JIMMY WALES, the co-founder of Wikipedia defended the decision to voluntarily blackout the world’s largest online encyclopaedia for 24 hours from 5am GMT on Wednesday. The move will affect the English version.
Visitors to the site will be greeted by an open letter encouraging them to contact Congress in protest instead of a database of more than 3.8 million articles.
Wales said that SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) will greatly impact the internet and in turn can affect everyone.
Wales said the decision to either enforce a US-only blackout versus a global blackout had been made as a result of a close vote of the Wikipedia community.
He told The Telegraph: “The community vote on the choice of US-only blackout versus global blackout was 479 to 591 in favour of going global, so while there was a solid majority, it wasn’t the overwhelming majority that we had for the whole concept. It seems to have been somewhat of a tough choice for many people.”
Wales cited a British internet user as having “best expressed” why the Wikipedia blackout should be global.
The user, who goes by the web name of ‘The Yeti’, said: “Although I’m non-US and live in UK, when I read on the SOPA page ‘The bill would authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction’, this belief that the world’s most powerful nation has the right to censor anyone on the planet and extend its laws anywhere it wants just because someone in the US doesn’t like something is more than worrying.
“It’s a thin edge of the wedge…One day’s inconvenience is nothing.”
Opponents of SOPA and PIPA argue they impose unfair responsibilities on websites such as Wikipedia to check that no material they host infringes copyright. Under current laws if websites remove pirated content when they are notified by the copyright holder they are not liable for damages.
The proposed laws also make it easier for American copyright holders to cut off access to foreign websites hosting unlicensed copies of films, music and television programmes.
The legislation has been backed by an intensive lobbying campaign by major media owners, including Rupert Murdoch, and opposed by the giants of Silicon Valley, including Google and Facebook.
On Friday the White House said it would not approve key parts of the bills, however, effectively sending them back to the drawing board. A statement from President Obama’s internet advisors said the provisions for blocking foreign websites “pose a real risk to cyber security”.
“Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small,” a White House spokesman said.
SOPA was proposed by Texas congressman Lamar Smith in October with the support of a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans but was immediately set upon by opponents who claimed it violated America’s First Amendment, which guarantees the right of free speech.
Legislators in both parties attacked the bill and over the weekend Darrell Issa, a Republican from California who has fought the proposals, said he had secured a promise from House Speaker John Boehner that the legislation would not go before a vote until there was “consensus”.
Wales has estimated that 100 million English-speaking Wikipedia users will be affected by the blackout and warned students via his Twitter feed to “do your homework early”.