Yesterday more than 115.000 sites blacked out their site to protest against SOPA, the “Stop Online Privacy Act” and PIPA, the PROTECT-IP ACT. We simply say: Stop SOPA, stop the ridiculous metaphor of “piracy” and the war against Internet. The Internet has brought us a new organisational model, and “intellectual property” will need different regulations to cope with that and with it the busines models of intellectual monopolists. Of all sites that blacked out, Wikipedia is arguably the one with the highest impact. Let us look at their thank you message about yesterday’s black-out.
The Wikipedia blackout is over — and you have spoken.
More than 162 million people saw our message asking if you could imagine a world without free knowledge. You said no. You shut down Congress’s switchboards. You melted their servers. Your voice was loud and strong. Millions of people have spoken in defense of a free and open Internet.
For us, this is not about money. It’s about knowledge. As a community of authors, editors, photographers, and programmers, we invite everyone to share and build upon our work.
Our mission is to empower and engage people to document the sum of all human knowledge, and to make it available to all humanity, in perpetuity. We care passionately about the rights of authors, because we are authors.
SOPA and PIPA are not dead: they are waiting in the shadows. What’s happened in the last 24 hours, though, is extraordinary. The Internet has enabled creativity, knowledge, and innovation to shine, and as Wikipedia went dark, you’ve directed your energy to protecting it.
We’re turning the lights back on. Help us keep them shining brightly.