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The website blackouts are happening

January 17th, 2012 by Joseph Ruthaford

So there have been reports that websites will be going dark in protest to the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy ACT) . The cofounder of Wikipedia, has gone and done such a thing. Jimmy Wales is actually defending his decision to blackout the website across the world tomorrow. Unfortunately other companies are still not cool on the idea. The blackout will be for 24 hours, and it is going global. Even though this is an American battle within the government, many are worried that people will not be so happy around the globe as they would fear that a passing of such bill would make other countries think about their online piracy and make a move to make a similar act, in which case would make censorship global. However there was some debate on the Wikipedia side on if should of been just US vs. worldwide. It went to a vote and the globe won. Wikipedia is the sixth most visited site in the world, and as far as the English speaking people the shutdown will affect 100 million users as only the English version of the site will be down across the globe. It does look like the protests could be working as there are reports that the White has stated that it will not approve many key parts of the act. What this will do would just send it back to for another crack at making the act stick. So keep up the protests and maybe we can keep free speech on the internet.

Related posts:

1. Anonymous hacks San Francisco’s myBart website.
2. Tumblr trying to protect the internet
3. GoDaddy changes stance on SOPA, but why?
4. Ad-based Apple TV deal with CBS not happening
5. When Sony attacks!