Major Online Brands Stand Ready For A Day Of Protest Action Against SOPA

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How much work do you plan to get done on Wednesday (Jan 18)?

Put another way, how easy would you find it if the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Foursquare and Reddit switched off?

Well, the truth is, that’s unlikely to happen, although all the above are known to be opponents of the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) which is scheduled to return to the U.S. Senate this week.

Opposition from Internet companies and users has hardened against SOPA and two other pieces of proposed anti-piracy legislation, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), which is due to go before the Senate on Jan 24, and the Online Protection and Digital ENforcement Act (OPEN). Opponents claim these are badly drafted works of censorship that will stifle freedom of expression and business development on the web.

Significantly, two days ago the White House also appeared to have come out against SOPA & PIPA with a blog post stressing the importance of those very points.

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small

The extent to which this has become a battle between the forces of old and new media was made clear by Rupert Murdoch’s furious reaction to the White House statement via Twitter:

So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery. -

And so to Wednesday.

It was Reddit who first proposed switching off in protest, and a number of large websites, particularly in the gaming sector, have said they will join the blackout. Wikipedia has said it would like to join the blackout, but wants to confirm with others that. Facebook, Google, Twitter and Foursquare may well mark the day with some form of protest, but are extremely unlikely to go offline. The degree of their anger shouldn’t be underestimated.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said: SOPA…

…would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world

Foursquare said:

The PIPA and SOPA proposals restrict openness and impose preemptive censorship. If a couple of rogue links are found in our Tips, PIPA and SOPA could allow the government to shut foursquare down. So, either we censor all our users (and sites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter do the same) or risk being shut down by the government.
As a startup, this scares the crap out of us. For our 15,000,000-strong community and the over 500,000 local businesses on foursquare, we hope this seems absurd. And for the growing American internet industry and the jobs it creates, this is a kick in the shins.

It seems likely we may, at the very least, see some unusual homepages at our most familiar online haunts on Wednesday.

Will you be protesting on Weds? (There are WP Plugins!)

Image: ThisisBossi