PIPA and SOPA blackout: Wikipedia, Reddit and Others to go down in Protest

To protest PIPA and SOPA, a blackout will be observed by Wikipedia, Reddit and others websites today, from midnight to midnight. The English-language edition of Wikipedia is temporarily shut down, in protest of proposed legislation to fix something that is neither broken nor over-regulated -- in other words, the Internet.

English versions of the website will 'black out' for 24 hours to register the objections of the Wikimedia Foundation to the “destructive legislation” associated with the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act.

The legislation is designed to crack down on sales of pirated US products overseas. Critics say it could hurt the technology industry and infringes on free speech rights.

Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia SOPA blackout

Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales tweeted a link to his statement to the press which said:

Such legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States. This is an extraordinary action for our community to take - and while we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world.

If SOPA passes, copyright holders could authorise offending websites to be shut down. Search engines and other providers would be forced to block the sites.

Websites such as Google and YouTube fear they could face punishment if a pirated TV show is uploaded.

Several sources said members of Congress, reacting to the online objections, were pulling back on parts of SOPA and PIPA to which Internet companies object. But the protest movement continued for the time being.

Wikipedia Blackout Timings in PIPA and SOPA Protest

Wikipedia will go black today, from midnight to midnight, Eastern Standard (USA) Time. Wikipedia Blackout Timings starts from 5:00 AM UK time (5:00 AM Greenwich Mean Time) in protest at PIPA and SOPA anti-piracy legislation under consideration in the US Congress.

How to Access Wikipedia entries during SOPA Blackout period

Try Google Cache
The great big G, Google keeps a a cached version of every web page it finds. You can access old entries of Wikipedia entries during SOPA Blackout period stored in Google cache. That means one will be able to access the content of a Wikipedia page when you type the subject into the Google search box.

Start a search and then hover over the grey box with double right arrows next to the search results. The page will appear on the right-hand side of the screen. Click on “Cached” and Google will take you to the page, except there will be a grey box at the top of the screen.