Revenge of the Nerds: Websites Go Dark in Protest of Piracy Bills

7,000 venues participate

If you go to Wikipedia today, be forewarned. The free online encyclopedia, along with more than 7,000 others such as Reddit, Mozilla and WordPress, are blacked out in protest of two bills aimed at cracking down on foreign websites that infringe on U.S. intellectual property.

According to the organizers, it is the biggest blackout of Internet sites in U.S. history, and for some venues, it comes with a price.

"It is no small thing for a business, particularly an Internet business that makes its revenue through its website, to go dark for a day," wrote Harold Feld, the legal director of Public Knowledge in a blog post supporting the protest. 

The day of protest, or the "Internet Spring" as some are calling it, is the culmination of an aggressive campaign on the part of the Internet community to warn lawmakers and consumers that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the...

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