Tomorrow, on January 18th, many sites around the internet are planning either blackouts or some form of protest against two pieces of American legislation that are currently being considered by Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. Some of the world's largest internet entities have committed to the cause: Google, Wikipedia, and Reddit has all dedicated themselves to fighting this cause.

It's not enough.

Google merely plans to put up some wall of text on their home page to make people aware. What they don't seem to realize is that YouTube, a company they run, has already been spreading the message for a while now. Therefore, posting some fucking essay about how SOPA and Protect IP are bad isn't going to do more than what has already been done.

Wikipedia will be shutting down the English-language version of its website for 24 hours tomorrow. /slowclap Congrat-you-fucking-lations. Meanwhile, I'm going to open my browser up, load another version in some other language, and then hit the "Translate" button. It may not be perfect, but it will serve my purpose well enough.

Reddit will be going down for 12 hours. Whoop-tee-fuck.

The problem with protesting against something like this is that you need to be ballsy, and in corporate America, no one is willing to actually commit in fear that they are going to lose their fat-ass dirty dollars.

If Facebook shut down for a week solid...

If Google cut all of its services off for a week solid...

If Wikipedia killed its site for a week...

Would they lose money? Yeah. Would that make the shareholders worried? Yeah. They should already be worried about these bills passing and potentially killing the sites they have investments in. When it comes down to it, you as a company need to be willing to say "I am going to risk my business, my lifesblood...in order to see this legislation never passes, and I'm going to set an example to the world by showing how a bill like this can TRULY affect modern day living".

Personally, it could be the wish to see what kind of utter chaos would happen when someone can't tweet what they ate for breakfast or press "Like" on a status about how shitty the day was for them. I want to see people freaking out when they actually have to RETAIN knowledge rather than pulling out their Google smartphone to look on a Google search engine what 8 x 2 equals.

I want people to realize that they are too reliant on technology so they can understand the harm these bills will impose.

But instead...instead, we get a bullshit protest. We get a handful of websites that say "we're going to make sure we're still remaining profitable, but we're gonna show Congress by waving our fist in the air and telling them how bad this legislation is".

Lead by example, not by lies.

Until next time...

***UPDATE***

"Blackouts" have started.

Google put up a Google Doodle of their name censored out. If you click it, it tells you some stuff about SOPA and Protect IP...but only if you click it...and only if you want to learn about it. The search engine is still fully functional. LAWL

Wikipedia has killed the English version of their website. Luckily, you can just type in wikipedia.org with no prefix like "en", and then go to the Spanish version of the website...and have your browser translate it to English. As it turns out, you can then read it in pretty damn decent English (no more difficult to read than a lot of texts that people send nowadays anyways!).

SUPER...EFFECTIVE...PROTESTING. It may raise some awareness somewhere, but it's nothing more than a ding.

I always understood this sort of thing as a means to spread the world to the masses that are too lazy to look at a news site from time to time by basically shoving it in their faces.

12 hours is enough for protest. People nearly loose their minds and start setting places on fire when an important website they use on a regular basis is unavailable for an hour.

And yeah you can probably use translator so you get some shitty translation from foreign Wikipedia but this protest isn't directed to "IT nerds" who already are aware about this issue.

I didn't even know what SOPA was until I saw it on Giant Bomb two weeks ago. If Google would have put something up on their page, I would have known faster.

@Claude said:

I didn't even know what SOPA was until I saw it on Giant Bomb two weeks ago. If Google would have put something up on their page, I would have known faster.

Don't worry. I didn't know what Reddit was until all the talk of Reddit blacking out because of SOPA came up

@Rappelsiini said:

12 hours is enough for protest.

12 hours is a shift at work. That's not a protest. That's "oh, servers are down for maintenance".

I wouldnt have known about SOPA unless some internet saavy people didnt post it on the social networking sites I go to

It's to raise awareness. They aren't "row row fight(ing) da powa". They are letting people know "YO SHIT'S ABOUT TO BE FUCKED".

@Rappelsiini said:

12 hours is enough for protest. People nearly loose their minds and start setting places on fire when an important website they use on a regular basis is unavailable for an hour. And yeah you can probably use translator so you get some shitty translation from foreign Wikipedia but this protest isn't directed to "IT nerds" who already are aware about this issue.

Thank you! Your average internet user, who this is aimed at, will be completely lots. Just wait until tomorrow and you see all the SOPA statuses that will go up from people who don't even know how there is such thing as an advanced google search. That is who this is aimed at. Because once you have everyone bitching about it the government will never let this go through.

Its easy to talk when its not your millions on the line.

I dont think wikipedia gets that much money from there site, if they did you would see advertising all over that site. Besides, 24 hours without wikipedia will probably make enough kids fail an assignment or cause headaches for someone to prove a point.

I really don't think anyone who isn't going to forfeit tens of thousands of dollars can really complain about the quality of the protests of those who will. Sure, I agree that shutting down THE search engine and online encyclopedia for a day isn't terribly severe. But to cuss them out for doing that which no one else is doing? Even if you're one of the (far too) few that actually signed petitions, we've a long way to go to match their contribution.

cool

Sopa is not the first or last. For a company to put itself in danger to prove a point is like a man trying to stop the cutting of one tree in the forest and putting everything on the line for it. This is one attempt on the tree but many more can come and having himself potentially killed for the sake of one tree is dumb. Im not saying these companies shouldnt show support or care. Im just saying, the people of the internet are fickle and if google goes down on this, it doesnt matter if they succeed or not in the demonstration, everyone may move on to bing and like it because google forced people to try something new (exhibit A: internet explorer 6 had to be ripped out of the hands of most people, how hard is it to get people to try new browsers?). And now (in this scenerio) google is in the shitter for succeeding (and protecting the interests of direct competitors) or failing and still losing footing.

If asked tho, i tend to agree with your sentiment, i also would love to see if the internet leaders shut down their respective sites.

@jakob187 said:

If Facebook shut down for a week solid...

If Google cut all of its services off for a week solid...

This would mean a loss of tens of millions of dollars; this isn't a realistic proposition.

No what we need is to bomb the internet, just like the Japanese did in 1942. THAT would make Jan. 18 a day that would live in infamy.

I never saw SOPA or PIPA get mentioned on traditional news channels like CNN, until Wikipedia declared the 'blackout'.

So in terms of raising awareness, this protest seems to be doing the job.

Even ignoring the millions of dollars they would lose in revenue, If Google and Facebook were down for a week, that would be very annoying for me as a student especially given that a lot of the information we share as a class is posted on Facebook and I use Google Scholar for a lot of my primary literature searches (as a supplement to PubMed). Also, having a big fat message on the Google front page about SOPA will basically do the same thing as a blackout without the unnecessarily inconvenience.

@mlarrabee said:

I really don't think anyone who isn't going to forfeit tens of thousands of dollars can really complain about the quality of the protests of those who will. Sure, I agree that shutting down THE search engine and online encyclopedia for a day isn't terribly severe. But to cuss them out for doing that which no one else is doing? Even if you're one of the (far too) few that actually signed petitions, we've a long way to go to match their contribution.

Google is not shutting down its search engine, though. Wikipedia is not shutting down their encyclopedia. Google is putting up an essay...which they could've been doing this ENTIRE TIME. Wikipedia is only dropping the English-language version of their site, which...if anything...does no good to inform the people in America that don't even read or speak English!

In turn, I say "they are doing nothing". SOPA and Protect IP awareness is everywhere, and anyone saying it's not is nuts. Hell, my LOCAL NEWS STATION runs stories on SOPA and Protect IP.

That mainstream internet user that everyone wants to bring up? They don't give a shit. They seriously don't.

"Oh, something is down for a day? Whatever. I'll just go do something else and it'll be back tomorrow." People act as though shit doesn't "go down" for 12 hours...or a day...or whatever...on a regular basis. PC games go down in order to patch. The servers for some games go down for a while.

If anything, the only thing that brought about some hardcore pandemonium in recent memory was Amazon's servers going down. If that happened for a week, it wouldn't make people just realize "oh shit, things are about to be fucked up". It would make businesses and consumers of all kinds REALLY see just how bad this legislation could end up being if the infant form of it gets passed.

@Dagbiker said:

Its easy to talk when its not your millions on the line.

If it was my millions on the line and I was the CEO of something as important as Facebook or Google or whatever, I would absolutely black something out for a week. That's just me personally. I believe principle over profit, and the principle that needs to be sent out is this: America needs to realize how much of a crutch they've allowed the internet to become, and they need to know that not letting their voices be heard (either for or against) and not offering an opinion on something can directly affect them.

Hell, if Gmail went down for a week total, do you know how much chaos would occur?!

24 hours is a long time for a public media/information outlet to go down. A radio station's licence with the FCC could be in jeopardy if they were off air for that long, to put it in perspective.

@jakob187 said:

Tomorrow, on January 18th, many sites around the internet are planning either blackouts or some form of protest against two pieces of American legislation that are currently being considered by Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. Some of the world's largest internet entities have committed to the cause: Google, Wikipedia, and Reddit has all dedicated themselves to fighting this cause.

It's not enough.

Google merely plans to put up some wall of text on their home page to make people aware. What they don't seem to realize is that YouTube, a company they run, has already been spreading the message for a while now. Therefore, posting some fucking essay about how SOPA and Protect IP are bad isn't going to do more than what has already been done.

Wikipedia will be shutting down the English-language version of its website for 24 hours tomorrow. /slowclap Congrat-you-fucking-lations. Meanwhile, I'm going to open my browser up, load another version in some other language, and then hit the "Translate" button. It may not be perfect, but it will serve my purpose well enough.

Reddit will be going down for 12 hours. Whoop-tee-fuck.

The problem with protesting against something like this is that you need to be ballsy, and in corporate America, no one is willing to actually commit in fear that they are going to lose their fat-ass dirty dollars.

If Facebook shut down for a week solid...

If Google cut all of its services off for a week solid...

If Wikipedia killed its site for a week...

Would they lose money? Yeah. Would that make the shareholders worried? Yeah. They should already be worried about these bills passing and potentially killing the sites they have investments in. When it comes down to it, you as a company need to be willing to say "I am going to risk my business, my lifesblood...in order to see this legislation never passes, and I'm going to set an example to the world by showing how a bill like this can TRULY affect modern day living".

Personally, it could be the wish to see what kind of utter chaos would happen when someone can't tweet what they ate for breakfast or press "Like" on a status about how shitty the day was for them. I want to see people freaking out when they actually have to RETAIN knowledge rather than pulling out their Google smartphone to look on a Google search engine what 8 x 2 equals.

I want people to realize that they are too reliant on technology so they can understand the harm these bills will impose.

But instead...instead, we get a bullshit protest. We get a handful of websites that say "we're going to make sure we're still remaining profitable, but we're gonna show Congress by waving our fist in the air and telling them how bad this legislation is".

Lead by example, not by lies.

Until next time...

It doesn't sound like you want a protest, it sounds like you want complete technological anarchy due to your lack of satisfaction with the obsession over social networking and the reliance on online databases. I understand what you're staying, but it would be likened to protesting book burning by demolishing the library.

Getting people to do anything unified is hard enough. Baby steps. The MPAA's words this afternoon should be enough to keep people enraged just that much longer than they would have been otherwise.

@jakob187 said:

If it was my millions on the line and I was the CEO of something as important as Facebook or Google or whatever, I would absolutely black something out for a week. That's just me personally. I believe principle over profit, and the principle that needs to be sent out is this: America needs to realize how much of a crutch they've allowed the internet to become, and they need to know that not letting their voices be heard (either for or against) and not offering an opinion on something can directly affect them.

Hell, if Gmail went down for a week total, do you know how much chaos would occur?!

And you would be fired. The board of shareholders would get together and give you the "Resign or get carried out" policy. Stuff like this happens all the time, usually for much smaller things. You have to pick your battles and let awareness of these issues reach a critical mass. The protest tomorrow will bring awareness to the unaware, which is exactly what we need right now. The moms and dads who haven't been told about SOPA, the kids who are reliant on wikipedia and will be forced to explain to their teacher why they couldn't do their research last night because of this SOPA bill, which will spur a discussion, and most importantly the elderly who are the ones who actually use their vote more than anyone else (arguably the most important demographic to get in politics because they're the ones with the time to show up at the polls).

There's a lot of time between now and the house hearing. There's plenty of time for this bill to get even more toxic. There's no need to toss out the baby with the bathwater yet.

However, I do agree, if Amazon joined in and people weren't allowed to actively purchase things for 12 hours, it would be massive. The lack of functionality tomorrow will be minimal, but it's a good opening salvo. I just hope it's not too late.

@jakob187 said:

Hell, if Gmail went down for a week total, do you know how much chaos would occur?!

Probably a lot, but Gmail wouldn't survive that. Everyone would move away.

@TheSeductiveMoose said:

@jakob187 said:

If Facebook shut down for a week solid...

If Google cut all of its services off for a week solid...

This would mean a loss of tens of millions of dollars; this isn't a realistic proposition.

The loss of tens of millions of dollars would make a lot of shareholders talk to their lobbyists and tell those money-grubbers on Capitol Hill "hey, don't you even think about voting yes on that shit".

Moreover, tens of millions of dollars today...ain't the same as it was ten years ago. For the people where tens of millions of dollars would actually exist, that's essentially the same as throwing a penny in a well. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, tons of others wouldn't waste their time to bend over and pick up that tens of millions of dollars if it was laying on the ground.

@Mesoian: Maybe I want to see people understanding and appreciating what they've been given more than they do. It's the idea of people taking something for granted, and now there is something that is threatening all of that, there are so many people that don't care. All they want to know is who is getting fired from The Apprentice.

I'm just sick of seeing the people of the United States forget that they are supposed to be the bosses, not the people we elect.

the amount of people Google can reach is amazing. It's better to educate the huge amount of people who use their service than to just temporarily interrupt service.

@Mesoian said:

You have to pick your battles and let awareness of these issues reach a critical mass.

Yes. It worked so well for making sure the National Defense Authorization Act didn't get passed.

Oh wait...

Awareness is "hey, dinner is ready".

Demonstration is "what do you want for dinner" followed by serving it up.

@s10129107 said:

the amount of people Google can reach is amazing. It's better to educate the huge amount of people who use their service than to just temporarily interrupt service.

Retention of education requires people to give a shit. If they don't give a shit now, what is going to make them give a shit tomorrow? A big message on the Google front page saying "this is what we think...now do something"?

@N7 said:

It's to raise awareness. They aren't "row row fight(ing) da powa". They are letting people know "YO SHIT'S ABOUT TO BE FUCKED".

Right. Even when SOPA started making the rounds on the Internet since last October. They even removed the DNS blocking clause last week because of all the backlash. Google even managed to piss off Rupert Murdoch. PIPA is a rebranded form of SOPA and even the status of that Bill is questionable. The President has already said he'd veto it (least I think). Controversy is over folks, lets go back to mocking OWS. You hear that they've gone to Congress now? Bet that's going to die off real quick

@deathstriker666 said:

The President has already said he'd veto it (least I think).

He also said he'd veto the National Defense Authorization Act.

@deathstriker666 said:

The President has already said he'd veto it (least I think).

He also said he'd veto the National Defense Authorization Act.

@jakob187 said:

@Mesoian said:

You have to pick your battles and let awareness of these issues reach a critical mass.

Yes. It worked so well for making sure the National Defense Authorization Act didn't get passed.

Oh wait...

Awareness is "hey, dinner is ready".

Demonstration is "what do you want for dinner" followed by serving it up.

That's the thing though. Though NDAA did get quite a bit more coverage than SOPA or PIPA is, it still wasn't very much. Remember Guantanamo Bay and the atrocities that were being reported? And when Obama said it was shutting down, but nothing really happened? That got more coverage that NDAA, SOPA and PIPA combined. It takes a lot to get people moving. The fact that people are doing this much, willing to do some sort of change in order to show that they're not in favor of something means a lot.

SOPA's already going down in flames. Our President came out against it, Congress stalled their vote in reaction to that news, and now BOTH parties are abandoning it like the proverbial sinking ship that it is. What you suggest is not only unnecessary, it would do more harm than good. Trust me, I live in San Francisco and I can tell you that when people started protesting Public Transit cops' brutality (they carry pepper spray, clubs and guns, so brutality is not just a stern ticket writing) by protesting at stops. ALL this did was make commuters, who had NOTHING to do with what they were protesting, late and infuriated. If Google shut down for a week, if Wikipedia shut down for a WEEK??? It wouldn't be an effective form of protest, it would be confusing at best and infuriating at worst.

Write letters to your congressman and senator. You may think your one letter doesn't make a difference, but they know not everyone is motivated enough about this sort of thing to go out of the way to act: your one letter will represent many more similarly-minded people to the official you elected to represent you.

Today in this topic: Man who doesn't know what he's talking about tells companies to financially ruin themselves to stop themselves from being ruined. Film at 11.

@jakob187 said:

Would they lose money? Yeah. Would that make the shareholders worried? Yeah. They should already be worried about these bills passing and potentially killing the sites they have investments in. When it comes down to it, you as a company need to be willing to say "I am going to risk my business, my lifesblood...in order to see this legislation never passes, and I'm going to set an example to the world by showing how a bill like this can TRULY affect modern day living".

Personally, it could be the wish to see what kind of utter chaos would happen when someone can't tweet what they ate for breakfast or press "Like" on a status about how shitty the day was for them. I want to see people freaking out when they actually have to RETAIN knowledge rather than pulling out their Google smartphone to look on a Google search engine what 8 x 2 equals.

I want people to realize that they are too reliant on technology so they can understand the harm these bills will impose.

You do realize that companies need to be reliable, right? If any company can decide to shut down it's services for a week on a whim, right or wrong, you're not looking at millions of dollars. You're looking at irreparably damaging your business. It's corporate suicide. Plus, I'm fairly certain that that decision cannot be made solely by the CEO, but by the board of directors.

They're going about this the right way. My only complaint is towards how long it took for anyone to take action.

@KommanderCevin said:

Write letters to your congressman and senator. You may think your one letter doesn't make a difference, but they know not everyone is motivated enough about this sort of thing to go out of the way to act: your one letter will represent many more similarly-minded people to the official you elected to represent you.

I've already sent my letters in, both by snail mail and e-mail.

@Freshbandito said:

Today in this topic: Man who doesn't know what he's talking about tells companies to financially ruin themselves to stop themselves from being ruined. Film at 11.

Today in this topic: Man who feels the need to make a snarky comment rather than actually add anything worth discussion because keyboard + anonymity. Film at 11:30.

Your argument about Google shutting down is stupid. Do you have any fucking idea how many different search engines there are? Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and on and on and on. If they shut down but those other ones don't, the most likely one to stay up is Bing because M$ are money grubbing whores, then they will lose a fortune over a week. Hell in a week people might flat out switch over and use those other search engines. The exact same thing goes for YouTube. They hold a majority share in VOD content online, but they are far from the only ones out there. Dailymotion, MegaVideo, VuReel, vimeo, blip, and on and on and on yet again. They shut down people very well could migrate like a pile of sheep.

Wikipedia shutting down works because it's a USER generated site run off of USER donations and USER submissions. It has no ad-revenue. Hell, it really has no other alternatives either. reddit, really who gives a fuck. If they're on reddit odds are they know about SOPA and PIPA already. But Wikipedia hits a broader group. Teachers and students, young and old people, business men and blue collar workers. Fuck, half of these politicians probably have to use Wikipedia to point out Iran on a map. Wikipedia going down is a very very big deal. Could it be bigger if EVERYONE agreed? Absolutely. But we both know that there isn't, and wasn't, a fucking chance of that happening.

Also I think that you underestimate how much of a fuck people will give when they learn about this for the first time. Everyone and their mother uses Google, Youtube, and Wikipedia. A simple message or shutting it down could be enough to expose them to it, even though they've been blatantly ignorant of the entire issue. Not everyone is as tech savvy as you, I, or anyone else on this forum to hear about shit through a message board, then research it, and then form an informed decision. This could be a gentle push in the right direction. Odds are it will fall flat, but at least they're doing something together on the same day to raise awareness instead of bitching about them not doing enough to raise awareness and not going overboard, basically grinding the internet as a whole to a halt.

Some people are just never happy. Wait until you see the results before you start crying that it wasn't enough, at least.

I should also point out: I understand why there are people who support the legislation. I'm not going to sit here and say that piracy is nearly the massive epidemic that industries make it out to be, namely because a lot of those industries still continue to believe in archaic ways while also failing to find ways to keep their consumers happy. I don't support piracy, although I'm not going to sit here and say I've never downloaded an album without paying for it.

I just don't think that America has the right to pass any form of legislation that restricts the internet in any way. The internet is WORLDWIDE, not just here. Any form of legislation that restricts the internet is horseshit, even if there are good intentions in some of it.

It's better than nothing.

Sucks for anyone who has to cram for a test or scramble together a paper.

It seems like Wikipedia has already "shut down" now. Basically you go to the english version of wikipedia and you get a page about SOPA and a couple links to share it on facebook and so on.

@AiurFlux: I would hope that it wouldn't just be Google that would do something of the sort. Essentially, the idea I was putting forth was that many companies would look past their greed and realize that freedoms are at stake. I'm aware that it wouldn't happen.

As for Wikipedia being that massive, I'm not denying that it's not. At the same time, what effect will you actually see from the English-language Wikipedia site being down for 24 hours when you can do a translation feature in your browser that will get you essentially the same information? No, it's not going to be word-for-fucking-word the same as the English version. However, to say that Wikipedia is shutting down is foolish. They are closing one portion - which is the biggest portion, sure - of their website. However, they are not blocking the capability for people to see how bad internet censorship can be.

@CrazyBagMan said:

Some people are just never happy. Wait until you see the results before you start crying that it wasn't enough, at least.

It's not about "not being happy". It's about looking at the pieces and being able to say "a website like Reddit down for 12 hours is almost the equivalent of downtime for an MMO when patching" or "Wikipedia down for 24 hours is the equivalent of Wal-Mart being closed for Christmas Day". It's an inconvenience, but you know it's going to be back up tomorrow.

If you force people to understand "no, this could go down forEVER", that's when people say "oh damn, we need to do something".

As AiurFlux pointed out, people would go to another source. However, if Google, Bing, Yahoo!, etc all went down...if every search engine were dead for, let's just say 48 hours even, people would realize how much they rely on these things. They would realize how harmful any form of legislation that could potentially lead to internet censorship could be.

Also, something else:

SOPA and Protect IP, as it is right now, has the Congress saying "oh, no...U.S. sites can't be affected by this legislation...we'd only be able to shut down international stuff..."

Isn't that basically how North Korea started their whole "keeping the people in the dark" thing? Seems a lot like how there was a government-imposed media blackout on the Occupy movements until people said "bullshit, show it".

EDIT: OH MAN! BLACKOUTS ARE STARTING! Check out Google's big contribution! MAN, SO EFFECTIVE! -_- Fucking ridiculous. https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en

@jakob187: According to the information on this page it seems that you don't even have to go to the effort of translating non english parts of wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more

ah fack it my link failed

@Artigkar said:

@jakob187: According to the information on this page it seems that you don't even have to go to the effort of translating non english parts of wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_devil_inside

Use Chrome and translate it. I had absolutely ZERO ISSUE reading it. Pretty damn good English translation, if you ask me.

Yeah, this whole protest is so fucking effective. -_-

@jakob187: "Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?

The Wikipedia community, as part of their request to the Wikimedia Foundation to carry out this protest, asked us to ensure that we make English Wikipedia accessible in some way during an emergency. The English Wikipedia will be accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. Because the protest message is powered by JavaScript, it's also possible to view Wikipedia by completly disabling JavaScript in your browser." This is from the page I tried to link to, but failed.

@Artigkar said:

@jakob187: "Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?

The Wikipedia community, as part of their request to the Wikimedia Foundation to carry out this protest, asked us to ensure that we make English Wikipedia accessible in some way during an emergency. The English Wikipedia will be accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. Because the protest message is powered by JavaScript, it's also possible to view Wikipedia by completly disabling JavaScript in your browser." This is from the page I tried to link to, but failed.

LAWL!!!

@jakob187: "Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?

The Wikipedia community, as part of their request to the Wikimedia Foundation to carry out this protest, asked us to ensure that we make English Wikipedia accessible in some way during an emergency. The English Wikipedia will be accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. Because the protest message is powered by JavaScript, it's also possible to view Wikipedia by completly disabling JavaScript in your browser." This is from the page I tried to link to, but failed.

Wikipedia is down

I need to use Wikipedia

Fuck congress.