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Unbelievable! Wikipedia is going to shut down? And the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has agreed to shut down his site which is one of the most popular and most visited websites on the internet? And people will accept this? Lets find out…

Don’t panic folks! Wikipedia is not going to shut down for ever. Even if Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales wants to shut it down, hope so it will be quiet impossible for him too, to shut it down forever because of its popularity. Rather it will remain close just on Wednesday. Jimmy Wales wrote on Twitter that the 24-hour Blackout would begin from midnight from Washington DC-time schedule. Don’t worry guys, only the English version of Wikipedia will go offline on Wednesday for 24 hours. What is the reason? Just to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill.

Guys, have you any idea, how much this temporary off-line of English version is going to cost people? 25 million daily visitors according to Wales. In fact, Wikipedia had over 420 million unique monthly visitors in last November and right now, there are more than 20 million articles in Wikipedia archive written in almost 300 languages. Of them, more than 3.8 million articles are in English version. But as Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites, especially Students visit this site to get some help and finish their homework properly, Jimmy Wales has send them a very special message through Twitter.

According to Wales, to make this temporary off-line successful, The German version of Wikipedia will run a banner and other languages will “make their own decisions”. He also mentioned that, this temporary off-line was a “community decision”, rather than his alone. In fact, the SOPA anti-piracy bill, which is a controversial anti-piracy bill being debated in Congress would allow rights holders to have websites shutdown that allegedly infringe copyright issues. During this 24 hour English version of Wikipedia shutdown, you will not be served with a blank page (if visited to English version), rather, there will be instructions for you that contains how you are able to reach out to your local US members of Congress. Well, the telephone companies are going to have a Hard day. Jimmy Wales says this,

“We have no indication that SOPA is fully off the table,” Wales said in Tweet that, “PIPA is still alive and kicking. We need to send Washington a BIG message.”

Copyright owners have charged that online piracy has damaged their businesses and therefore, many workers have lost their job. However, Web companies and Human Rights groups have asserted that if the bills became law, they would rob the Web of free speech and damage the health of the Internet.

It’s getting really complex. Hope so, the the purpose of this temporary shutdown becomes successful. Wikipedia is going to join Reddit, WordPress, Mozilla and the Cheezburger network in Wednesday’s protest against the draft bill.

Source : CNet, ZDNet

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