Commercial Sites Find Other Ways to Support Wikipedia’s SOPA Strike Because They Have Customers, Not Just Users

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Wikipedia's public appeal has a few hundred sites following suit to protest Internet censorship

While Hundreds of sites have pledged to go dark at midnight tonight, protesting the proposed anti-piracy bills in Congress, big .com sites like Google and Twitter won’t. The called for strike is happening despite the news from the White House that they are opposing key elements of the pending legislation, essentially putting all current versions to bed.

SOPA (Stop Internet Piracy Act), and its compatriot in the House, Protect-IP ACT, while supported by big music and the Hollywood Titans, are opposed by free speech advocates and most of the tech sector – most notably, Google, and now it seems, a whole raft of dynamic Internet sites.

The acts are called out for their heavy-handedness, their limited due process and the power they allocate which will unfairly and unconstitutionally curtail freedom of speech.

It is because of these oversights and the potential for abuse that sites like Wikipedia, Reddit, BoingBoing and Cheezburger will be going on strike. This is black out as an act of political speech.

From the LA Times: “This is an extraordinary action for our community to take,” said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in a statement Monday announcing Wikipedia’s decision to go dark. “While we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, 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.”

These sites, however, have no commercial obligations. Commercial sites like Google cannot so readily cut off their service — just like the many businesses in “Occupied” cities that remained open during the demonstrations. But, little should this stop commercial sites from involvement in direct action such as this. Google said that while its search engine will continue to function, a link will be placed on the homepage to highlight its opposition to the twin bills.

“Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and Web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet,” Samantha Smith, a Google spokeswoman, said. “So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our U.S. home page.”

There are some loud voices sending a powerful message about how the Internet should be governed: “If you want an Internet where human rights, free speech and the rule of law are not subordinated to the entertainment industry’s profits, I hope you’ll join us,” said Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing.

We should remember, however,  that this strike action is not, and will not be, the only way Internet sites can voice their displeasure. Twitter, for example, while an opponent of the bills, will not be joining the action. Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo confirmed in a message that “Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish”.

We’ll be withholding judgement until we see the kind of backlash that arises, both for and against this direct action. The benefit of hindsight is everything.

Related articles

• Obama Administration Takes the Right Approach to Internet Policing and Says No to SOPA (legallyeasy.rocketlawyer.com)
• Battle of the Titans: Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley (legallyeasy.rocketlawyer.com)
• Internet Strike: Wikipedia, Mozilla, Reddit to go dark tonight (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Google to protest SOPA on its homepage tomorrow (venturebeat.com)
• Twitter Calls Wikipedia’s Anti-SOPA Blackout ‘Foolish’: Who’s Right? (ibtimes.com)