Wikipedia blacks out for 24 hours in protest

Online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has today embarked on a 24 hour long black out in protest of two proposed United States Congress legislation aimed at prohibiting free and open access to information on the internet.A message on the site partly read, 'For 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.'Apparently, in protest against the SOPA and PIPA legislation currently being considered by the United States congress, readers of English Wikipedia beginning at midnight January 18, Eastern Time, will experience the black out.During the blackout readers will not be able to read the encyclopedia: instead, they will see messages calling on electorates to use social media outlets to call on their representatives to stop the 'fatal Bill'.According to Wikipedia's community blog on anti SOPA blackout, administrators assert that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)in the U.S. House of Representatives, and thePROTECTIP Act (PIPA)in the U.S. Senate' that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.The blog explained that, in making the decision, Wikipedia will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That's a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.Kat Walsh, a foundation board member of Wikipedia, in the companies mailing list said although Wikipedia's articles are neutral, its existence is not.'We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world's knowledge. We're putting it in context, and showing people how to make sense of it'. He added.Wikipedia sources also elucidate that, 'that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia.''Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or, if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.
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