> They [the bills] put the onus on website owners to police user-contributed
> material and call for the blocking of entire sites, even if the links are
> not to infringing material. Small sites will not have the sufficient
> resources to mount a legal challenge.
This is beautiful. It succinctly puts forth the problem that SOPA/PIPA and similar legislation will create: chilling innovation.
The black-out page did its job in my case. Here's what I sent to my representatives:
As one of your constituents, I want to make you aware of my strong opposition to SOPA, PIPA, and any bill that threatens to restrict or encumber the free flow of information on the Internet.
The monopoly rights that we extend to the owners of intellectual property are intended to provide an incentive to create and disperse knowledge and culture for the benefit of society at large. Legislation that imposes potentially enormous costs on society in order to protect IP rights is antithetical to that very idea.
I encourage you to do what you can to ensure that these bills do not become law.
Well, that's interesting. All the content is still there, but then an overlay is placed on the page using JS once the page loads. How long until someone puts up a greasemonkey script to unblackout WP?
The mobile site is also still available, by design.
"Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?
The Wikipedia community, as part of their request to the Wikimedia Foundation to carry out this protest, asked us to ensure that we make English Wikipedia accessible in some way during an emergency. The English Wikipedia will be accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. Because the protest message is powered by JavaScript, it's also possible to view Wikipedia by completely disabling JavaScript in your browser."
Well with the direction CSS is taking, Javascript isn't only for 'cool and moving things' anymore. I use Cufon for fonts, since it's better and cleaner than font-face.
Tell people that this is what it will be like to access information online if anything like SOPA passes.
I wonder if a lot of people are going to be searching for "how to access wikipedia" now? Pity it will be too late by tomorrow, or you could inform them yet again. Oh well.
I think Wikipedia still gets to make its point if you have to pepper in some JavaScript or CSS to get back to it. Much more work than your standard interstitial.
This is the best point to make: the SOPA will only stop people who don't know how to get around it, just like the Wiki blackout. That is precisely to point to be made here.
I think that looks and scans worse. I didn't count characters, but it also seems like more characters. I bet it performs worse too (not that performance matters in this case).
I think the idea is to draw attention of the non-technical crowd. Those who can "put up a greasemonkey script" are probably well aware of SOPA already.
I was sitting here trying to figure out if it started yet because all the pages kept loading. This is good though, almost anyone who has javascript disabled is probably aware of the issue and against it.
The time delay in implementation of the black-out on my system (via JavaScript) probably helps make the point more. I went to the main page (the link here) not by following the link from this thread, but from my browser history. I saw a brief glimpse of today's main page, and then the screen image changed to Wikipedia's black-out page. I went to the information page, and there it still shows all the headings a Wikipedian will see when logged in: the user's own user page, and user talk page, and so on. So I followed the link to my user page, and it too displayed for the briefest tantalizing moment before showing the black-out page. Slick. I tried some other stored URLs from my browser history, and they all briefly displayed the appropriate Wikipedia page before being overwritten with the black-out notice. This will get attention.
says "The Wikipedia community has blacked out the English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours on January 18th to raise awareness about legislation being proposed by the U.S. Congress," but I see it also includes advice for residents of other countries about what to do about the legislation.
The information page even includes a response to the question "In carrying out this protest, is Wikipedia abandoning neutrality? Can I still trust Wikipedia?" The response is "We are staging this blackout because, although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence actually is not. Wikipedia depends on its existence for a free and open, uncensored Internet." This immediately suggests some other countries that it might be important to draw more attention to on Wikipedia. I wonder if that will happen. If it doesn't, I may indeed start doubting the neutrality of Wikipedia even more than I already do.
Mobile devices are exempted from the black-out, according to the information page, and anyone can turn off the black-out by disabling JavaScript. (I enable JavaScript on Wikipedia to take advantage of various Wikipedia editing tools.) I'll have to experiment with viewing the site some more, and I'll be curious to see what the worldwide reaction is. Again, I wonder what users will suggest what other countries to protest about with regard to Internet censorship.
AFTER EDIT: In another experiment, I posted a Wikipedia link to Facebook to tell friends about the background to my new favorite pop song. The link
still shows correct summary text when embedded in a Facebook comment. That the links are still pasteable and still have usability when submitted to discussion forums is an especially nice aspect of how Wikipedia implemented its blackout. (P.S. The direct link to the official video for the new song, which is rapidly going viral around the world, is
"Wikipedia depends on its existence for a free and open, uncensored Internet."
Gah... that should be "Wikipedia depends, for its existence, on a free and open, uncensored Internet.", but of course editing that page is disabled! :)
I did not realize how much I used Wikipedia until now. I've run into the page four times in 20 minutes (reverted to google cache to get what I needed). I'll make it a challenge for me not to block it with noscript.
When you are on the 'glimpse' of the page you want to see you can press the stop button on the browser and it will stop the blackout page from appearing.
Seems really poorly implemented. Doesn't explain why it's blacked out in a concise manner, it was unable to look up the House rep for my zip code, it doesn't autolink Twitter, refers to the bills only as "SOPA" and "PIPA" and never actually uses the full names, certainly doesn't employ any innovative methods of getting people to call their reps like Tumblr did, etc...
If a blackout of the English language Wikipedia affects you, then the destruction of the English language Wikipedia by US domestic politics would _also_ affect you, whether you like it or not.
I am unable to influence US politics. My point is not that SOPA would not affect me, but that I am unable to actually do anything about it. Thus, this protest is annoying, without achieving anything.
Google, far more sensibly, and with the understanding that domestic US protests are not relevant to the entire world, took the route of only blacking out their logo for US users.
Western English speaking countries tend to copy each others legislation. SOPA passing in the US would make something similar easier to push through in Australia, Canada, etc.
Indeed they do, and if an English version comes through parliament I will appreciate protests from Wikipedia. However, as things are, this is disproportionate and unhelpful. Something like the HN approach of blacking out the logo would be far more appropriate for users outside the USA.
I was prepared for an un-circumventable blackout myself, and on reflection also think that the JS overlay is pretty smart.
I'm certainly over-thinking this, but perhaps there's also a parallel between the way that many people will be finding out how to dive into their configuration and turn off Javascript, install bookmarklets or whatnot today, and the way that people may be finding out how to set their machines up to use alternate DNS servers if and when SOPA's DNS blocking ever comes to pass.
Sorry Wikipedia, i want to use you anyway today ...
just click on this bookmarklet on any blackouted Wiki page:
javascript:(function(){document.body.appendChild(document.createElement('script')).src='http://www.soluch.at/other/JavaScript/bookmarklets/testsuite...;
Plenty of tools already posted, but there are a few more here, including a native FF add-on (so you don't have to keep hitting the bookmarklet) and userscripts for greasemonkey in FF, or native chrome:
http://www.theobamastore.com/stopsopanotknowledge/
I have to say, I just spent as much time browsing all the different languages represented on Wikipedia nowadays as I normally spend on TV Tropes. There's one good result of SOPA!
Reading the comments, I have feeling many people outside HN would miss the essence and only think of it as a challenge ("Look, I can access the content! I'm JavaScript ninja!").
Maybe it's intentional to actually serve the content but then black it out using a simple script (rather than 503'ing and serving only the blackout page). It's similar to the proposed SOPA censorship in that it only affects the most clueless of us and anyone who really wants to get there can circumvent it.
Just as I predicted last week, Twitter is filled with people complaining about the Wikipedia blackout. College students in particular are screwed cause they can't get their work done. StratGirlStories writes, "WTF WHY IS EVERYTHING BEING BLACKED OUT!!!! I HAVE A FUCKING PROJECT DUE IN 5 HOURS!!!! I NEED WIKIPEDIA!!!! FUCK FUCK FUCKKK"
