14 DAY TRIAL // Wikipedia has gone ahead and blacked-out the site in protest of SOPA and PIPA. Any page on the English Wikipedia redirects to a notification page explaining that the site has been 'taken down' for 24 hours and urging people to find out more about it.
Wikipedia joins several other big websites and companies in the protests on this day. However, Wikipedia's move may be the one that gains the most attention, because it is one of the largest websites in the world, but also because it is the most drastic.
The entire site and millions of pages have become inaccessible to anyone for any reason. People needing information of any sort will have to wait a full day to access it.
The controversial decision was voted by some Wikipedia contributors and insiders, speaking for the millions of users and contributors. The consensus was that this type of action was needed to really get the public's attention.
Which they certainly have managed to, though that doesn't necessarily translate into people actually getting the message or even knowing what is all this about, as illustrated by Twitter.
Doubtless, many Americans were not aware of SOPA or even if they had heard of it, didn't pay too much attention to the subject. Doubtless, many of them are now better informed and some may have even taken action and contacted their representatives in Congress to voice their concerns.
It is possible or maybe even likely that more people will have done so because of the blackout than they would have had if Wikipedia only ran a banner or an interstitial page and still allowed users to get to the content they wanted.
But what is also doubtless is that millions of people are left in the dark and are feeling very frustrated or angry that they can't get to the information they wanted, regardless of the reasons. And those millions of people, many of them outside of the US, will be lashing out at Wikipedia and not the US government or the entertainment industry lackeys.
What's more, even if millions of people outside of the US wanted to do something about SOPA, they couldn't, there is simply no action that they could take to affect the fate of the bill. In the end, it is very likely that a lot more people will remember this day as the day Wikipedia didn't let them read what they wanted or didn't allow them to access the pages they themselves have written, rather than the day Wikipedia saved the Internet.
In the meantime, here's how to access Wikipedia despite the blackout.