Beginning midnight Wednesday, crowd-sourced knowledge database Wikipedia went dark and will be offline for 24 hours as a protest against proposed anti-piracy legislation in the United States. We give you the inside scoop on why the sixth most popular website on the planet has decided to turn itself off for a day and how you can access its pages even though it is offline.

How long will the site be blacked out?
The blackout started at 12:00 a.m. eastern time (5:00 a.m. GMT) on Wednesday morning and will last until 12:00 a.m. eastern time on Thursday (also 5:00 a.m. GMT).

What exactly is blacked out?
The English-language version of Wikipedia is offline and has been replaced with a message related to the anti-piracy legislation going through Congress, SOPA, in the United States. Other language editions of Wikipedia will be unaffected.

Additionally, popular community website Reddit has also gone offline, as well as Boing-Boing and several smaller websites.

Whoa, SOPA? What the heck is that?
SOPA, which stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a piece of legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives. The act is designed to target copyright infringers online through a series of harsh penalties.

In the U.S. Senate, a separate companion bill is called the Protect Intellectual Property Act or PIPA.

SO what do you guys think of SOPA?

SOPA should be taken down

SOPA and PIPA are MAJOR problems for anybody who likes freedom of speach and ideas.

>>1, This would have been more informative if you'd included information on PIPA in your OP, since the two of them are so closely related.

As for my opinion on the two, SOPA and PIPA are two of the most ridiculous things I've ever known to be suggested. As if the fact that 2/3 of the internet (almost all of your favorite sites) will be shut down or censored beyond recognition, the combination of the two allows the US government to shut down a website under suspicion of piracy or copyright infringement. No proof is needed to shut down your radio station, or blog, so they can instantaneously make your site go black. But it takes months to prove your innocence in court, and by the time your site is up and running, you will have lost all credibility with those who used to frequently visit, making your hard work collapse anyway.

As for the piracy, I'll admit to reading manga for free, and ripping un-buyable music from YouTube. I post copyrighted images on my Facebok wall, and reblog them on Tumblr. So I'd be slightly upset about those disappearing as well. Not to mention the fact that all of those websites would be terminated.

In general, if the laws were passed, I'd be pretty pissed. I can't imagine the chaos that would erupt from the rest of the country as people begin to scream "OH NO! MY INTERNETS ARE DEAD!"

██ ████████ ██████ ██████████ ██ ████ ██ ████ ██████████ ██. ███ ███ This post has been found in violation of H.R. 3261, S.O.P.A and has been removed.

SOPA and PIPA allow any website to be black listed or erased from the internet.

To add to the wealth of information about SOPA...

I'll use Google as an example. When you run an image search on Google, it displays all images, copyrighted or not. If you download a copyrighted image from Google, SOPA gives the government the right to shut down Google...even though it was a single person who downloaded the copyrighted image.

I'll use Facebook as another example. Say you post a copyrighted picture on your profile. Under SOPA, Facebook, not you, is held accountable and suddenly -BLIP- no Facebook.

I will admit that like >>4 I read manga for free and rip un-buyable music off youtube, but that doesn't mean that piracy is a good thing. The entertainment industry looses thousands yearly because people are pirating music and movies they could buy off of iTunes or AmazonMP3 and watch on Netflix. The government has chosen the wrong way to deal with piracy, and we need to stop them before they create a terrible mess.

wikipedias not offline.all you have to do is go past the bannner.i was on wiki last night at 12am

Something tells me at this point the way the itnernet is used now is pretty much integrated into the minds of today's youth. Me included.....
If I hadn't found episodes of Code Geass or Hikaru No Go on the Internet I probably wouldn't be an Anime fan, and this thread probably wouldn't have existed. I think that the Entertainment Industry at this point has to embrace it (somehow), and do it in a way that won't bring to power an army of nerds and spotty-faced bloggers to destroy the Government (I'm obviously joking at this point).

is it me or has the government finally lost their damn minds?

I bet this won't last long, if this SOPA thingskeeps going on believe me theres gonna be alot of people protesting like wikipedia just did, the goverment just has to listen to the people, and whats even worse due to the SOPA Megaupload was already brought down.

Well it will highly unlikely to make it past the senate.....and since Obama opposes the bill.. He will definitely sign it.

SMITH Has declared war on the Internet....we will BURY YOU

I think too many people are protesting this for SOPA to honestly happen :V

>>13 to many people thought to many people weren't voting for bush....the second time

>>13 There aren't enough people until the threat is gone.

SOPA is done. Being shelved already. In fact, as of today, there is a majority opposition to it.

PIPA, however, barely had any attention. From the start, it was deployed as a scapegoat, and meant to either detract attention from SOPA, or to sneak in behind it.
Unless more people realize that, that sleazy-ass tactic is going to succeed.

FUCK SOPA!!!!!! Obama better not approve to this!!!!

Not sure if its over just yet, Megaupload was taken down today... :/

Why is this thread here. If you don't know what it is then clearly you were born yesterday. Not to be rude.

>17

Teh president agreed to SOPA in general. He just wants to put more things into the act by saying "Establishing jobs" and such.

we can thank anonymouse for trying to stop this crap

Good thing for people who can read other languages... It's still bullshit though.

>>21 Anonymous is just in a hurry to put this fire out cuz they know sparks could fall on their own damn heads. Dont thank them they're just desperate.

Yaa!! well Its Over no need to worry xD

Wikipedia isn't online anymore because many different people go online and write about certain things. If anyone were to look up anything on wikipedia, they get atleast 50 different answers. Some are logical, but others are peoples opinions on that certain thing. That's probably why it's offline. The SOPA act cancel's out anything with peoples opinions that could give the government problems.

>>25
Ha, what now? It is online. What are you smoking?

>>25 funny, because I don't get 50 different answers for anything. i get general overviews for a topic or event or person. and as stated in >>26 it is, in fact, still online. how you're getting some of this information is beyond me. perhaps you are thinking of a different site?

SOPA and PIPA are bad news no matter how you look at it. The Dollars, being a gang, could suffer greatly from them.

>>28
>>Being a gang.

What does that have to do with anything?
We're not a group of punk-like, misfits. We're a community of like minded individuals. Not a gang. It takes a moron to think we are.

>>29 technically speaking, we are, just not in a traditional sense of the term.

what i know is we are one or maybe a organization instead but just different from others