Wikipedia To Shut Down For 24 Hours : Twitter Toi

[Spartan]

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales on Monday asked school students to finish their homework early as he detailed the plan to shut down the website on Wednesday to protest against a controversial anti-piracy bill that the US senate is debating.

[b]"Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday," [/b]Wales said on his Twitter page.

"I am just starting to do press interviews about the upcoming blackout of Wikipedia...This is going to be wow. I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know," he wrote. Wales said that visitors to the Wikipedia's English website will see a message telling them that the website has been shut for 24 hours to protest the anti-piracy laws called Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA).

For last few months there has been a fierce debate over SOPA in US. While organizations like Motion Picture Association of America believe that laws like SOPA, which has several drastic provisions, including blocking websites at DNS level, are needed to fight piracy, web companies like Google and Facebook say that SOPA will stifle innovation and hit freedom of speech.

Wales also said that ComScore estimates around 25 million people visit the English website of Wikipedia every day.

[tom bhayya]

gp

[Spartan]

[img]http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/wikipedia_sopa_blackout_design.png?w=640[/img]

[Abala tho Thabala]