Are you familiar with present issues surrounding internet censorship in North America? If not, then I suggest you Google it. The first result in your query, most queries for that matter, is probably going to be a helpful and informative Wikipedia link to a relevant article. However, If you were to have checked out Wikipedia, the primary source of information in our digitized era on Jan. 18-19 you would have found it to be temporarily blacked out.
The Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act are pieces of American legislation that severely threaten the well-being and integrity of the entire internet. If you value an open, secure and free internet, as we, the Gauntlet do, then stopping grievous legislation such as sopa, pipa, the Canadian Bill C-11 or the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement ought to be a primary concern for each and every one of us.
Wikipedia’s blackout, done in protest of the censorship legislation, began at midnight Jan. 18, Eastern Time and ended 24 hours later. A visit to the site during the blackout period yielded a nearly pitch-black page, with an ominous Wikipedia ‘W’ and a brief message stressing the risk that legislation like sopa and pipa represent. Wikipedia’s brief blackout coincided with blackouts on other websites and similar messages of concern from groups as wide-ranging as the publication Wired, Mozilla and their Firefox browser, Google, Tor, WordPress, Reddit, the widely popular (and Calgary-born) application StumbleUpon and the online comics Nedroid, Cyanide & Happiness and the Oatmeal (on whose blacked-out page appears an animated .gif that decrees sopa and pipa’s method of dealing with privacy and copyright issues to be “like dealing with a lion that has escaped from the zoo by blasting kittens with flamethrowers,”) and many more. While the blackouts and messages of concern, coupled with petitions, letter writing campaigns and other efforts have successfully convinced many legislators to reconsider their stance of sopa and pipa, the bills are far from dead — especially on an international level where many governments often follow American legislation verbatim (like Canada’s Bill C-11) and multilateral agreements that bind globally (like acta), which are equal cause for concern.
Easy access to free information is an immense privilege afforded to many our generation — it is perhaps even our generation’s hallmark. Ideas from every corner of the globe, content from an endless variety of sources, discussion of every issue and of every sort, reachable by anyone regardless of ethnicity, class or education are the promises of the internet. Yet, the very existence of this egalitarian and progressive treasure has a tenuous existence. In totalitarian nations the censorship is direct — China, for example, directly intervenes in their citizens’ internet content and accessibility, enforcing what they deem to be acceptable and unacceptable through both the blocking of specific websites and punishment of offenders. Here in the Western world censorship has crept upon us, brought in the backdoor by obfuscating bureaucrats in the pocketbooks of profit-hound lobbyists. Acts such as sopa, pipa, acta and Bill C-11 (to name but a few) have been introduced under the guise of protecting intellectual property and safe-guarding privacy, when really they are efforts to block or commodify information that is presently widely available and, most importantly, free.
The internet superhighway is at risk of being riddled and confounded with check stops, tollbooths, roadblocks and an endless parade of patrols. As the blacked-out Wikipedia homepage asks us, “Imagine a world without free knowledge.” While it is true that we all could find a way to get by without Wikipedia and the multitude of other websites that would be threatened by internet censorship (after all, every generation before us managed to do it), it is absurd to simply sit witness as corporate interests violate our connection to one of the most unique, informative, equalizing, progressive and powerful tools presently at the hands of everyday people.