Wow! That’s all I could say Jan. 18 when Wikipedia went black to protest proposed, anti-piracy legislation in the federal government. At midnight, Wikipedia switched off ready access to nearly 4 million web pages and gave searchers a dignified explanation in shades of dark gray.
Wow! It really happened. The world’s fifth most popular website pulled the shades on Jan. 18 and provided information on just one topic: anti-piracy bills before the United States Congress: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate. The proposed legislation focuses on the monitoring of every electronic link from any website that might take a reader to another website in the world where they might be able to purchase pirated, intellectual properties.
And Wikipedia did not protest alone. According to Wikipedia’s report of the day, 115,000 other websites and tens of millions of individuals around the world protested the proposed laws.
Wow! That many. I had no idea.
The idea for the blackout began back in December as legislators studied the bills, held hearings and appeared to be aiming to get a quick and early vote on the bill. Seeing a major threat in the proposed bill, Wikipedia management, and others, began discussing the blackout.
On Jan. 18, as websites around the country went black, most offered links for visitors to register their protest with their federal legislators.
And wow, did people protest! More than 8 million people looked up their representative on Wikipedia, a petition at Google recorded over 4.5 million signatures, more than 1 million email messages were sent to Congress through the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for several hours Twitter received over a quarter million tweets per hour concerning SOPA, lawmakers collected “more than 14 million names – more than 10 million of them voters,” according to Wikipedia’s most current entry about the day.
With so many “participating in the protest against SOPA and PIPA, 15 U.S. Senators (including sponsors) have dropped support for the proposed SOPA and PIPA acts. Real notice was taken when Wikipedia, Reddit, Newsboiler, BoingBoing, WordPress, Mozilla and other sites suddenly went offline as part of the overall plan of protest. Many people, including college students, were forced to find out more about the proposed acts after their essential services went all black,” reported the Internet website whatshawt.com
Let no one assume that a one day of protest will suffice. Internet watchdogs continue to follow this issue. Google, Craigslist, Wikipedia and hundreds of other Internet providers continue to study and pass along information, news and updates about the anti-piracy laws. They speak for everyone who has come to depend on the Internet such as the 25 million people who view information on Wikipedia every day … except Jan. 18, when the blackout left bewildered students and teachers wondering how they could do their homework without the online encyclopedia. How could instructors teach without this valuable, free resource supported by donations? How could anyone research a topic without the Internet?
Wow! How quickly we have become dependent on the Internet for communication, entertainment, information and digital storage.
Less than 15 years ago, Wikipedia did not even exist. Students still roamed through library shelves with note cards, paper, pencils and pens to research a topic. Twenty years ago, few had heard of e-mail – although the U.S. Post Office realized and addressed its potential financial threat as early as 1977. Thirty years ago, very few individuals could even afford the luxury of personal computers. Today young children carry cell phones with Internet connections.
The Jan. 18 blackout was a shot heard around the world as individuals, corporations and governments took a stark look at the extent of their dependence on the Internet and its ability to generate a massive public response.
Well entrenched in the age of the Internet, the impact the one-day blackout still left me repeatedly gasping “Wow!”
(The awed Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. Joanh@everybody.org)