NOTE: At this time we believe only USA sites will go down Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning.
Some of the sites Yahoo, Twitter, eBay, Facebook, Google, Hotmail have mirror sites in India, they may be up but not sure.
USA ET Tuesday-Wednesday Midnight = Wednesday 10:30 AM India
Joining the protest against two proposed federal Internet regulation bills, Wikipedia's English-language site will be blacked out for all of Wednesday, co-founder Jimmy Wales announced onTwitter today.
Beginning midnight ET Wednesday, Jan. 18, visitors to the English site will see a protest message for 24 hours, Wales tweeted. The move will affect about 100 million users.
"This is going to be wow," he says.
Wikipedia and several other sites are calling on lawmakers to block the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). They are concerned the laws will "hold website owners liable for links to sources of illegal music and movie downloading, with a detrimental effect on free speech online," The Financial Times reports.
Reddit and the Cheezburger network, which includes such sites as The Daily What and Fail Blog, also plan to shut down to protest SOPA, The Washington Post reports. The document service Scribd already made a billion pages vanish in protest, the Post says.
Craigslist posted a message to all its users explaining it and other Web site's opposition to the bills.
Meanwhile, Wales tweeted this: "Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday! #sopa"
Saturday, the White House urged that SOPA be vetoed and spelled out what it would support in anti-piracy legislation. The House leaders then said they would shelve the bill until a "consensus" could be reached, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Sunday he hoped to "move forward" with an amendment when lawmakers return from recess, The Hill says.
NEW YORK | Mon Jan 16, 2012 4:24pm EST
(Reuters) - Wikipedia, the popular community-edited online encyclopedia, will black out its English-language site for 24 hours to seek support against proposed U.S. anti-piracy legislation that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said threatens the future of the Internet.
The service will be the highest profile name to join a growing campaign starting at midnight Eastern Time on Wednesday that will see it black out its page so that visitors will only see information about the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).
The information will urge Wikipedia readers to contact their local congressman to vote against the bills. Other smaller sites leading the campaign include Reddit.com and Cheezeburger.
"This is a quite clumsily drafted legislation which is dangerous for an open Internet," said Wales in an interview.
The decision to black out the site was decided by voting within the Wikipedia community of writers and editors who manage the free service, Wales said. The English language Wikipedia receives more than 25 million average daily visitors from around the world, according to comScore data.
The bills pit technology companies like Google Inc and Facebook against the bill's supporters, including Hollywood studios and music labels, which say the legislation is needed to protect intellectual property and jobs.
The SOPA legislation under consideration in the House of Representatives aims to crack down on online sales of pirated American movies, music or other goods by forcing Internet companies to block access to foreign sites offering material that violates U.S. copyright laws. Supporters argue the bill is unlikely to have an impact on U.S.-based websites.
U.S. advertising networks could also be required to stop online ads, and search engines would be barred from directly linking to websites found to be distributing pirated goods.
Google has repeatedly said the bill goes too far and could hurt investment. Along with other Internet companies such as Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and eBay, it has run advertisements in major newspapers urging Washington lawmakers to rethink their approach.
White House officials raised concerns on Saturday about SOPA saying they believe it could make businesses on the Internet vulnerable to litigation and harm legal activity and free speech.
"We're happy to see opposition is building and that the White House has started to pay attention," said Wales.
News of the White House's comments prompted a prominent supporter of the bill News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch to slam the Obama administration.
"So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery," he posted on his personal Twitter account Saturday. News Corp owns a vast array of media properties from Fox TV, the Wall Street Journal to Twentieth Century Fox studios.
Wales said the bill in its current form was too broad and could make it difficult for a site like Wikipedia, which he said relies on open exchange of information. He said the bill also places the burden of proof on the distributor of content in the case of any dispute over copyright ownership.
"I do think copyright holders have legitimate issues, but there are ways of approaching the issue that don't involve censorship," Wales said.
(Reporting By Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, confirmed the site’s decision on Monday on Twitter, writing: “Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!”
The members of Wikipedia have been debating and voting about whether the site should participate in a blackout, which several other Web sites, including Reddit, the social news site, and BoingBoing, a technology and culture blog, plan to join.
On Twitter, Mr. Wales said that Wikipedia would go dark beginning at midnight Eastern time on Tuesday and remain unavailable until midnight Eastern time on Wednesday. Visitors who try to reach the Wikipedia home page will be greeted with information about the bills and details about how to reach their local representative. Mr. Wales estimated that the blackout could affect as many as 100 million people.
“This is going to be wow, ” Mr. Wales wrote. “I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!”
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