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After a 24 hour blackout in protest of SOPA, Wikipedia released the following press release.

More than 162 million people saw our message asking if you could imagine a world without free knowledge. You said no. You shut down Congress’s switchboards. You melted their servers. From all around the world your messages dominated social media and the news. Millions of people have spoken in defense of a free and open Internet.

For us, this is not about money. It’s about knowledge. As a community of authors, editors, photographers, and programmers, we invite everyone to share and build upon our work.

 

Our mission is to empower and engage people to document the sum of all human knowledge, and to make it available to all humanity, in perpetuity. We care passionately about the rights of authors, because we are authors.

SOPA and PIPA are not dead: they are waiting in the shadows. What’s happened in the last 24 hours, though, is extraordinary. The internet has enabled creativity, knowledge, and innovation to shine, and 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.

 

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Social news site Reddit and massive online encyclopedia Wikipedia will black out its site on January 18 to protest the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act SOPA bill that is currently working its way through the U.S. House of Representatives.

Many other sites are taking a stand with the SOPA movement by blacking out their web site for a 24 hour period on Wednesday, tomorrow.

In a blog post earlier this week, Reddit team members said they have decided to black out the site next Wednesday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST in a bid to draw attention to SOPA.

“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,” the blog noted. PIPA, is an acronym for the Protect IPA Act, a U.S. Senate version of SOPA.

“A few months ago, many people thought this legislation would surely pass. However, there’s a new hope that we can defeat this dangerous legislation,” the Reddit team wrote.

Visitors to Reddit’s site on Jan. 18 will be presented with a live video stream of a hearing by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on DNS and search engine blocking.

SOPA was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Lamar Smith (R-Va.). It is co-sponsored by John Conyers (D-Mich.), Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and several other lawmakers.

SOPA is ostensibly designed to make it easier for U.S. copyright and IP owners to take action against foreign sites dedicated to selling counterfeit goods, fake prescription drugs and copyrighted movies, music and other content. SOPA supporters claim such sites cause tens of billions of dollars in losses annually to U.S. companies.

The bill enjoys support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and predictable quarters such as the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America. It also has garnered wide support from a majority of state attorneys general, law enforcement officials, hundreds of trade unions and industry groups.

Opponents say that while the intent of the bill is good, the provisions in it would lead to a form of Internet censorship.

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