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The online encyclopedia says it will, making it the most prominent participant to date in a planned Wednesday protest over a Hollywood-supported effort to fight online piracy. “We have no indication that SOPA [the House's Stop Online Piracy Act] is fully off the table,” Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales tweeted today. Also, a similar bill in the Senate, the Protect IP Act, “is still alive and kicking. We need to send Washington a BIG message.” The plan is for Wikipedia’s English-language site to go down for a day beginning Wednesday at midnight ET. “Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!” Wales tweeted. He added that “My goal is to melt switchboards!” Last week news aggregator Reddit said it would go dark for 12 hours on Wednesday; Cheezburger Network also will join the protest. The companies, along with most of the tech community, bitterly oppose the proposals that would give the government the right to block overseas sites that traffic in pirated content. They say the legislation could backfire if the government used its power to close legitimate sites or thwart free speech — or if it dissuades investors from backing innovative new Web businesses. The MPAA says that illegal sales of copyrighted work endanger U.S. jobs by making movies and TV shows less lucrative. The White House said on Saturday that it shares many of the tech community’s concerns. That dampened the likelihood that the bills will pass, at least in their current form. Still, the MPAA said that it’s still willing to negotiate a compromise. ”We hope the Administration’s role in this debate now will help steer the attention to what can be accomplished and passed into law to protect American jobs,” MPAA Senior EVP Global Policy and External Affairs Michael O’Leary said.
Will Wikipedia Go Dark On Wednesday To Protest Anti-Piracy Bills?
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Any and all opposition to SOPA’s useless tactics is a welcome one.
But the article glosses over the real issue!
Students use Wikipedia for homework and are allowed to?! Now you want to talk about needing a law to stop something, stop that from being allowed!
Medical students and doctors use wikipedia all the time. It may not be deemed a “scholarly” source but its the most efficient way to learn.
Errors and all… Just what we want from medical students and doctors.
I have yet to find an error in a science article on Wikipedia.
I bet you couldn’t find one after spending the whole day looking.
Wikipedia has certainly improved its accuracy over the past few years, science beng one of the bigger improvements.
However, science still has many serious issues on Wikipedia. The majority of errors in science are errors of omission, to make something look better or worse, and the related left-leaning/right-leaning slant to the articles. or take it all as bias errors.
These type of errors are just as damaging as a wrong aka logic formula error.
I’ve seen lots of inaccuracies and bias in articles on neuroscience. Much of it may simply be well-intended ignorance, a MAJOR Wikipedia problem. A Nobel Laureate can write accurate, up-to-date information about her work, and it can be overwritten by a college sophomore who’s working from an outdated textbook or someone who’s still promoting an overturned idea. It’s always useful to double-check the discussion section to sort out the disagreements.
It’s not as if academic textbooks are always accurate (most standard textbooks on media and TV economics are spiked with errors), and in contrast to a print book, a Wikipedia article can be corrected all the time.
Piracy is theft, no different than shoplifting. Or carjacking. Stealing something that doesn’t belong to you is wrong. It’s fairly simple.
Don’t be stupid.
I agree that piracy is damaging to the entertainment business and to anybody who deals in licensing IP (as I do). I agree that we should try to eliminate it. But to say that it is no different that carjacking, is just ignorant.
Carjacking is a violent crime involving theft by force and personal endangerment. Piracy is a passive crime that exploits someone’s IP without duly compensating them for it. Huge difference. Stop with the hyperbole.
Stopping piracy is far from simple and there are many nuances to the battle.
Giving the government the power to block foreign websites is not the answer and can (will?) lead to an abuse of power. It will not be effective.
The MPAA and the studios need to focus on providing the consumer with a reasonably priced, convenient, high-quality way to obtain their product in a manner that seamlessly integrates it into the consumer’s electronic devices. The majority of people will then pay to legally download their entertainment of choice.
As for sites that don’t comply with US law, there are other ways to go after them other than giving the government carte blanch to arbitrarily block their sites.
Keep flogging that dead horse.
Where is the analysis of why Wikipedia is so strident about this?
Wikipedia hosts music and more, pays no licensing, is unreliable (to say the least) and still perpetually begs their users for money.
Jimmy Wales doesn’t want any boundaries on what he can post… Because he wants to expand how much music and publishing he can post. Jimmy Wales is a joke acting in his own narrow interest, now trying to scare up outrage in lazy college kids that don’t do their own work…
I won’t miss Wikipedia nor Cheezburger nor the Brooklyn PC police over at Reddit.
Everything isn’t free all the time.
Ok. Explain the “unreliable to say the least” comment please. Every single study about Wikipedia accuracy or comparison to other sources of information, including peer reviewed journals, has shown that Wikipedia is as accurate if not more so than other sources. I’m happy to say that it shouldn’t be used as a primary source; no encyclopedia should, but to say it’s unreliable is phenomenally ignorant.
star, you’re funny! two seconds on wikipedia would reveal their “analysis of why [they are] so strident about this.”
Those who would give up free speech to stop petty theft are looking out for greedy corporations, not citizens.
Wikipedia usually doesn’t host copyrighted material unless it’s under Fair Use exemptions, which are legal.
Wikipedia usually doesn’t host copyrighted material unless it’s under Fair Use exemptions, which are legal.
Tom, it’s not ‘fairly simple.’ Piracy is bad, no one is debating that. Reddit, Wikipedia, Google, and all the big tech companies recognize that. What is being contested is the vague language written into the bill that will give the government oppressive powers that go beyond combatting piracy and will hamper free speech much like “The Great Firewall of China.” Do your research, man.
You’re right. So let’s Nuke the internet.
Opposing SOPA is not about condoning piracy, it is about stopping stupid law that would give the Feds power to for instance close down Deadline Hollywood simply because a third party poster posted a link in the comments to pirated material.
That is how far-reaching SOPA is and its sister bill in the Senate are. They grant the Feds far too much latitude.
STUPID EXEC: We’re shooting all our shows in 4K, right?
SMART EXEC: Why the hell would we do that?
STUPID EXEC: To protect our investment, into the future.
SMART EXEC: Yeah. Listen. I’m thinking about becoming a lobbyist.
STUPID EXEC: I wonder how much it’s costing Paramount to Blu-Ray Next Gen…
SMART EXEC: Does your guy in the Valley deliver?
STUPID EXEC: Wait…a lobbyist?
Wikipedia hosts music and more, pays no licensing, is unreliable (to say the least) and still perpetually begs their users for money.
When did Wikipedia become a music hosting site? Youtube hosts music and more and pays no licensing.
The biggest reason to stop these from going further it that it has come to a point where Congress cannot be trusted to do anything right. 11% approval rating…
Plus if Murdoch is for it, that is 1000% reason to be against it.
The point the tech community is making is that the broad scope of these bills means that their likelihood for abuse is too high and that this type of anti-piracy enforcement tactic (stopping what amounts to the flow of information) is wholly unamerican. If possession of pirated content is illegal here than punish those caught with it, don’t start playing censor for which sources of information people are allowed access to.
It becomes a slippery slope very quickly. Do we cut off travel to destinations known for lax child sex laws? No, we punish offenders if/when caught. Does your doctor provide the most easily-abused pain killer or stimulant medication without first trying something milder? Of course not. Why? Because the potential harm far outweighs the potential benefit if other, more targeted solutions haven’t been fully exhausted.
This is the sort of reactionary, unimaginative, protectionist “solution” that comes out of Hollywood today. People tend to forget that the advent of the reality TV show as a full genre (in the 90s, mind you) is the last truly creative element to come out of Hollywood. For an industry that touts its creativity, I challenge you to find one truly home-grown innovation vs. a reaction to either Silicon Vally or (in a more limited scope) Madison Ave. Here’s a hint: the answer isn’t on Wikipedia.
I’ve worked in all three industries I’ve mentioned (entertainment, tech, marketing) and can tell you that tech (the ones screaming loudest here) are by far the most intellectual, least self-centered (though it’s certainly a relative scale) and most concerned about their impact on the world around them of the three. Therefore it’s no surprise why I tend to find their goals and reasoning most palatable in this situation.
Oh God, PLEASE let this happen. And I hope some of the other sites like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc join in too.
The US govt has too much power already. You give them this authority and you can bet your life it WILL be abused.
I just don’t understand people who want govt to have more and more control over their lives.
Wow, what a stupid solution. Another chisel into my freedoms for the sake of protecting art?
Reality: Starving artists dream of being pirated.
Hollywood Film divisions are in danger, not their artists. Artist can buy same gear as Roger Deakins these days.
Digital production technology is not as advanced in the hollywood unionized/ bloated studio industry as it should be in 2012. Nobody in hollywood wants change but change is happening. They all just want to retire and die before it does, so they stall the inevitable like those nitwits at Kodak.
Welcome to the new model boys.
Copyright and Trademark infringement is exactly that. No different than Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein knock-off watches, handbags, perfume sold on the street. They get cracked down on all of the time. With one MAJOR difference. A handbag can’t go point-of-purchase rogue viral virtually instantly. Both sides have a point but the importance of Freedom of Expression must over-ride all. Howard Stern famously enjoys Freedom of Expression. But you have to be a paying subscriber to hear it. The troubling part for me is the extent to which blackmail and extortion have been legitimized generally in the Wall Street white collar business world. And unfortunately for them the Hollywood conglomerates are a very efficient way of looking at that. You used to be able to get the three broadcast networks and PBS no problem. Now you can’t get a picture without subscribing to more channels than a productive human being can possibly follow. Why exactly is this? The larger picture is that this is an on-going turf war between the traditional content creators and the inter-net model of such (which do indeed canaballize expensive content; there is no real money for performers on the inter-net; finessing a link to someone else’s expensive content is not content creation; the erosion of the general quality of the product with such terms in place was an inevitability)…with the inter-net model elbowing in on their territory which Murdoch’s recent Tweet acknowledges. (Nikki Finke has to spend way too much time pointing out her original reporting because other websites will lift it in a matter of seconds.) Lobbyists will be making a lot of money. The pathetic F.C.C. will be nowhere to be found. It’s that power vacuum that’s creating the chaos. Cable upended and usurped the F.C.C.’s purpose and mandate a long, long time ago at this point. I know it’s just the airwaves – but the question is, should it be just the airwaves?…which seems to me to be an antiquated model.
There is no governmental body designed to address this matter – a.) the sacrosanct American ideal of Freedom of Expression, in collision with b.) copyright law subject to the fluid nature of consistently regenerating millennial technologies. Hence the ginned up outrage and chaos.
Something tells me Jimmy Wales of the “non-profit” Wikipedia has figured out a way to live, maybe not media baron large, but well enough.
And as always it’s all about the language of the proposed legislation. Which is the only thing Congress fights about anymore and endlessly hence the public’s disgust.
Sounds like a publicity stunt.
The Wiki-whiners who, like PBS, are constantly begging for money to stay afloat will get a day of not having to pay for bandwidth, while the fools cheer them on. Well played.
Randall,
Maybe you should use wikipedia to figure out what unreliable means.
“Every single study” HAS NOT shown wikipedia to be accurate. A FEW studies said that SOME SCIENTIFIC articles were CLOSE to being as accurate as actual Encyclopedias. No one is seriously pushing WikiPee as a journal of science. Well, no one with a clue.
The fact of the matter is that the people who run WikiPee are as infantile as those at Google, and other Internet companies. It is not uncommon for liberal attacks on anyone NOT liberal to be ignored completely by WikiPee staff. They of course leap to protect their liberal idols.
When everyone owns something; no one owns it. That means that no one is responsible for it. A mob does not make for accurate, precise, or truthful anything.
Thanks, Mark, for giving us the hysterical, irrational, paranoid right-wing viewpoint. If you’re an example of the sort of NON-liberal you’re trying to defend from the Wikipedia staff, I say more power to the Wikipedia staff.
Look on the bright side . . .
No misinformation spread on the internet for one day.
Does everyone miss the human basics here?
1. It’s the OWNER/CREATOR’S FREE-WILL CHOICE to let her/his creation/intellectual property be circulated free, or to charge for it.
2. You don’t get to steal software I create. I don’t get to steal the indie movie you spent 30,000 hard-earned dollars makaing. Say you make a great movie with your $30K.
Anonymous, PiratesBay and BitTorrent spread it all over the Web. It goes viral, and all ignore your take-down requests.
Swelled with success, you approach a movie distributor for your deal of a lifetime to reward y our creativity, hard work. It will launch your career!
Distributor says, “Why should I buy what’s already free on 20 million screens?”
The pirate sites cost you fame, success–and the money you would have earned had you been wiser.
3. Not every thing is free, available to all, owed to all. Who creates or discovers it owns it.
Say I have knowledge about…GE’s inner workings, or next week’s gold prices:
(a) I don’t have to publish it, so that information is not “owed” to anyone. I can retain it for my own private use.
(b) If I do publish it, I can copyright it to prevent theft. You can’t freely distribute my knowledge.
(c) I can charge whatever I choose for my book, newsletter, or access to my Web service.
(d) You can choose to pay that amount–or tell me to stuff it, by keeping your money. But all knowledge isn’t magically yours by Divine Right.
Yes, that goes for students, “serious investigators” and researchers and reporters. They can request access, dispensations, special privilege, limited republication rights–and many more allowances–which a wise author would readily give.
But no one owes you a duty to hand out her or his hard work to the world.
And you don’t have a right to get all pouty and steal other people’s stuff on the playground.