Wikipedia is the worlds most popular and encyclopedia, began an 24 hour 'blackout' in protest against proposed SOPA and PIPA bill. It starts protest on 18 Jan 2012 by blanking English edition of Wikipedia for 24 hours. Readers who visit during the blackout period will redirected to an new page as shown in the figure below, they are not able to read the articles.
SOPA and PIPA are two bills proposed by US Senate. SOPA is the acronym for 'Stop Online Piracy Act' and PIPA for 'Protect IP Act'. These acts are aimed to prevent online copyright inflation committed by foreign sites.
The protest doesn't implies that Wikipedia is violating any of acts or the copyright laws. But it is a thread for Wikipedia, since the act will force it monitor each and every link, to ensure that it doesn't host any infringing content. According to Wikipedia this bill inhibit people's access to online information, not a problem that will solely affect people in the United States but will affect everyone around the world.
This act is real thread to all social networking sites. So as an protest, and to support Wikipedia's motion, Google US had blanked their banner. According to reports Google and other social networking sites are decided to widen their protest.
Along with social networking sites, the worlds popular browser Firefox also spread their protest by changing the the starting page background to black. I hope it may be beaning phase of worlds first, fast spreading, massive, cyber war.
