This screen on the left is what greeted visitors to Wikipedia on Wednesday, as the online encyclopedia site began its ‘blackout’ protest of two controversial intellectual property bills currently being discussed in the US Congress.
For 24 hours starting from 5am GMT on Wednesday, Wikipedia blocked users from viewing or editing all of its English-language pages except for the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act, the bills it is protesting against.
“For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia,” the site explained.
The two bills have sparked fierce controversy between media and technology companies. Media companies claim they are needed to protect content providers from online piracy, but many technology companies say that the proposed laws are too far-reaching and will stifle free speech and creativity.
A number of other technology companies have joined in the blackout protest, such as Reddit, Yahoo (via its Flickr photo-sharing site) and Mozilla (creator of Firefox). It is not just US companies protesting against the bill. Even Riot, a Los Angeles-based games studio majority owned by China’s Tencent, has made a public appeal against the bill.
Google has “blacked out” its US homepage logo in its protest (see left). It has also added a link under its search box urging its millions of US visitors: “Tell Congress: Please don’t censor the web!”
The text links to a “take action” landing page, briefly arguing that SOPA and PIPA would “censor the web and impose harmful regulations on American business” and asking users to sign an online petition against the acts.
A separate blog post by its chief legal officer, David Drummond, further explains Google’s position. He argues that PIPA and SOPA will “risk our industry’s track record of innovation and job creation” and in any case “will not stop piracy”.
Mr Drummond is also careful to set out the efforts that Google is making to tackle illegal downloading, after criticism from News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch that the search company was a “piracy leader”. Mr Drummond writes:
Last year alone we acted on copyright takedown notices for more than 5 million web pages and invested more than $60m in the fight against ads appearing on bad sites. And we think there is more that can be done here—like targeted and focused steps to cut off the money supply to foreign pirate sites. If you cut off the money flow, you cut the incentive to steal.
Mr Murdoch, via Twitter, overnight on Tuesday hit back at the tech industry’s claims. “Nonsense argument about danger to Internet. How about Google, others blocking porn, hate speech, etc? Internet hurt?” he tweeted. However, he also acknowledged that the digital campaign was gaining ground:
Additional reporting by Tim Bradshaw
