By Suzanne Choney
The midnight oil was burning across the United States on college campuses before the English version of Wikipedia went dark at midnight, a blackout to protest anti-piracy legislation making its way through Congress. "Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!," warned Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on Twitter, and with that, one of the most heavily visited websites began a 24-hour "blackout."
Craiglist, the free classified ad site, too was dark. Google slapped a black tape across the word "Google" on its home page, as if it were muffled, although it continued to be available for search.
Social news site Reddit said it would be blacked out for 12 hours, starting at 8 a.m. ET. And while the world didn't stop, the Internet kind of did, at least for users and fans of the sites and others in the U.S. as sites began to go dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate.
Google's protest of proposed anti-piracy legislation includes blacking out its own name on its home search page.
You could still access Wikipedia in Spanish, or French, or German or Russian or many other languages; just not English. "This is going to be wow," Wales said on Twitter. "I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know!"
The two bills, supported supported mainly by the entertainment industry, are aimed at stopping illegal downloading and streaming of movies and TV shows. But many in the tech world?? including giants Google and Facebook ? say the legislation would let federal authorities shut down portions of the Internet without due process, and fundamentally alter the Internet's ability to provide a platform for free speech.
(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and Comcast/NBC Universal. Comcast/NBC Universal is listed as a supporter of SOPA on the House Judiciary Committee website. On Tuesday, Microsoft itself said it opposes SOPA as it is "currently drafted.")
"This is an extraordinary action for our community to take," Wikipedia's Wales said earlier in the week about the blackout, adding, "...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."
Wales said the English version of Wikipedia gets about 25 million visits a day, according to comScore.
The site has become almost a staple of daily Web surfing, whether it's directly sought out or cited on search engines like Google.
It's not just desperate students looking to it for information on their way to getting a degree; it' about 53 percent of all adult Internet users in the U.S., said the Pew Internet & American Life Project last year.
"The percentage of all American adults who use Wikipedia to look for information has increased from 25 percent in February 2007 to 42 percent in May 2010," Pew said.
It also noted that Wikipedia is "more popular than sending instant messages ... or rating a product, service, or person ... but is less popular than using social network sites" or watching videos on sites like YouTube.
Several other sites plan to go dark Wednesday to protest the legislation. Among them: icanhazcheeseburger sites (those goofy ones you visit to see cats on the Internet or serial killers) including Know Your Meme and The Daily What); and TwitPic, the site that lets you share your photos on Twitter. Social news site Reddit said it would be out of commission for 12 hours starting at 8 a.m. PT.
A list of websites participating and considering participating in the protest is available here.?
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