As far as we know, it's 0500 UTC
On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 7:22 PM, Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for this announcement Jay, and everyone involved in the planning of this unprecedented action.
Quick clarification: What time, precisely, will this be occurring? The on-wiki summary states "...for 24 hours starting at 05:00 UTC on January 18, 2012, or at another time as determined by the Wikimedia Foundation." could you just confirm what time this will happen, thanks.
-Liam
On Tuesday, 17 January 2012, Jay Walsh jwalsh@wikimedia.org wrote:
Please also see the related blog post,
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/16/wikipedias-community-calls-for-anti-sop...
The release is posted here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/English_Wikipedia_to_go_d...
*English Wikipedia to go dark January 18 in opposition to SOPA/PIPA
San Francisco -- January 16, 2012 -- On January 18, 2012, in an unprecedented decision, the Wikipedia community has chosen to blackout
the
English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours, in protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in
the
U.S. House of Representatives, and PROTECTIP (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate.
If
passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the
United
States.
Wikipedia administrators confirmed this decision Monday afternoon (PST)
in
a public statement (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Action#Summary_and_co...
):
Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to
take
against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation
in
a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the
level
of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to
encourage
greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a "blackout" of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.
“Today Wikipedians from around the world have spoken about their
opposition
to this destructive legislation," said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. "This is an extraordinary action for our community to take - and while we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for
even
a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger
free
speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world."
We urge Wikipedia readers to make your voices heard. If you live in the United States, find your elected representative in Washington ( https://www.eff.org/sopacall). If you live outside the United States, contact your State Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs or similar branch of government. Tell them you oppose SOPA and PIPA, and want the internet to remain open and free. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- Peace, love & metadata _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l