Wikipedia, the free, web-based, multilingual encyclopedia, began its strike Tuesday night to protest against anti-piracy bills that limit output information. The protest is set to last at least 24 hours. The website has the highest traffic on the Internet. If anti-piracy bills are passed by the U.S. Congress, it would reportedly be very difficult, if not impossible, for the nonprofit encyclopedia to operate. Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia said, “The issue here is that this law is very badly written, very broadly overreaching and, in at least the Senate version, would include the creation of a DNS (domain name system) blocking regime that’s technically identical to the one that’s used by China. I don’t think that’s the right way the U.S. needs to go in taking a leadership role on the Internet.”
The English version of Wikipedia is currently the only version on strike, making this a global effect. Wales said, “U.S. law does affect the entire Internet. It does impact people globally. And, therefore, people felt like we should make this known everywhere.” Other sites on strike include Reddit.com and BoingBoing.net.
