Surfing the web for quick answers may become a little tougher on Wednesday, when Wikipedia goes dark for 24 hours in protest of proposed U.S. anti-piracy legislation.
The free online encyclopedia says it will "black out" its English website for 24 hours to protest two bills which take aim at online piracy, and more specifically offshore sales of pirated U.S. products.
Content on Wikipedia's English site won't be available from midnight (ET) until midnight on Wednesday.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is being reviewed in the U.S. House of Representatives while the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) is up for debate in the Senate.
"Both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web," Wikipedia said in a statement released Monday evening.
SOPA and PIPA have been designed to tackle the sales of illegal music and other media, making the proposed legislation popular amongst those in the music and film industry.
Proponents have hailed the bills as a way to crackdown on the web's rapidly growing population of media pirates.
Wikipedia, on the other hand, is adding its voice to a chorus of groups and individuals from the technology industry who maintain that the bills hinder free-speech and interfere with website security.
Technology analyst Carmi Levy said Wikipedia's planned blackout will force ordinary Internet users to realize what's at stake if the bills are passed.
"Up until now, the mainstream users of the Internet really haven't been aware of this controversy that's been bubbling under the surface," he told CTV's Canada AM on Tuesday.
Levy called the anti-piracy legislation debate a battle between those who own content and copyright and those who shape the Internet and want to ensure it's "free and open to everyone."
Companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo and AOL have also joined the battle by openly criticizing the legislation.
Canadians are vowing to join the protest too, including law professor Michael Geist and social media service Identi. Toronto-based Tucows, which includes the management of 11 million domain names among its online services, has also vowed to go dark.
"The proposed SOPA legislation is fundamentally flawed in how it works and the damage it is likely to do to the Internet," the company said in a statement posted to its website warning users that its popular software download portal will be blacked out for a 12-hour period starting at 8 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, whose headshot is often featured at the top of the encyclopedia's pages, has continued to speak out against the proposed legislation on Twitter.
In a message posted to the site on Tuesday, he urged U.S. citizens to call their senators to protest SOPA and PIPA. Correspondence between Wales and another user suggested Wikipedia will "have a tool to use on Wednesday" for supporters to access phone numbers.
Wikipedia's Italian-language site shut down temporarily last October to protest an Internet censorship bill that did not end up going through. It's the first time, however, that English Wikipedia has staged this type of protest.
In Levy's opinion, it's an effective way to direct attention towards SOPA and PIPA.
"By having Wikipedia go dark, regular everyday folks will suddenly realize like ‘Hey, wait a second, this isn't just some far off controversy. It's something that affects me,'" he said.
