SAN FRANCISCO -- Wikipedia is joining the fight against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the United States House of Representatives and PROTECTIP (PIPA) in the United States Senate.
The free encyclopedia website announced Monday its English Wikipedia version will “blackout” January 18, 2012 for 24 hours. The site says if passed, the legislation will harm free internet and bring censorship to the United States international websites.
“This is an extraordinary action for our community to take,” said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. “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."
Administrators of Wikipedia have issued a public notice of the blackout.
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