Google, Wikipedia Go Dark In Protest Against SOPA and PIPA

A big black bar over the typically animated Google home page logo. No quick searches on the English-language Wikipedia.

Those two internet giants are among the nearly 7,000 sites that voluntarily went dark or posted calls to action on Wednesday (January 18) in a protest against the U.S. House of Representatives' Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate's similar Protect IP Act.



The Act is designed to prevent online piracy and copyright infringement by giving the government and large corporations the ability to shut down sites accused of copyright infringement without a trial or hearing. The point of the legislation, according to the Washington Post is to stop foreign web sites that sell pirated and counterfeit goods by imposing restrictions that would force U.S. companies to stop selling online ads to suspected pirates, processing payments for illegal online sales and refusing to link to sites suspected of piracy in search-engine results.

"There's no fundamental First Amendment right to engage in thievery. Nor to advertise thievery," said Motion Picture Association of America spokesperson Howard Gantman.