18th January 2012
Wikipedia and others protest anti-piracy law

Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing and an estimated 7000 other websites blacked out their web pages as part of a global protest against the U.S. House of Representatives' Stop Online Piracy Act and the U.S. Senate's Protect IP Act.

At the time SOPA and PIPA were bills not yet approved as laws that would give entertainment companies the power to take down domains that host or link to anything they consider pirated.

Neither bill had been finalized for presentation, and at that point language could still be changed. According to the White House website at the time, the Obama administration was against Internet piracy but would not support legislation that restricted freedom of expression or thwarted online innovation.

Many websites simply redirected to the SOPA Strike website strike for the duration of the protest which was the largest online protest in history.

Related information:

• SOPA Strike website
• BBC News: Wikipedia's blackout protest against SOPA explained

Image:

• Wikipedia's protest page
  Credit: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Images remain the copyright of the original copyright holder. Used under fair use policy for educational purposes only.