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发帖数: 764 | 1 To: English Wikipedia Readers and Community
From: Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Date: January 16, 2012
Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the
English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC
on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia
Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in
the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of
Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate – that,
if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including
Wikipedia.
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. Here
’s how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who
formally facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement,
signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:
It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of
these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.
Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have
joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to
take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of
participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which
illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed
legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community
action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of
the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a "
blackout" of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on
other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.
On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators
note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world,
not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global
blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to
readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple
banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a
blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns
about similar legislation in other nations.
In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to
abandon neutrality to take a political position. That’s a real, legitimate
issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to
propagandize them.
But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. As
Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing
lists recently,
We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to
operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other
sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression.
For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and
collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing
people how to make to sense of it.
But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find
and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the
speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have
sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or if your views are pre-
approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular
will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.
The decision to shut down the English Wikipedia wasn’t made by me; it was
made by editors, through a consensus decision-making process. But I support
it.
Like Kat and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, I have increasingly
begun to think of Wikipedia’s public voice, and the goodwill people have
for Wikipedia, as a resource that wants to be used for the benefit of the
public. Readers trust Wikipedia because they know that despite its faults,
Wikipedia’s heart is in the right place. It’s not aiming to monetize their
eyeballs or make them believe some particular thing, or sell them a product
. Wikipedia has no hidden agenda: it just wants to be helpful.
That’s less true of other sites. Most are commercially motivated: their
purpose is to make money. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a desire to
make the world a better place – many do! – but it does mean that their
positions and actions need to be understood in the context of conflicting
interests.
My hope is that when Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will
understand that we’re doing it for our readers. We support everyone’s
right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone
should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even
if they can’t pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where
information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed
laws like SOPA and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and
outside the United States, don’t advance the interests of the general
public. You can read a very good list of reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA
here, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Why is this a global action, rather than US-only? And why now, if some
American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat on SOPA?
The reality is that we don’t think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still
quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader
problem. All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation
intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways,
that hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they
are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open,
everywhere, for everyone.
Make your voice heard!
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On January 18, we hope you’ll agree with us, and will do what you can to
make your own voice heard.
Sue Gardner,
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
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