Why was Wikipedia recently blacked out for 24 hours? Why did Reddit do the same thing for 12 hours?

Why did Google cover its logo with a black bar, as seen in the screen capture above?

The fight is over SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act – a bill proposed late last year in the House of Representatives.

SOPA, sponsored by Texas Republican Lamar Smith, addresses what Lamar described as the current “problem” of online pirating. Smith said this in a recent response to the critics of SOPA:

“SOPA makes it possible to enforce the law against foreign criminals and counterfeiters — making it harder for foreign online thieves to profit from selling counterfeit goods to U.S. consumers.”

Another sponsor of the bill, Virginia Republican Bob Goodlatte has also spoken out on behalf of the bill:

"Intellectual property is one of America's chief job creators and competitive advantages in the global marketplace, yet American inventors, authors, and entrepreneurs have been forced to stand by and watch as their works are stolen by foreign infringers beyond the reach of current U.S. laws.

“This legislation will update the laws to ensure that the economic incentives our Framers enshrined in the Constitution over 220 years ago—to encourage new writings, research, products and services— remain effective in the 21st century's global marketplace, which will create more American jobs," said Goodlatte.

Ohio’s second congressional district representative, Jean Schmidt (R-OH), has not stated her opinion on SOPA, but she has been known to vote 93.15% of the time with her party. The Republican Party has 8 of the 12 co-sponsors of SOPA.

Critics of SOPA, many of whom are leaders in the tech world – such as Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit, the same websites that spend most or all of Jan. 18 “blacked out”  – claim the bill violates the first amendment and promotes censorship in the media.

Wikipedia cut off access to it’s site for 24 hours, Reddit for 12 hours. Visitors to the Google search engine immediately noticed the black “censorship” stripe across the company logo. All of the website gave information about SOPA, and urged their customers to contact their government representatives to express opposition to the bill.

"Tell Congress: Please don't censor the web!" is the message you got when hovering over the Google black bar.

The group “Anonymous” has been a huge motivation behind the anti-SOPA movement, causing some companies, like Sony, to back off their support of the bill. Anonymous is a group of hackers known for their social protest and often wearing Guy Fawkes masks, made famous by the Hollywood film "V for Vendetta" and shown here.

Students around Kings High School have also voiced their opinion on SOPA. For example, Jake Miller, Kings senior, said he blames the government.

“This is just another example of the government just looking out for the big corporations instead of the people,” he said. “For the People By The People is a load. The corporations are the only thing the government is representing with this bill.”

Early reports show that the Jan. 18 blackout has had an effect. As many as 10 U.S. Senators have decided to reconsider their support of SOPA, and all votes have been delayed.

The fate of SOPA remains unclear, but what is certain is that the fight over speech, property rights and censorship has run headlong into the Internet age.

UPDATES

SOPA and PIPA postponed indefinitely after protests

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