Wikipedia has blocked their own website for 24 hours in protest against proposed US legislation that could seriously hamper access to information on the internet.
Imagine a World Without Free KnowledgeFor over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia
This enough to take up the sword and join Al Qaeda in the fight against the evil Americans!
Echoes of our very own Protection of Information Bill, anyone? Maybe a massive DoS attack on our government’s servers is in order.
'Luthon64
Should be fair, they already DoS everyone else…
Thus far, attempts to control the web have been about as successful as the “war on drugs.” I’m not too worried about it.
I think there is reason for concern here. The proposed legislation would make a company liable for users’ actions. User generated sites such as Wikipedia and YouTube would be expected to regulate (censor?) the content of their users’ postings. The volume of information involved makes this a mammoth task. They can even be held accountable if a user provides a link to another site which infringes copyright. The local equivalent would be that bluegray would have to verify the copyright compliancy of every website members of this forum provide links to from here. I use Wikipedia on a daily basis and would be most disappointed if it got seriously undermined. I can imagine how keenly our government is going to seize this opportunity to publish our own Protection of Copyright Bill, as they have with FICA and RICA and of course the POIB.
Good. That means that if they really actually apply the law, they’ll shut down the entire internet within two weeks. Another week later, red in the face, they’ll either repeal the law or stop applying it. You cannot legislate reality out of existence.