Research paper due Friday....and no Wikipedia? Thanks Congress.

Lots of companies are doing blackouts in protest. The bills being voted on could seriously restrict what you can do and view on the internet. I haven't read the bills but I've been told it could give power to the government and companies to block websites from your view even if they aren't breaking laws and to impact what shows up in search engines.

If you don't have a set of encyclopedias go to the nearest library. Books are a great source of information.

Yes, I was planning to head to the library tomorow. And I am sure their are other sites that have the information that I need.

I also notices Google is also doing the "Blackout" thing. It still works though.

My son said Facebook and other social networks are included in this chess move by congress. Interesting that they want to shut it down during an election year. Think they are worried??

Yea, I signed the petition. It's a bunch of bull what they are trying to do...evil gov't.

There are over 40 websites that are doing this.

It's only the English one, use Spanish or French and you are fine

Are you seriously allowed to use wikipedia as a source on research papers?

Press the ESC key before the black screen shows up and you will be able to look at wikipedia. You have to do this for each page you go to.

Yeah... I too was a bit worried . I think it is a good tool to give you basic directions to look in but you have to fact check behind it. So much has changed since I was in school.

That's wild. I finished college not that long ago (mid last decade) and we were not allowed to use ANY internet sources whatsoever.

This is how I usually use it. It gives me enough information to research further. A springboard, if you will. Or, one of many sources. Because of its nature (anybody can edit it), I do not trust it for most things.

I considered blacking out RabbitTalk, too. This legislation, if it passes, will likely make it impossible for sites like ours to continue functioning. It isn't feasible for forum owners to moderate every single post, before it's posted, to be sure that each post doesn't contain anything that someone might consider to be infringing copyright. All it would take is someone to post a link to a YouTube video* that someone complains about as infringing, for them to take down our site entirely - without due process, only on the strength of a complaint. The potential for abuse is nearly limitless. Someone has a site you don't like? Post something infringing on it, and then complain about it.

*Note: YouTube and other American sites have been given exceptions in this legislation. So they will go after small sites like ours for linking to it, but leave YouTube alone.

How exactly would this legislation affect Canada and other countries? If you are a Canadian running a Canadian site I don't see where the U.S. congress has the jurisdiction? I don't mean to be rude or anything but the internet is way bigger than just the U.S!! If it passes I foresee a large exodus of companies out of the States and into other countries! Also how does Youtube rate? There has been significant incidences of copyright infringement on this site over the years, in fact that is probably where most of the infringements occur. The music and movie industry lobby must be really greasing the wheels being as its an election year there! How much money does the movie/music industry need???? They seem to be the only ones NOT affected by the economic downturn!!

SOPA only targets non-US sites. They're trying to create their own version of the Great Firewall of China, with the ability to censor any site at the DNS level. This means that they would redirect the RabbitTalk.com domain to another page, and nobody within the US would be able to view it directly. There are of course ways around this. We could still see the site at the IP address itself, for instance.

The other concern is that PIPA and the existing legislation (look up DMCA abuses and ICE) would allow them to seize the domain itself, since .com is an American registry. We're already looking at options for moving the site out of the U.S. and onto a non-U.S. domain. Remember that these seizures, currently performed by the Dept. of "Homeland Security" are without warrant or charge, without due process of any kind. DHS doesn't have to answer to anyone about this. We're dealing with a reincarnation of the KGB or GRU here, or some fascist amalgamation of the two.

The MPAA has paid upwards of 94 million dollars for this legislation, in the form of bribes (some call it lobbying) to politicians. The U.S. government has been threatening other countries with "repercussions" if they refuse to pass like-minded legislation in their own countries. As far as Canada goes, when was the last time we stood up to the U.S. on anything? Harper thinks he IS an American for crying out loud.

You can be sure of one thing. With the amount of money paid into this legislation, they're not going home until they get it. They've already shown with the NDAA that their president is a puppet, who won't stand up to anything so long as they tack on riders that would make him look bad politically should he oppose the original bill.