Wikipedia will black out on Wednesday in SOPA protest

Wikipedia, in protest of the Stop Online Privacy Act, will join Reddit in a site black out tomorrow, the 18th of January ...

Padmini Harchandrai|Jan 17, 2012, 10:59:55 IST

Wikipedia, in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act, will join Reddit in a site black out tomorrow, the 18th of January. The online encyclopedia's founder and CEO, Jimmy Wales tweeted that he's starting to do press interviews on the upcoming Wikipedia blackout and has even started a hashtag for the topic, called simply #WikipediaBlackout. He also tweeted that he hopes Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday and in another tweet, called out to students to do their homework early, because "Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday".

Wikipedia will join Reddit in blackout

Wikipedia has been protesting SOPA from the beginning itself. They supported Dump GoDaddy Day in December when the domain service had proclaimed support for SOPA and when Reddit declared a blackout for the 18th of January, Wales quickly put a poll out to users to ask, if they should join in on the blackout. However, Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo has called Wikipedia's blackout "foolish" and "silly". According to the Guardian, Costolo has said, "That's just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish."

Do you think Wikipedia should protest SOPA? Let us know in the comments section below.

By Padmini Harchandrai

Paddy does not, we repeat, definitely does NOT belong in the category of Mac-head (yeh right!). She does get excited by her iPhone and her iMac and her iPod Nano and her Macbook and Bali's iPad and her future iHouse (patent pending). Ok, so maybe her head is a little bit forbidden fruit shaped. She likes shooting video (iPhone 4 camera zindabad!) and editing montages (Final Cut Pro zindabad!), whether the scene calls for it or no. In her spare time, she's either kicking it on stage with KB the keyboard or kicking butt at Taekwondo.