The Wikipedia Blackout – Jan 18th, 2012

I repeatedly mention in blog posts and conversations of how the internet is like the USA Western expansion of the 1800’s. We have colonization, expansion, government fire-sales / payments, and annexation. And once everything is established / saturated, government has the foothold to build law.

Tomorrow’s law, coming through congress intended to put strict restrictions on piracy and illegal copying of media online. The two bills, PIPA, the Protect IP Act in the Senate, and SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, will essentially require internet providers to block websites that contain potential links to illegal piracy. It sounds all good and great, but when it comes down to it, the act of execution is absolutely unfeasible. Sites such as Google and Wikipedia could immediately be targeted as violation of this law, hence forcing Internet Providers such as Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner to block these sites as a violation occurs. It could mean widespread outages. How could this be policed? Needless to say, there are no internet companies who want to see this go through.

In-fact, tomorrow marks a day of Internet protest as many internet giants make a stance against this new policing of internet content. Wikipedia will be shutting down their website for an entire day. There are other sites which will be doing the same (Reddit and Boing Boing). And Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr have all voiced out against these bills, where you will most likely see some mention of it on their website for tomorrow.

These are bills that are too soon, too immature, and will negatively hurt the growth of the internet. Spread the word. Or, just try and hit www.wikipedia.org (6th highest traffic site on the internet) on Jan 18th and see how serious the protest is.