Wikipedia: The Shutdown Heard Around the World

This week’s news is not lacking in disastrous headlines–the sinking of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, the apparent end of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis’ relationship. And if you tried searching either one of these subjects on Wednesday you might have discovered a third woe–Wikipedia’s self-administered blackout–which temporarily left curious web-surfers, journalists, and C-student’s without their most trusted source for encyclopedic information.

Incidentally, the only Wiki article available for viewing during the shutdown was a page describing SOPA, the anti-piracy bill that could lead to the broadening of the Department of Justice’s internet-policing powers and some serious internet censorship. You might never read a more exciting Wikipedia article. After all, SOPA is what the online encyclopedia protested by turning out their lights, giving their users a taste of what might come if the bill is passed in its current form. The words just come alive.

The bill is in fact something to worry about for many Americans. For instance, if it passes, streaming an episode of Jersey Shore, an offense that is unpardonable but not necessarily criminal, would land you in jail for up to five years (And you thought a virus was the worst you could catch from an illegal Nicki Minaj download).

An estimated 7,000 websites joined Wikipedia in putting up the day-long, digital stink. But just hours after the demonstration, the Department of Justice proved it didn’t need SOPA to be passed in order to crack down on file-sharing services, seizing Megaupload.com’s domain names and arresting four of its heads for copyright infringement.

Now virtual war has broken out between the Department of Justice and a subversive band of hackers who are cunning and courageous and may have watched “V for Vendetta” a few too many times. The group known as Anonymous, which Wikipedia describes as an, “Internet meme that originated in 2003…representing the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain,” launched a series of massive hacks yesterday on the websites of Universal Music Group, Recording Industry Association of America, Motion Picture Association of America, (MPAA) and the FBI, causing shutdowns.

The coordinated attacks, which involved around 6,000 participants, were not so much in defense of Megaupload as they were in retaliation for an overreaching move made by the Department of Justice to shut the site down. “Even without SOPA having been passed yet, the federal government always had tremendous power to do some of the things that they want to do,” wrote Barry Brown, spokesperson for Anonymous. “So if this is what can occur without SOPA being passed, imagine what can occur after SOPA is passed.”

Click here for Nate Anderson’s full article on the Megaupload shutdown, or here for billboard.com’s article on the Anonymous attacks.

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Tags: anonymous, department of justice, megaupload, wikipedia blackout