Reddit Blackout Over SOPA, PIPA: Site To Protest By Going Dark On January 18

Redditors have sounded the call to arms.

In a blog post on Tuesday, community news-sharing site Reddit announced that it will be shutting down normal operations on January 18 in protest of proposed legislation Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

"The freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables is in jeopardy," Reddit admins wrote in the blog post. "Congress is considering legislation that will dramatically change your Internet experience and put an end to reddit and many other sites you use everyday."

If passed, SOPA would allow the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders against foreign and even domestic websites that enable or facilitate copyright infringement. If a website is accused, it could be punished by being removed from search engine results, barred from online advertising networks, and blocked from payment processing networks. In other words, sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit could be crippled for hosting or linking to user-uploaded content that potentially infringes on copyrights.

The bill would also make the unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content, such as a song or TV show, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

Reddit's 12-hour blackout, which is planned for 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST on Wednesday January 18, coincides with a congressional hearing on SOPA, at which tech and security leaders, including Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, will air their grievances toward SOPA and PIPA.

During the downtime, Reddit will show a live-stream of the hearing and will display a simple statement on why this proposed legislation would mean the end of user-generated content sites.

This is not the first time that Reddit, which received about 2 billion page views in the month of December, has been used to take a stand against SOPA. Last month, Reddit user selfprodigy used Reddit as a platform to start a boycott against domain-hosting company GoDaddy, which was a SOPA supporter at the time. Selfprodigy urged domain holders to transfer their websites to other hosting companies. The next day, GoDaddy withdrew its support for SOPA citing a spike in domain name transfers.

On Twitter, reactions to the Reddit blackout have been overwhelmingly positive. The hacker group Anonymous came out in support of Reddit, tweeting a link to the blog post announcing the blackout.

In December, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales considered a site-wide "blank out" to demonstrate what the site might look like should this legislation pass. The blackout never happened, but Wales would go on to withdraw Wikipedia and Wikia domains from GoDaddy as part of the December boycott.

Some suggest that the Reddit blackout could lead to more collective efforts against SOPA. According to VentureBeat, "there have been rumblings that Google, Twitter and Facebook are also planning a collective protest effort against SOPA and PIPA."

Comments

[Mischevious Misa]

06:43 AM on 01/18/2012

As if the economic crisis hasn't screwed us already, but now Congress wants to take my liberty. Well they can shove there PIPA and SOPA up there's well if they manage to remove their heads first. NO ONE will take my liberty

[pascalobi]

08:07 PM on 01/14/2012

Good job as usual to the Huffington post for inflating a story out of proportion to garner traffic. While you may credit Reddit (as you seemed obsessed with doing) get real and understand that so long as the big dogs don't blackout no one is even going to notice. eg. http://blog.operationreality.org/2012/01/13/google-facebook-and-co-hold-the-key-cards-in-reddits-sopa-blackout/ When is the last time Huffington post had any interviews with any serious CEOs? Oh that's right they won't talk to you unless they're looking for a quick traffic fix...

[VibeApp]

10:14 AM on 01/13/2012

There is a difference between "sharing" information through social media, that's new, video, and photos; and seeking out copyrighted material with the intention to retain it, keeping a song or book on your computer. Thanks to Reddit and others for keeping the internet open and innovative!
Love,
The Vibe App
http://www.zami.com/v.html

Vibe is a free iPhone App that let's you Communicate by Location with Text, Pics, and Video. Anonymous with Self-Destruct Messages.

[Acert]

05:47 PM on 01/12/2012

There seems to be some confusion.

Opposing this bill has nothing to do with supporting digital piracy. It has everything to do with the draconian methods, which the bill uses. Also, we already have VERY strict copyright laws.

[rikilii]

07:12 PM on 01/12/2012

"Also, we already have VERY strict copyright laws." Strict or not, they're virtually impossible to enforce against pirate websites based in foreign countries with no respect for IP rights.

[Acert]

12:41 AM on 01/13/2012

They can still go after people in the USA, who violate copyrights, regardless of whether they use foreign sites to do so.

[rikilii]

10:43 AM on 01/12/2012

So I've read through both bills, and can't seem to find anything that amounts to "censorship" or denial of due process.  Indeed, the way these bills are portrayed in this article and others seems to be quite inaccurate.  Anyone care to explain to me why I'm wrong?

[Jam75]

02:13 PM on 01/12/2012

Check this out. It's a goo read on the matter.

http://www.boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

"On the network side, attempts to make a network that can't be used for copyright infringement always converge with the surveillance measures that we know from repressive governments. Consider SOPA, the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act, which bans innocuous tools such as DNSSec—a security suite that authenticates domain name information— because they might be used to defeat DNS blocking measures. It blocks Tor, an online anonymity tool sponsored by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and used by dissidents in oppressive regimes, because it can be used to circumvent IP blocking measures.

In fact, the Motion Picture Association of America, a SOPA proponent, circulated a memo citing research that SOPA might work because it uses the same measures as are used in Syria, China, and Uzbekistan. It argued that because these measures are effective in those countries, they would work in America, too!"

[rikilii]

03:30 PM on 01/12/2012

That wall of text is anything but a "good read". The portion you quoted isn't even accurate.

[rikilii]

10:42 AM on 01/12/2012

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[SGMD1]

09:54 AM on 01/12/2012

Jon Stewart will be talking about SOPA on his show tonight

[Mike Vids]

02:26 PM on 01/12/2012

Good, I'll have to remember to stream it

[nobodyzhome]

08:20 AM on 01/12/2012

All websites should have the you know whats to do this. People need to pay attention to what their government is doing.

[netzwerg]

07:48 AM on 01/12/2012

“The could do that, but it still wouldn't help, because this bill would still block their use on any American computers.”

Sure, American computer users might be censored away, but the companies would not risk an expensive lawsuit in America. And America has like what? 5% of the global internet users?

[pilchiebybb]

12:43 AM on 01/12/2012

Plainly put, SOPA = CENSORSHIP

This legislation will be abused by the government at the cost of our freedom of speech, and free flow of information.

Hopefully our kids will be able to read about this in their history books as the failed attempt to censor the internet. If it passes, I'm sure their history books will be just about as useful as the internet.

[rikilii]

10:18 AM on 01/12/2012

How is making it a crime to infringe someone else's copyright by streaming data over the internet "censorship"?  Was it censorship to make it a crime to sell pirated DVDs?

[AEX7]

11:19 AM on 01/12/2012

its already a crime. SOPA removes the requirement to prove it.

[Jam75]

01:56 PM on 01/12/2012

It doesn't just apply to that. It applies to any copyrighted works and allows for the government to force entities to remove your presence from the net based on nothing more than allegations by the DOJ. Thus, it is ripe for abuse, particularly given how less savory entities will manipulate the DOJ. UMG just tricked Youtube into removing a video written for Megaupload.com by claiming they owned it. They are now being sued over that. The fact of the matter is that this simply isn't good proposed law and not a soul behind this bill has bothered to explain why our current legal system and process for dealing with copyright violations needs to be abandoned.

[geneandeddie59]

12:30 AM on 01/12/2012

It already has enough outages to qualify as 'going dark'!

[Allosaur2010]

11:21 PM on 01/11/2012

Want to kill this? Have the media impose a complete blackout on coverage of the coming election campaign. I guarantee you Obama alone would veto this in a heartbeat.

[SGMD1]

09:57 AM on 01/12/2012

a.) The media conglomerates not only support SOPA...their lobbyists actually wrote it.
b.) If Obama could sign this year's NDAA, he will have no qualms about signing SOPA.

[Mike Vids]

06:43 PM on 01/11/2012

As someone who has used Reddit to help myself formulate my moral outlook on the world, I wholeheartedly support their brave stand that has absolutely nothing to do with attention whoring or bandwagoning. We must stop any politician that dares to stop us from taking all the free films, tvshows, sporting events, music, games, software, books and magazines that are our birthright. If anyone dares to defend artists against taking back what is rightfully mine, let them be put on notice that we will vote them out, until every bit of intellectual property is free for the taking.

[Artemis Strong]

07:29 PM on 01/11/2012

The problem isn't the crack down on piracy. The problem is the transferring/increasing of a website's liability in piracy and copyright infringement.

[imaginmyself]

09:13 PM on 01/11/2012

Your are clearly misinformed on the matter. I've yet to hear anyone complain about not having access to free content. These bills stop piracy the way a nuclear bomb would assassinate a foreign leader - there are too many unnecessary casualties for this to be acceptable.

[Mike Vids]

05:27 AM on 01/12/2012

And I've yet to hear any of you post one constructive idea on how to stop piracy other than letting the status quo run its course and continuing to allow once flourishing industries slowly die. Our trade deficit with China in 2010 was 250 billion dollars... to put that in perspective, if each of the 400 million Chinese internet users illegally downloaded as little as two songs a day, our trade deficit would be even. The government has already let us down by its inaction... another analogy would be if we had an outbreak of bird flu and because they didn't want to violate anyone's civil rights that they wouldn't quarantine anyone out of fear of quarantining a healthy person and 100 million people died. Sounds outrageous? Maybe, but something that might easily happen one day. Let's say somehow this bill passed... do you really think a legitimate site would stay closed for long? ...if someone closed down a legit site, people would immediately take to facebook, twitter, huffpost and the site would be up the next day... Meanwhile, the content providers would have at least a fighting chance against the pirates that are costing our economy billions. Tell me a better solution that might actually work and I'll listen.

[Donald Klaus]

05:13 PM on 01/11/2012

lol...

[2crudedudes]

04:57 PM on 01/11/2012

and not a single da­mn was given that day