After-24 hour blackout what did Wikipedia accomplish..?

So, the 24-hour blackout is over and the site returned to normal. Means we can once again use Wikipedia’s free information that United States authorities do not like for their own reasons.

Anyway, a question arises, what did Wikipedia’s day-long blackout accomplish? Before going into details, read below the official statement by the Wikipedia Foundation.

“You said no,” Wikipedia said on its thank you page. “You shut down Congress’s switchboards. You melted their servers. Your voice was loud and strong. Millions of people have spoken in defence of a free and open Internet. SOPA and PIPA are not dead: they
are waiting in the shadows. What’s happened in the last 24 hours, though, is extraordinary. As Wikipedia went dark, you’ve directed your energy to protecting it. We’re turning the lights back on. Help us keep them shining brightly.”

The above statement is certainly strong when in this morning news broke that US senators Roy Blunt, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch and John Boozman and Marco Rubio have backed-out from the legislation they sponsored earlier.

Now, senate majority leader Harry Reid is under extreme pressure to make rather drastic regarding this huge protest against “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) bill.

According to Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, this bill, “is poorly constructed, quite dangerous and won’t actually address the real problem of piracy. Internet policy shouldn’t be set by Hollywood. The encyclopedia will always be neutral. The community
need not be, not when the encyclopedia is threatened. If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States.”

In protest against anti piracy bills, Wikipedia shut down its English-language service yesterday for 24 hours.

The information giant Wikipedia is concerted, multilingual internet encyclopaedia website that is supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and its 20 million articles (over 3.8 million in English alone) have been written collaboratively by volunteers
around the world while almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the website.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=9732

Posted by Umair Hassan on Jan 19 2012. Filed under Africa, Editorial, Europe, Infotainment, Latest News, Middle East, National, Opinion, Pakistan, South Asia, USA, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry