Wikipedia will shut down Wednesday for cyber protest

Wikipedia wants Congress to know it vehemently opposes anti-piracy legislation under consideration by the House and Senate, and so to make its point Wikipedia will completely shut down the English version of its site all day on Wednesday.

The bills in question are the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) in the House and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the Senate. CNN Money reports that this companion legislation "aims to crack down on copyright infringement by restricting access to sites that host pirated content. (The) main targets are 'rogue' overseas sites like … The Pirate Bay, which are a trove for illegal downloads of movies and other digital content."

According to Wired UK, the legislation "has been driven largely by movie studios and record labels who have spent vast amounts of money lobbying to clamp down even harder on file-sharing and copyright infringement online."

By no means does Wikipedia endorse Internet theft of copyrighted content like movies and music. However, Wikipedia asserts that "this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States" because the two bills will give too much unchecked power to the federal government to unilaterally shut down websites under the broad umbrella of "Internet piracy."

"Wikipedians from around the world have spoken about their opposition to this destructive legislation," Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said Tuesday via press release. "This is an extraordinary action for our community to take — and while we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that (these two bills) endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world."

On Saturday, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra posted on the White House blog to outline the general principles behind the Obama administration's opposition to the Protect Intellectual Property Act and Stop Online Piracy Act.