Anyone who wanted to look up something on Wikipedia, the Internet encyclopedia, yesterday, was out of luck. The powers-that-be had shut it down (and several other sites such as Reddit had done likewise, but Wikipedia is the most important of the bunch) as a protest against a couple of intellectual-property-rights bills being considered in the Congress. I have not looked closely enough at these bills to say how I feel about them — I suspect that I agree with the people who shut Wikipedia down on the substance of the bills, but I cannot be certain — but I think it was a sublimely silly thing to do.
Usually, a strike is an action by one party to exert pressure on another, where the second directly benefits by the activity of the first and is harmed by the first party's failure to perform. But in this case, the “second party” that they are trying to influence — Congress — can function very well without Wikipedia. They have their own research organization — the Library of Congress — which has direct access to a lot of the material which anyone might have gone to Wikipedia to look up. So shutting Wikipedia down for a day does little to advance their cause. In fact, the public that uses Wikipedia billions of times a month can only become angry at its not being there, and rather than petitioning Congress, they are more likely to turn against Wikipedia.
Several other Internet-related entities — in particular, Google and Yahoo! — have taken the more conventional step of lobbying Congress. And they appear to be — at least, to some extent — successful. Even before the Wikipedia shutdown, key Senators and Representatives had moved into opposition. Even Senator Ben Cardin (from my home state, Maryland), who had sponsored legislation of this type in the past, has moved into opposition.
So did they really need to shut Wikipedia down? I believe not.
Usually, a strike is an action by one party to exert pressure on another, where the second directly benefits by the activity of the first and is harmed by the first party's failure to perform. But in this case, the “second party” that they are trying to influence — Congress — can function very well without Wikipedia. They have their own research organization — the Library of Congress — which has direct access to a lot of the material which anyone might have gone to Wikipedia to look up. So shutting Wikipedia down for a day does little to advance their cause. In fact, the public that uses Wikipedia billions of times a month can only become angry at its not being there, and rather than petitioning Congress, they are more likely to turn against Wikipedia.
Several other Internet-related entities — in particular, Google and Yahoo! — have taken the more conventional step of lobbying Congress. And they appear to be — at least, to some extent — successful. Even before the Wikipedia shutdown, key Senators and Representatives had moved into opposition. Even Senator Ben Cardin (from my home state, Maryland), who had sponsored legislation of this type in the past, has moved into opposition.
So did they really need to shut Wikipedia down? I believe not.
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