Wikipedia enforces blackout over US online piracy act

JIMMY WALES, the co-founder of Wikipedia, defended the decision to voluntarily blackout the world’s largest online encyclopaedia for 24 hours from 5am today. The move will affect the English version.

Visitors to the site will be greeted by an open letter encouraging them to contact the US House of Congress in protest instead of a database of more than 3.8 million articles.

Wales said that SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) will greatly impact the internet and, in turn, can affect everyone.

Wales said the decision to either enforce a US-only blackout versus a global blackout had been made as a result of a close vote of the Wikipedia community.