Characterizing this as a "political reason" does a huge disservice to what the events of the 18th are all about. This "political reason" has the potential to ruin the internet forever. The point of the blackout is to give people a taste of what could happen under SOPA/PIPA/etc. And get them to call their representatives, and get the word out.
Reddit and HN squawking about a law won't do much on its own. Getting the word out in a meaningful way, meaning impacting sites that the average (non-techie) joe would access, has the potential to be much, much more effective.
Something to the effect of "THIS COULD HAPPEN PERMANENTLY IF LAWS LIKE THIS PASS".
Between Cheezburger, WP, and some of the other sites out there, this is going to be a very, very interesting Wednesday.
If you want to help, take the complaining you're doing now and direct it at Congress (or your local equivalent if you're not in the USA). You can thank them for these shenanigans.
EDIT:
Keep in mind, even if you're not in the USA, this impacts you (and I don't just mean the blackout). So much of the internet's structure is located in the USA (IANA, ICANN, registrars, etc) that any bad legislation here has potentially global reach. SOPA/PIPA is a good example of such bad legislation.
How bad does some political issue have to be for Wikipedia to get involved? And note that SOPA is far down on the list of "universally thought of as evil for all humanity" things that people would like to see changed.
I believe this is the point of the demonstration.
Also, if you're that scared, you've been given fair warning. Download a copy for your archives, so you can keep using Wikipedia while it's offline.
Would SOPA care for those arguments?
Even if that political reason threatens to shut off the encyclopedia?
A 24-hour blackout on only the English version of the site is fairly reasonable to raise awareness of an issue as important as SOPA.
And that's exactly what SOPA would do. Permanently. Nobody is preventing you from accessing today's Wikipedia content on your own this Wednesday - go download a copy of their db right now if you're that scared and fearful of a day without it. The point is a strong demonstration of what the world would be like with SOPA/PIPA. It's necessary.
We should certainly get people's attention by doing something very overt like replacing every article with a big dark SOPA message, but there really should still be a way to click through to the information.
> We should certainly get people's attention by doing something very overt like replacing every article with a big dark SOPA message, but there really should still be a way to click through to the information.
That's fine for us mega-nerds, but what about everyone else?
I actually don't know what it's going to be like to work on Wednesday without Wikipedia. But I think it's in all our interests to find out and put a face on these bills.
Uh, no. That's not the same token at all.