Protests against SOPA and PIPA

A screenshot of the English Wikipedia page during the January 18 blackout

The English Wikipedia blackout was an online 24-hour protest by the English Wikipedia that commenced at midnight U.S. EST on January 18, 2012. In place of articles, the site showed only a message opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), legislation being proposed in the United States Congress.

On January 16, Wikimedia founder Jimmy Wales and Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner announced the blackout after conducting a 72-hour poll of the editing community. The general poll followed several weeks of discussion in smaller Wikipedia forums. The date was chosen to coincide with similar action by other websites, such as Reddit, and ran for 24 hours starting at 05:00 UTC (midnight Eastern Standard Time) on January 18.

Background

Main articles: PROTECT IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) are bills that were introduced into the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate in the last quarter of 2011. The two bills, through different means, are designed to provide legal mechanisms for copyright holders, such as music and movie studios, to combat digital piracy that occurs on non-United States websites. Both bills are extensions of the earlier Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that enabled content producers to issue "take down" notices to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and websites to remove infringing content. While the DMCA has been considered effective for patrolling of websites within the United States, the DMCA fails to address infringement from foreign websites. Part of the language of the bills when originally proposed would allow for copyright owners to issue complaints to ISPs and other major websites, like Google or Bing, requiring them to remove the hostnames of infringing sites from their Domain name registry (DNS) and to delist entries in search engines to these sites.

Many of the companies and organizations supporting the proposed legislation are content producers, such as the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Entertainment Software Association, and identified the need to have such laws to combat revenue losses associated with the copyright infringement from these foreign websites. However, some lawmakers and many technology and Internet firms and associations have expressed concerns that two bills' languages are too broad, and the concept of domain name blocking and search engine removal would amount to censorship of the Internet without due process. A common criticism of the bill addresses broad and unclear language, such as what entails "deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability" for a website. Google's policy director, Bob Boorstin, stated that a site like YouTube supporting user-generated content "would just go dark immediately" to comply with the legislation. An alternative bill, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN), has been proposed by Representative Darrell Issa and Senator Ron Wyden, with support of technology companies; this bill places enforcement of copyright-infringing websites to the United States International Trade Commission instead of the Justice department, and would target the financial resources of these websites.

In December 2011, SOPA was brought to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee to begin the process of marking up the bill prior to introduction to the House floor. During this time, numerous websites began displaying banners and messages promoting their readerships to contact Congress to stop the progress of the bill, stating that their sites would be "blacked out" should the bill pass as a law. The markup session, in which several proposed amendments to address the concerns of technology companies were defeated, was eventually put on hold prior to the end of the year, to be restarted once Congress came back in session. Several technology websites began proposing the idea of an "Internet blackout" on the same day to protest SOPA and PIPA to occur before SOPA would be voted on on the House floor as a means of further protest. Reddit was the first major site to announce an "Internet blackout" on January 18, 2012, and several other sites shortly followed, coordinating actions on that day. Though Senator Patrick Leahy, the main sponsor for SOPA, had stated that they would remove the controversial DNS provisions prior to the blackout date, sites continued to plan the demonstration.

In January 2012, in response to concerns over PIPA and SOPA, the White House stated that it "will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet."

Responses

English Wikipedia's response

Sue Gardner at the Wikimedia Foundation discussing the English Wikipedia Blackout of SOPA on the evening of January 17, 2012

In line with the initial voices to stage an Internet blackout in December 2011, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales called for a "public uprising" against the proposed legislation, which critics fear would threaten free speech.

An initial discussion on this was held on Wales's talk page on the English Wikipedia, before being moved to its own project page, where the means of how the blackout would be implemented was discussed, such as whether to restrict the blackout to United States users based on geolocation, or whether to simply have a single black page presented to the user prior to passing through to the site's content. Eventually, the discussion led to the choice of enacting a 24 hour blackout of the site on January 18, disabling normal reading and editing functions. A vote taken of about 1,800 editors favored the action. The blocking action was purposely not complete; users could access Wikipedia content from the mobile interface or mirror sites, or if they disabled Javascript or other web browser functions. Other Wikimedia projects were free to stage their own protest with the Foundation's support for any technical implementations. Projects that chose to run a banner included the Albanian Wikipedia, Arabic Wikipedia, Bulgarian Wikipedia, Catalan Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Georgian Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia, Norwegian Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia, Serbian Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Wikimedia Executive Director Sue Gardner posted an announcement of the Foundation's support for the blackout proposal on Wikimedia's blog. The post received over 7000 responses from the general public within the first 24 hours of its posting.

Despite the support of those polled for the action, some Wikipedia editors blacked out their own user profile pages or resigned their administrative positions in protest of the blackout; one editor stated his "main concern is that it puts the organization in the role of advocacy, and that's a slippery slope".

Other websites

In addition to Reddit's and Wikipedia's blackout plans, other popular websites opted to show their support in opposing SOPA and PIPA by participating in similar blackout activities.

Google announced their intention to join the blackout by altering their logo for the day. Clicking through the logo would take readers to an informational page about the bills, and the opportunity to sign a petition to be sent to Congress stating their concerns for these bills.

Wired magazine's online site used Javascript to place black bars on most of the text on their page, as if the text was redacted, outside of their key article regarding SOPA/PIPA; readers could remove the bars with a mouse click.

The photo-sharing website Flickr created the ability for a registered user to "censor" an unlimited number (up from a limit of ten) of photos as demonstration of how SOPA/PIPA regulation would affect the site.

Other sites that participated in the blackout included Craigslist, Boing Boing, A Softer World, Cake Wrecks, Destructoid, dotSUB, Free Press, Newgrounds, Good.is, Good Old Games, little-apps.org, Mojang, MoveOn.org, Mozilla, Oh No They Didn't, Tucows, CallAvoiders.com and TwitPic, as well as around 7,000 other websites. 4chan ran a banner and "censored" posts by users on all image boards.

Physical demonstrations

SOPA/PIPA Protesters in New York City and other cities, in coordination with the Internet blackout

In addition to the online blackouts, protests in cities such as New York City, San Fransicso, and Seattle were held on January 18 to raise awareness of the two bills.

Reaction

Pre-blackout

The announcement of the blackout was reported worldwide. Media that covered the story included ABC Australia, CBC, BBC, der Spiegel, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Libération, Fox News, The Guardian, Menafn, News Limited, Sky News, The Age, The Hindu, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Times of India.

Several media organizations including The Washington Post, The Guardian, and NPR encouraged a "crowdsourcing solution for those left searching for answers" during the Wikipedia blackout by inviting users to ask questions on Twitter using the hashtag #altwiki.

An executive of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) dubbed the blackout plan an example of the "gimmicks and distortion" that inflamed passions while failing to solve the problem of copyright infringement by "draw[ing] people away from trying to resolve what is a real problem, which is that foreigners continue to steal the hard work of Americans". Former U.S. Senator and MPAA Director Chris Dodd stated that the coordinated shutdown was "also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today."

Dick Costolo, CEO of social networking site Twitter, rejected calls for Twitter to join the protest, saying, "[c]losing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish." He later clarified he was referring to a blackout of Twitter and is supportive of the Wikipedia blackout.

The sponsor of the bill, Representative Lamar S. Smith, called the blackout a "publicity stunt," stating "it is ironic a website dedicated to providing information is spreading misinformation about the Stop Online Piracy Act."

During the blackout

The Wikimedia Foundation reported that there were over 162 million visits to the blacked-out version of Wikipedia during the 24-hour period, with at least 4 million uses of the site's front page to look up contact information for their U.S. Congressional representatives. The usage of Wikipedia's front page increased enormously during the blackout with 17,535,733 page views recorded, compared with 4,873,388 on the previous day. A petition created and linked to by Google recorded over 4.5 million signatures, while the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that more than 1 million email messages were sent to congressmen through their site during the blackout. MSNBC reported that over 2.4 million Twitter messages about SOPA, PIPA, and the blackouts were made during a 16 hour period on January 18; this included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg, who had not used the service since 2009, to encourage his followers to contact their congressmen.

Creative America, one of the groups in favor of the SOPA and PIPA bills, used the blackout to prompt those affected by it to enjoy other forms of entertainment in lieu of their normal Internet activities; such ads appeared at Times Square in New York City and on various websites.

CTV news in Canada published a "survival guide" for "getting around the blackout" on their national website, citing Wikipedia as the answer to "burning questions such as such as "Are chinchillas rodents?" and "What does ‘rickrolling' mean?" The guide provided detailed instructions on how to circumvent the ban and access the English Wikipedia during the protest. CTV referred to the protest as "a date that will live in ignorance."

Since the blackout was not meant to be complete but was rather as a means of raising awareness of the SOPA and PIPA bills, there were ways "around the blackout". Those who needed to access Wikipedia, were able to access its contents by disabling Javascript on their brower, trying to hit the Escape key before Javascript loads. There were other methods such as accessing a moblie version Wikipedia, using Google cache, or going to a mirror such as The Free Dictionary Encyclopedia.

During the day of January 18, six senators who had been sponsors of the bills, including Marco Rubio, PIPA's co-sponsor, Orrin Hatch, Kelly Ayotte, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, and Mark Kirk, stated that they would withdraw their support for the bills. Several other congressmen issued statements critical of the current versions of both bills.

Post-blackout

The impact of the coordinated action was generally considered significant. Yochai Benkler of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society stated that the January 18 blackout was "a very strong public demonstration to suggest that what historically was seen as a technical system of rules that only influences the content industry has become something more," further adding "You've got millions of citizens who care enough to act. That's not trivial." California House member Darrell Issa called the collective effort an unprecedented means for upsetting a backroom lobbying effort. One Silicon Valley lobbyist said the content industry had "a lot to learn," noting that they don't have grassroots support: "There are no Facebook pages to call your congressman to support PIPA and SOPA."

Newspaper editorials had mixed views. The Boston Herald called the protest a "hissy fit" by "Internet powerhouses" saying, "within hours of the online protest, political supporters of the bill... began dropping like flies, thus proving how very powerful these cyber-bullies can be." The New York Times described the protest as "Noted, but as a Brief Inconvenience" and, as well, offered an Opinion about the protest and possible accomplishments. BBC News technology writer Rory Cellan-Jones was of the opinion that the blackout achieved its objectives but possibly at some cost to Wikipedia's reputation. The shutdown also prompted a cartoon response from Matt (Matthew Pritchett) in the British Daily Telegraph.

See also

• 2011 Italian Wikipedia blackout, also undertaken to oppose a proposed law.
• New Zealand Internet Blackout
• Internet activism

Bibliography

• Musil, Steven (January 16, 2012). "Wikipedia to join Web blackout protesting SOPA". CBS News. Retrieved January 16, 2012.
• Rainey, James (January 16, 2012). "Wikipedia blackout to protest SOPA progress in Congress". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 16, 2012.

External links

• Wikimedia Foundation's official statement and Wikimedia CEO's statement.
• SOPA Strike - Listing of all participating websites for the Internet blackout