providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign “rogue” websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting. Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new and uncertain liabilities, private rights of the action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of websites.”

Tekedra N. Mawakana, AOL's senior vice president of public policy, elaborated in his own statement, saying, "As written, we cannot support the bills. We believe an open Internet is critical for innovation, job creation, and the sustained growth of Internet businesses. We are in the process of working directly with lawmakers
to improve the bills," 

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