By CALEB HAYES – Editor-in-Chief
In retaliation to Congress’ Stop Online Piracy Act, several popular websites have “blacked out” for a 24-hour period.
Teachers often deter students from using Wikipedia as a valid source for research, but today they won’t have to – the English Wikipedia has shut down access to its hub of free knowledge in a 24-hour protest.
Courtesy of www.wikipedia.org
Anyone attempting to visit Wikipedia in the states will be redirected to a blacked out page, explaining the reasoning behind the online retaliation. Craigslist and Reddit users will also face a shadowy page, and Google’s ever-changing logo is hidden by a censorship bar to show support.
Around 7,000 sites have shut down for today in protest of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Protect IP Act in the U.S. Senate. The legislators behind the bills are aiming to regulate piracy and copy infringement across the web, which has roused controversy across the World Wide Web.
Although they are not participating in the day-long black out, websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Edmodo have spoken against the bills. They believe that the American government’s goal of regulating, censoring and ceasing piracy sites will damage many widely-used sites in the crossfire, even if they are not directly related to the sharing of online files.
