Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, has released a message encouraging all students to complete all work before Wikipedia shuts down for 24 hours in protest of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). “Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!” Wales tweeted.
“I am just starting to do press interviews about the upcoming blackout of Wikipedia…This is going to be wow. I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know,” He continued. SOPA will allow authorities to control and monitor nearly everything that users do on the computer, essentially a NetNanny but on a national/global scale (currently only in action in the U.S.)
This aims to eliminate pirate websites such as PirateBay and uTorrent, which have both cost the entertainment industry copious amounts of money. According to one website, it would “allow the U.S. government and private corporations to create a blacklist of censored websites, and cut many more off from their ad networks and payment providers.”
There is also news that AOL, Google, Facebook, eBay, PayPal, Twitter, and Yahoo! will also be shutting down for the 24 hour period in protest of this bill. This would cause absolute mayhem on the internet, and could possibly stop some people performing their jobs etc.
