In addition to Wikipedia’s blackout …

Posted by Lynn Ramey on Wednesday, January 18, 2012 in Research Tools.

Google Homepage seems to be doing something similar with a large black box placed over the logo.  Click on the black box, and it leads you to the following website, named “End Piracy, Not Liberty”:  https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/  There is even a form on this page to send an anti-online censorship message directly to Congress!

Also, the following is a link to an article that summarizes the extent of the protest:  http://blogs.ajc.com/news-to-me/2012/01/17/thousands-of-websites-offline-wednesday-to-protest-sopa-pipa/

Jonathan Lethem’s article “The Ecstasy of Influence” addresses this triangular tension among consumers, creators and corporations (the three players affected by/interested in SOPA and PIPA): “But the truth is that with artists pulling on one side and corporations pulling on the other, the loser is the collective public imagination from which we were nourished in the first place, and whose existence as the ultimate repository of our offerings makes the work worth doing in the first place” (68).  Earlier, in his explanation of the “usemonopoloy”, Lethem writes, “Whether the monopolizing beneficiary is a living artist or some artist’s heirs or some corporation’s shareholders, the loser is the community, including living artists who might make splendid use of a healthy public domain” (64).

The refrain seems to be that copyright and anti-pirating laws not only block creative progress but also negatively affect the public — and this 2007 article still strikes true, especially in light of Wikipedia’s black-out, which is explained by Wikipedia as a defense of public (and global) information:  “Wikipedians have chosen to black out the English Wikipedia for the first time ever, because we are concerned that SOPA and PIPA will severely inhibit people’s access to online information. This is not a problem that will solely affect people in the United States: it will affect everyone around the world.”