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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Wikipedia’s English-language site went dark for 24 hours beginning January 18, 2012, as a planned protest against two proposed U.S. bills: SOPA in the House of Representatives and PIPA in the Senate. It was a deliberate action by the English-language Wikipedia community, not a technical outage.
Why did Wikipedia go dark?
The protest opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The English-language Wikipedia community believed the bills could seriously damage the free and open internet, including Wikipedia. The action was part of wider protests against the proposals, but the site-specific decision covered English-language Wikipedia.
Editors discussed possible responses before the community chose a 24-hour blackout. The Wikimedia Foundation announced the decision on January 16 and supported it. Executive Director Sue Gardner described the action as unprecedented for the site: “This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made.” Wikimedia Foundation announcement, January 16, 2012.
When did the blackout happen, and what did visitors see?
The blackout began at 05:00 UTC on January 18, 2012, and was planned to last 24 hours. It had worldwide reach, though the named site in the Foundation’s announcement was English-language Wikipedia. During the action, the site displayed a blackout landing page and editing was disabled; Wikimedia’s operations team kept other systems running. Wikimedia Foundation report, January 19, 2012.
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How many people encountered the blackout?
In its January 19, 2012 report, the Wikimedia Foundation said 162 million people experienced the Wikipedia blackout landing page. It also reported that more than 8 million U.S. readers used Wikipedia to look up their congressional representatives. These are the Foundation’s own contemporaneous figures, not independently established measurements.
Was Wikipedia down because of a technical problem?
No. The interruption was a planned protest against proposed legislation, not a service failure. The deliberate blackout and temporary disabling of editing were part of the action, while other Wikimedia systems continued operating.
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What happened to SOPA and PIPA?
The cited Wikimedia announcements establish why the community protested, when the blackout took place, and how it was carried out. They do not establish that the blackout alone caused later political developments around the bills. It would overstate the available evidence to credit the protest by itself with changing lawmakers’ decisions.
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