Wikipedia and Reddit Among Sites Protesting SOPA and PIPA

College students of the world are in a state of panic. If you go to school online, take some classes online, or bring your ipad/laptop to class then you should get prepared for January 18^th; a date in time so horrific not even the Mayan’s could’ve predicted it. Reddit and Wikipedia will be closed for business this Wednesday!

Now students might actually have to spend their time in class listening to their professor or, dare I say it, participating in class discussions. And those who are online students will actually be forced to do their work right away without their time-tested means of procrastination!

But all is not in vein. The goal of this protest is to let Congress know that the internet is not a beast that can be caged!  According to Wikipedia: “The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate — that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.”

Even the White House isn’t backing SOPA and as a result, it’s been shelved. Hopefully permanently. That being said, it’s not that they are against getting piracy under control, it’s that they’d like to do it in a way that doesn’t violate the first amendment. If that’s even possible remains to be seen.

Although Reddit, Wikipedia and Boing Boing (yeah, I haven’t heard of this last one, either) are all going black tomorrow, other social media giants and search engines have taken firm stances against SOPA and PIPA including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr though none of them are going black. Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo has even gone so far as to say “Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish”. He later clarified that he was talking about Twitter and not about Wikipedia’s decision.

A popular image, or meme, on Reddit that was inspired by "Game of Thrones" an HBO show also about protesting authority. Hopefully Reddit's protest will result in less beheadings, though.

Time Magazine’s person of the year in 2011 was ‘The Protestor’, and it looks like that mentality has permeated through to big business. Of course, all these digital companies protesting could stand to lose a lot if SOPA and PIPA ever go through, but they aren’t just protesting on behalf of themselves. They are also protesting for their users with the mutual understanding that one would not exist without the other.

Hopefully the blackout will send the right message. And at the very least, professors will be stunned by the sudden amount of student participation tomorrow. That, in itself, is as entertaining as any meme you’d find on Reddit.