Internet Sites Go Dark to Protest Anti-Piracy Bills

January 18, 2012, 3:12 pm

Students counting on Wikipedia today to help them finish papers or prep for exams are out of luck. The online encyclopedia’s English-language site has gone dark for 24 hours as part of a Web-wide blackout to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (HR 3261), or SOPA, a bill being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives, and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act (S 968), or PIPA. Both bills have come under heavy fire from the tech industry and from Internet-freedom advocates because they would make it possible to shut down Web sites that link to unauthorized content. That puts sites with a lot of user-generated content especially at risk.

Many Web sites joined Wikipedia today in going dark, including the Internet Archive, Wired.com, and Reddit. Boing Boing put up a “503: Service Unavailable” page. Google censored its own iconic logo with a black bar. One site, The Oatmeal, has an especially funny/irreverent take on the protest, asking readers to “please pirate the [expletive] out of” the animation it posted today to mark the blackout. “This is what happens when you make the Internet mad,” The Washington Post said in one of many mainstream-media reports on the blackout.

A number of higher-ed sites joined the protest with blacked-out screens and links to more information about SOPA and PIPA. The School of Information Studies at Syracuse University made its Web site and blog dark for the day. “The iSchool is taking a strong stance on this issue because a free and open Internet is critical for growth and innovation in the areas of study that we focus on,” it said. MediaCommons, an online scholarly network, announced it was offline for 24 hours “in protest against legislation that threatens our ability to explore new forms of scholarly communication.” The Association for Computers and the Humanities blacked out its home page with a “Stop SOPA!” notice, which also turned up on the digital-humanities DH Answers site and elsewhere. The CUNY Academic Commons posted a notice telling readers that “these bills, intended to curb online piracy but excessively overbroad, threaten the existence of sites like the CUNY Academic Commons that allow people to share information on the Internet.” The home page for Baruch College’s blog network greeted visitors with an information page about the controversial bills, and the MIT admissions site also went dark for the day.

Have you seen other higher-ed sites participating in today’s blackout? Did you black out your own site—or do you think the reaction is overblown? Let us know in the comments.

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blesstayo

“shut down Web sites that link to unauthorized content?” How will they be able to filter out all “unauthorized content” in the presence of “Fair Use Law” that educators enjoy?
renprof

They won’t. That’s the problem. This is why I edited an Out-of-Office reply indicating my opposition to this legislation, something I have never done before. I am not out of the office– I am meeting my classes and even answering my email–but it is something like Google’s blackout doodle.
drjennycrisp

Out of curiosity, I just checked. One Wikipedia search still pulls up results that aren’t blacked out: SOPA.
sand6432

Fair use is not a privilege limited to educators. Not sure why you thought it was.
sand6432

The people who oppose SOPA/PIPA need to get serious about piracy, however, as it will affect them sooner or later. Public librarians should be concerned, e.g., because publishers’ fears about ebook piracy have led many of the largest publishers to hold back in allowing ebooks to be part of library lending services. University administrators need to worry because piracy means losses of sales to university presses, which will then need higher subsidies to continue providing the service they do. It’s not all just about Hollywood, folks!—Sandy Thatcher
vatican

Hit the “escape” key before the blackout occurs.
11250382

You are exactly right. It is also not just about piracy. It is a thinly veiled attempt to insinuate censorship into the “piracy” issue. If this passes, how long will it be before someone decides that other types of “objectionable” material should be removed. These bills must not pass.
11250382

Oops – insinuate. sorry.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KWKW6GTB5MINJYVFUXE4SV5TDA Packard Day

Memo to Washington DC: We do not need, nor wish your learned help to further regulate the internet.

The singular reason for the odd “Ron Paul movement” in this country has been because of proposed federal laws like SOPA. Distilled down, they are little more than Washington bipartisan politicians (Republicans & Democrats) trying to tell us how they can help us with their new laws designed to “safely control and protect” the content of the internet.

Please DC, most of us would like to see copyright piracy sought out and punished. We do not, however, want your “limited” government controls on what has become the world’s greatest platform for free speech. Few of us trust the judgment of either political party in this area.

In this regard, all we ask is to be let alone.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Wangsvick/26717288 Paul Wangsvick

Nevermind the academics and corporate types decrying SOPA/PIPA, I’d love to see what groups like Anonymous do to the federal government if these pass.