Wikipedia To Turn Black In Protest Against SOPA And PIPA

Wikipedia, one of the largest open-source encyclopedia or technically, a KMS (Knowledge Management System) and its community has decided to black out the English version of the site worldwide for 24 hours (less than 21 hours to go by the time of this writing) in protest against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA).

A leaderboard banner in the wikipedia.org site

It's the first time that the site will be stepped out to go for a public protest against two house bills and the decision was not easily raised. In the official statement released by Wikimedia, Sue Gardner, Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation said the decision wasn't made by himself but by the Wikipedians who have participated in a consensus decision-making who eventually joined together to encourage greater public support and actions in response to these bills.

The public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst writes:

It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations. 

SOPA and PIPA are proposed house bills in the United States that if implemented, expands U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeited goods.

Other sites, legislators, and prominent personalities that opposed SOPA are Reddit, Google, Yahoo and Internet pioneer Vint Cerf.