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Comment by jxcole | Hacker News Reader

Do you remember when the Italians shut down Italian wikipedia because the Italian government was going to pass something stupid? Since this legislation would make it possible to sue wikipedia in the united states, it would make sense for wikipedia to shut down in the US in protest to this bill.

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I was going to say that Wikipedia content is licensed under CC BY-SA, but that's just wrong. There's tons of fair use content, and plenty of quotes pulled from various sources. This really could pose an existential threat to them were someone to get it into their head to shut them down.

edit: On second (third?) thought, why just Wikipedia? SOPA threatens youtube, facebook, and just about every other site with user-generated content. Why not a Universal Blackout Day, with every site that could be threatened by SOPA displaying the same message warning about its dangers and directing users to contact congress and the white house?

There is already an organized movement for this, American Censorship Day: http://americancensorship.org/

All we need is committment from a few of the major web properties to get this issue some momentum in the mainstream media. Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube.. Where are you when we need you?

I posted a story on it yesterday but it didn't get momentum: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231343

Even if they just changed their landing page, and said 'this is an example of what you'll see if SOPA passes.' I would commit to this.

We're doing it for Glossi so hopefully other people follow. It's much easier to do this when you're a smaller company though.

We have an explanatory blog post too for whoever cares to read: http://blog.glos.si/post/12868376174/american-censorship-day

Many of these companies sent a letter to the judiciary committee, although it doesn't seem convincing enough: http://www.protectinnovation.com/downloads/letter.pdf

Can we lobby Wikipedia to send a similar message? Does that make practical sense?

Just sent an email to info-en-o@wikimedia.org:

  Dear Wikipedia,
 
  I admire your stance last month against the Italian wiretapping
  law when you shut down the Italian Wikipedia.
  
  I encourage you to please consider a similar protest against the
  SOPA legislation which threatens many websites, including
  Wikipedia. I believe raising awareness will do a lot of good,
  and Wikipedia has tremendous reach.
  
  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/sopa-hollywood-finally-gets-chance-break-Internet
  
  Thanks for your time!
  Greg

I have low expectations, but if anyone else is interested you're welcome to copy/paste my email.

EDIT: formatting

I received the following response:

We, too, feel that civil liberties are crucial, and by spreading knowledge, the Wikimedia Foundation strives to liberate minds. However, we cannot get involved in matters that do not directly affect our ability to spread such knowledge, as we need to keep an unbiased stance, both within our encyclopedias and in our interaction with society at large. Also, please be aware that Wikimedia is a global endeavour and the English version of Wikipedia is only one of many, and the United States is just of many countries where it is published. As a matter of fact, less than half of the contributions on Wikipedia originate in the US.

I got the same response. At least they heard this message from many of us. Thanks for the template.

"less than half of the contributions on Wikipedia originate in the US." I think they should look at it the other way around: "almost half of the contributions on Wikipedia originate in the US".

I got this response as well. It was worth a try

Just got the same response. Bummer :P

Thanks for the template Greg,

I've written the address a similar please. Good work!

I don't think lobbying Wikipedia makes any practical sense. There's no leader or central governing body. Is Jimbo going to order the sites closed?

But you could try to start a discussion about it on Wikipedia's village pump, though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump

Agreed, this would do a lot to raise awareness in non-techies.

I'd like to put a small overlay on PadMapper to point people to this. Does anyone know of a really good, engaging, layman's summary of the issues with Protect IP and broadly applicable, actionable advice that I could link to?

Perhaps someone more skilled in visual design than I could put together a common banner that people can drop on their sites/blogs to raise awareness.

EDIT: The source of that video ( http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/ ) seems like a decent option, so I've put that up on PadMapper. Any others?

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