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The proposed legislation in the United States—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate—that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet.
Piracy is not only bad but worst thing of course, and online piracy leads to the loss of millions of dollars,rupees, pounds (any currency) and violate a lot of rights of course and it must be fought against. The intentions of the proposed acts may be good but the results may be not acceptable by many online websites. Including the list is Wikipedia. If you visit Wikipedia now, you will see the message regarding their protest against the stuff. On 18 January 2012 English Wikipedia will be blacked out for 24 hours as part of their protest against the proposed stuff.
References:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/English_Wikipedia_to_go_dark
It is worth note that recently in India there was a debate about whether the Internet should have the censorship or not. Here are the videos for some of the talk shows related to the same.
Let us not go political here, the idea/intentions behind having laws are always good but sometimes they result into a product which was not intended for, let us know, what you think here…
An interesting video:
An article related to SOPA found here…
http://www.indiatimes.com/internet/sopa-weaving-a-web-around-the-web-10281.html
The Wikipedia blackout is over. According to the official announcement by Wikipedia, around 162 million people have visited their message and thought that they cannot think of the world not having free knowledge. In short millions of people have spoken in defense of a free and open Internet.
Now SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith stated that the House of Representatives will push the bill forward in February. Senate sponsor Patrick Leahy still plans for a PIPA vote on January 24.
Read more about the black-out and its results at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more
If you have tried visiting Wikipedia (English) recently. You might have already experienced that they have blacked it out as per the schedule.