As promised Wikipedia has gone dark. The world’s largest repository of knowledge announced at the start of this week that they would protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) by turning off access to their English based websites for a 24 hour period.
Users to the site are now greeted with the following message:
Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge
For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia. Learn more.
Wikipedia then gives users the chance to contact their representatives by providing a simple zipcode lookup for government officials in a users geographical location. Users can find phone and fax numbers through the search or email and Twitter account information that has been made publicly available to them.
Wikipedia joins the likes of Reddit which will also go dark for 12 hours on Wednesday in protest of the acts.
In the meantime not everyone is against the suppression of free information, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch fully supports the bill which could potentially give his company the power to shut down any website that disagrees with its views.
GoDaddy also supported the measure for a short period of time before customers began fleeing the websites registration and hosting services.
Do you believe that the negative attention begin given to SOPA and PIPA will ultimately lead to enough pressure to stop lawmakers from turning the horrible bills into law?