• The Telegraph, Tuesday, January 17, 2012 12 PM

Wikipedia isn’t the only Web company opposed to the antipiracy legislation being debated in Congress. Come Wednesday, however, it will be the only one voluntarily shutting down for 24 hours in protest. “The general sentiment seemed to be that US law, as it impacts the Internet, can affect everyone,” Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, tells The Telegraph.

“As for me, what I am hoping is that people outside the US who have friends or family who are voters in the US, will ask them to make a call to their senator or representative, and I hope we send a broad global message that the internet as a whole will not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement.”

As The Telegraph notes, however, a major target of the protest, SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act), has already been halted by the White House. Still, visitors to Wikipedia on Wednesday will be greeted by an open letter encouraging them to contact Congress in protest. Twitter, which also opposes the antipiracy legislation, has no plans to shut down its site. Asked about the idea, CEO Dick Costolo tweeted: “That’s just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to a single-issue national politics is foolish.”

Read the whole story at The Telegraph »