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Facebook Blackout

January 18, 2012 by · Comments Off on Facebook Blackout 

Facebook BlackoutFacebook Blackout, A blackout scheduled for Wednesday to protest against proposed legislation on online piracy has failed to get the support of the biggest Internet players.

Despite calls for the participation of sites such as Facebook, Twitter and other big names, the biggest participants are the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and the social-news website Reddit.

The situation shows that, while technology companies are concerned about the legislation, the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s Protect Intellectual Property Act ( PIPA), the companies are not prepared to sacrifice a day’s worth of revenue and risk the ire of users for a protest whose impact on lawmakers is hard to gauge.

Wikipedia and Reddit will black out their pages so visitors will see only information about Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

Of the biggest tech sites that have voiced opposition to the legislation, only Google is planning any type of change to its site tomorrow. It too will have information about the bills, although users will still be able to conduct Google searches.

“Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and Web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet,” said a Google spokeswoman. “So tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our US home page.”

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