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English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout
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To: English Wikipedia Readers and Community
From: Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Date: January 16, 2012
Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the
English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on
Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation
here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United
States—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives,
and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate—that, if passed, would
seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.
This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public
protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made. Here’s
how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally
facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement, signed by
User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:
It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these
bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.
Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined
together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take
against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a
community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of
concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming
majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public
action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by
Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia,
in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA,
received the strongest support.
On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note
the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just
from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came
from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the
United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice
instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout
preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar
legislation in other nations.
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.
The decision to shut down the English Wikipedia wasn’t made by me; it was made
by editors, through a consensus decision-making process. But I support it.
Like Kat and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, I have increasingly
begun to think of Wikipedia’s public voice, and the goodwill people have for
Wikipedia, as a resource that wants to be used for the benefit of the public.
Readers trust Wikipedia because they know that despite its faults, Wikipedia’s
heart is in the right place. It’s not aiming to monetize their eyeballs or make
them believe some particular thing, or sell them a product. Wikipedia has no
hidden agenda: it just wants to be helpful.
That’s less true of other sites. Most are commercially motivated: their purpose
is to make money. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a desire to make the world
a better place—many do!—but it does mean that their positions and actions need
to be understood in the context of conflicting interests.
My hope is that when Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will understand
that we’re doing it for our readers. We support everyone’s right to freedom of
thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to
educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for
it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared
without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA—and PIPA, and
other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States—don’t
advance the interests of the general public. You can read a very good list of
reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA here, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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 intended to
fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt 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.
Make your voice heard!
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On January 18, we hope you’ll agree with us, and will do what you can to make
your own voice heard.
Sue Gardner,
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
--
Mustafa Akgul <[email protected]>
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