

Wikipedia blackout notice now on all English Wiki articles. - dazbradbury
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News

======
Natsu
Note that NoScript (among other things) blocks the blackout bar. If you want
to go directly to the anti-SOPA message, that's located here:

[https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-...](https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-
SOPA_blackout)

And here's the part where they discuss the NPOV issue:

=====

In making this decision, Wikipedians 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.

But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. As
Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing lists
recently,

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 to
sense of it.

But 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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ErrantX
So; the blackout will work something like this:

<https://test.wikipedia.org/?banner=SOPA_blackout_alt>

The exact text is being figured out here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Propo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Proposed_Messages)

(I think the current draft isn't very informative; it doesn't actually explain
anything, just that there is a protest of SOPA/PIPA & link to some blogs).

My personal take is that as of last weekend we are now on the back foot - and
going through with a protest _right now_ plays into the hands of the
politicians. What will happen is that SOPA/PIPA are effectively dead anyway
(and were when the Whitehouse didn't outright support them), the press will
cover this protest until it bores them and then, after the election, a lot of
it will be slipped through under another name.

A mass blackout has the most impact, from a media perspective, the first time.
I worry that WP and others have essentially been goaded into misfiring. (I
also note that Issa has backed off going after SOPA this week; which I suspect
is the right way to play against a delaying tactic).

I hope I'm wrong, but I am a little worried :(

~~~
mike-cardwell
FWIW, if you disable JavaScript, that test.wikipedia.org page isn't blacked
out.

~~~
RexRollman
Confirmed. I use NoScript and I saw no warning noticed until it was turned on.

------
Osiris
I find it interesting that they decided to blackout globally and not just the
U.S. Their rationale:

=====

Why is this a global action, rather than US-only? And why now, if some
American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat on SOPA?

The reality is that we don’t think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite
active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem.
All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation seeking to
regulate the Internet in other ways while hurting our online freedoms. Our
concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We
want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.

=====

~~~
kokey
I think they have followed an erroneous path towards the decision that this
should be a global blackout. I'm not in the US, so this affects my view. I
believe the vote was highly biased towards contributors who obviously followed
their way to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative> because
they already care about SOPA. As someone outside of the US, I don't
particularly care. The US already has stupid laws, like the Unlawful Internet
Gambling Enforcement Act, which isn't actively copied by most other countries
and has created opportunity and profit outside of the US. Like most people
outside of the US, I don't care if they can't drink before they are 21, gamble
online or export cryptography. In fact, I'm happy that the US can pass stupid
laws like that since it creates opportunity for the rest of the world.

Not that I agree with SOPA, I think it's a stupid law, but I don't think
Wikipedia should subject the rest of the world to this. Think about it, how
can one now honestly tell countries like China that Wikipedia is not
controlled by US political thought, when it's advertising exactly that through
this action.

~~~
dspillett
_> I'm not in the US_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came..>.

In the UK where we can't deport a "cleric" who is guilty of hate crimes,
people can be deported to the US for breaking their copyright laws with no
reference to the legality or not of their actions according to our laws. No
doubt other countries have similar relationships with the US. _Not being in
the US does not mean you are completely shielded from the affects of US laws._

There are side affects too, you don't have to be directly affected by the law
to have an effect on your life. If Wikipedia content came under the scrutiny
of laws such as this and had to be taken down, being US based they would have
to take the content down _for all users not just US based ones_.

OK the site could move all its hosting arrangements and its employees could
all move to another territory but that:

1\. is hardly practical

2\. doesn't entirely solve the jurisdiction issue, unless you know of a magic
country that will stand up to the US legal system, allows the current freedom
of expression Wikipedia depends upon, has the technical infrastructure to
support such sites, and that the relevant people will be happy to move to.

------
guelo
SOPA/PIPA seem to be dead in their current forms. Lawmakers are going to route
around this public awareness by waiting a few months and renaming the
legislation. I think Wikipedia should have waited until the next threat
emerges.

~~~
nitrogen
Look at it from a strategic perspective: those of us who are protesting with
blackouts are doing so to send a message to Congress and the non-tech public.
We don't want to send the message that they can get us to go away by
pretending to retreat, so even if SOPA is temporarily shelved, the blackouts
should still take place. This proves that we're willing to act when
threatened, and that we're capable of acting again if they threaten us again.

~~~
forensic
How is that remotely strategic? That's not a strategic perspective, that's s
brain dead perspective. Blacking out Wikipedia right now does not change the
behaviour of congress. The masses will look into SOPA angrily, find out that
congress has already killed it, and then forget about it.

7 months from now during s major news event it will be attached onto some
other bill and all public will toward opposition will be dissipated. Will
Wikipedia repeat their blackout? It will be far less effective.

"following through" is not strategic. Congress is only concerned with
manipulating the masses, they have no fear of a bunch of nerds who prematurely
ejaculate when attempting to exert power.

~~~
nitrogen
_The masses will look into SOPA angrily, find out that congress has already
killed it, and then forget about it._

That's easily addressed by changing the wording of the blackout text:
"Although Congress has shelved some or all of SOPA/PIPA, we still need to let
them know that we won't accept this in the future. Call your representative
and senator, thank them for listening to their constituents about SOPA/PIPA,
and let them know you oppose the introduction of similar bills in the future."

------
rometest
Currently they have blacked out the "donate to wikipedia" area

~~~
ramblerman
My brain skips this area of the site, I'm sure this is true of many others.

The proper effect tomorrow will be a full page one however.

------
GigabyteCoin
It's not showing to myself in Canada.

We know lots of Americans too! :(

~~~
SquareWheel
I'm seeing it in Canada.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
I had javascript turned off :S

They were only using a javascript blocker.

~~~
SquareWheel
Out of curiosity, why do you have Javascript disabled by default? Security?

I'm curious because when programming web applications, I'm always making
graceful fallbacks for non-Javascript users. It's usually not too difficult,
but it adds to development time and code size. Honestly, I've been wanting to
drop you guys for a while!

So I want to ask where your coming from. And maybe more importantly, is it
okay for devs to start relying on Javascript yet?

~~~
GigabyteCoin
Hah, the only reason I had it off was because I was testing my own website's
"you require javascript to view this site"'s page and had forogotten to turn
it back on.

I never surf without javascript, it breaks almost every web page I frequent.

I have javascript as a requirement to use my service and nobody complains.

Cheers.

~~~
SquareWheel
Haha, fantastic, thanks!

------
gojomo
I know this will generate a lot of awareness and constituent calls to
Congress. But I don't think the effect on casual users will be exclusively
what the blackout-proponents are hoping.

People will become more conscious of Wikipedia as an entity with a political
agenda than before. They will realize it could go away – not just because of
government censorship but also when it suits the lobbying goals of project
leaders.

Among some readers, that could energize more devotion, but among others,
create a sense that Wikipedia is more common, more political, and less
relentlessly reliable than they'd thought.

I wonder if Wikimedia or anyone else is doing repeated surveys of users that
could be used to judge attitudes before and after the blackout.

~~~
pygy_
Wikipedia may have a political agenda, but here it is simply fighting for
survival. It may indeed go away, but its editors are willing to fight to
prevent it.

Jimbo Wales did a wide editor survey on his talk page. The few opposing voices
(that I remember of) were about Wikipedia's neutrality. They were missing the
fact that, while Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of
view, the existence of Wikipedia relies on non-neutral things like the right
to freedom of expression and not being taken down on a whim because someone,
somewhere, reported for some reason to some authority that some page was
infringing some copyright.

~~~
ErrantX
Well, in fairness, that couldn't happen to Wikipedia directly because of
provisions in the SOPA legislation.

The concern (which no one at WP is doing a good job of explaining...) is that
we might be defined under SOPA as a "search engine" and therefore forced to
stop linking to sites that, on a whim, are considered copyright infringing.

~~~
pygy_
> _Well, in fairness, that couldn't happen to Wikipedia directly because of
> provisions in the SOPA legislation._

'till next time? Good thing you show that you won't let people walk on your
turf.

------
maeon3
I'll bet fox news will never post one article on the first global protest
blackout action. If it does, the message will be completely fabricated
internally.

