7,000 websites are going dark today to lead the Anti-SOPA and PIPA protests.
Here’s a short list of some of the bigger players and a description of what they have to say about the destructive nature of the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act. FYI Internet giants AOL, Yahoo, YouTube and many others have expressed opposition to SOPA and PIPA but are not joining the protest movement.
WIKIPEDIA: The English versions of Wikipedia has been dark since Wednesday night at midnight. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales tweeted,
“This is going to be wow. I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!”
BOING BOING: Boing Boing also went dark at midnight Wednesday, the company posted the following,
“Boing Boing is offline today, because the US Senate is considering legislation that would certainly kill us forever. The legislation is called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), and would put us in legal jeopardy if we linked to a site anywhere online that had any links to copyright infringement,”
REDDIT: Reddit goes dark for 12 hours starting at 8am Eastern time Wednesday morning. The site was quoted on a blog earlier this week as saying,
“Instead of the normal glorious, user-curated chaos of reddit, we will be displaying a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action,”
GOOGLE: Google is not going dark to protest SOPA/PIPA but will be linking to information and advocacy on their site, the company has said the following,
“Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet. So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our U.S. home page.”
MOZILLA: Mozilla is redirecting traffic from their main English sites to an informational portal with info on how to fight SOPA and PIPA. The redirect will be in effect from 8am – 8 pm. he site issued the following statement,
“We hope the blackout of our U.S. sites will help bring attention to this important issue and encourage users to educate themselves about PIPA and SOPA,” Mozilla said in a statement. “All users will still be able to receive security updates and access our technical support website. This will NOT affect Firefox users.”
WORDPRESS: WordPress is going dark for 24 hours but a lot of their users sites will not be. The company said this,
“If you want to join the protest by blacking out your WordPress site or applying a ribbon, there is now a variety of blackout plugins in the WordPress.org plugins directory. While joining the protest in this manner is laudable, please don’t forget to also make those phone calls to U.S. Senators—they’re the ones with the voting power.”
TWITPIC: The Twitter Pic Site is currently hosting a Stop SOPA picture which links to information about the bill. The CEO of Twitter did not want to join the blackout movement, calling it foolish. He issued a tweet saying,
“That’s just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.”
CHEEZBURGER NETWORK: Cheezburger Network in on 24 hour blackout, tweeting,
“All Cheezburger sites will also be instituting a blackout on January 18th to protest SOPA and PIPA,”
If you have anymore please feel free to comment on this post.