English edition of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia on Wednesday will enter a 24-hour blackout as a protest measure against the anti-piracy draft law in the U.S.
According to a statement released by Wikimedia Foundation, quoted by Bloomberg, the movement is protesting against the law in general, but especially against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
Draft law is designed to combat illegal copying of movies and TV shows. If it passes, this law will harm the Internet and would definitely create new tools to censor international websites, according to the Wikimedia statement.
Wikipedia is currently available in 282 languages, containing over 20 million items added by a community of volunteer contributors worldwide – over 100,000 people.
What Does SOPA Involves
via Flickr
Any website, even a giant like YouTube or Facebook, could be closed following a complaint by the authorities for hosting illegal content published by users.
In here would fit any video uploaded by community that includes song released by a label, any fragment of a movie or TV series, cartoons or television recordings.
Since there is already possible to block certain content that fits into the copyright regulations, the SOPA project is basically an attempt to control the content that appears over the Internet more rigorously.
Moreover, even search engines that provide links to pirated material could be closed without appeal, and social networks that are 100% based on user made ??content, become extremely vulnerable.
Similar protests could follow from some websites like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo!
