Ben Huh, Cheezburger CEO
Ben Huh, best known as CEO of Cheezburger, has publicly called for Wikipedia to join Cheezburger and Reddit in their 12-hour SOPA blackout protest next Wednesday.
From 8am-8pm EST on January 18th, both the Cheezburger and Reddit sites will purposely be made unavailable in a blackout protest against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA).
Recently, long-established software download site Tucows said it would also join the blackout, rendering its services unavailable during the same period.
Ben Huh knows that if Wikipedia join, their protest could reach a far greater audience, educating users about the ill-effects that either bill would bring to the freedom of the internet. In a tweet Huh writes,
RT this: @jimmy_wales, please join @cheezburger and @reddit on Jan 18 blackout day to protest #SOPA and #PIPA.
— benhuh (@benhuh) January 12, 2012
Wikipedia has already publicly declared that it doesn’t support either bill. In fact, Wikipedia are moving their domains away from Go Daddy – the registrar that supposedly renounced their initial support for the bill.
If Wikipedia do join the protest, it could do so in a number of ways; including a complete blackout to US visitors only, by making its articles read-only for that period or by simply displaying a short message on each article page, calling users to action against SOPA.
