No Wikipedia Jan 18
By Asha

Put simply, the US Congress, backed by big business, is trying to pass two laws - SOPA and PIPA - which are good for big business but would stem the freedoms and creativity of the internet.  It would also allow anyone sitting in USA to even block advertising to a website in Bangalore.  Even if you are in the right, you have to go and settle it in USA.  Most experts, including Google and Facebook, believe that SOPA and PIPA will break all that is good on the internet.

Wikipedia, which gets 474 Million visitors a month, has decided to take a stand against SOPA and PIPA.  They will shut down their English website tomorrow to protest these bad laws

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On January 18, 2012, in an unprecedented decision, the Wikipedia community has chosen to blackout the English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours, in protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and PROTECTIP (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States.

“Today Wikipedians from around the world have spoken about their opposition to this destructive legislation," said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. "This is an extraordinary action for our community to take - and while we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world."
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