18 January means today will mark the apocalypse of the internet. Two of the world’s biggest websites, Wikipedia and Reddit, will shut down for 24 hours in order to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA)–two bills that the U.S. government is trying to pass.
In addition to the participation of these huge websites in the protest, the top website in the world, Google, will join in tomorrow–using the leverage of their homepage. This simple webpage just happens to get over a billion page views every day of the year! Take that SOPA!
A Google spokesperson recently told Mashable that there will be a link on the homepage for any of these hundreds of millions of people to click on in order to learn more about SOPA and its congressional counterpart, PIPA. The links will also include reasons why global tech firms like Google, Reddit, and Wikipedia oppose the bills.
“Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet,” the spokesperson said in an e-mail statement. “So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our U.S. home page.”
Although these head honchos of the world wide web are making a full-fledged attack on the government act, there are some household website that aren’t taking the same kind of action, one of these being Twitter. Following the news that had surfaced in the last few weeks of the Wikipedia and Reddit blackout, and in response to the call for help, CEO of Twitter, Dick Costolo responded to this by stating: “closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.”
Social networking site Twitter was also part of the protest letter that was sent to the senate in, but they would rather not shut down their site. Google, Wikipedia and Reddit are using their influence to raise awareness about these controversial bills. Time will tell if these bills ever see the light of day; but with President Obama in opposition, it is unlikely that PIPA and SOPA will pass.