o: English Wikipedia Readers and Community
From: Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Date: January 16, 2012
Today, the Wikipedia community
announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the
statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States—the
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the
PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate—that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.