Websites Go Dark Today Over Piracy Bills

Posted by Erin

Need to look something up (other than an Internet term)? You won't find it on Wikipedia--for today anyway.

The popular online encyclopedia plans to black out its English-language pages for 24 hours starting today to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act. Popular sites Reddit, Boing Boing and others are also set to go dark today, January 18, 2012.

The two bills which are making the rounds through Congress, would grant the government the power to shut down website with content that infringes on copyright laws. Opponents content that the bills would cut too deeply into freedom of speech.

The point is the bills are so over-broad and so badly written that it's going to impact all kinds of things that, you know, don't have anything to do with stopping piracy," Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told the BBC.

Twitter, however, won't be joint the protest. CEO Dick Costolo tweeted his view Monday that "closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish."

- As seen in The Wall St. Journal