The Day Wikipedia Was Down

The two bills -- one in the House and one in the Senate -- were supposed to protect intellectual property. Wednesday of last week was the day that a number of big on line companies that are essential parts of daily life now for most of us along with more than 100,000 other websites asked their users to contact Congress and oppose the legislation. Wikipedia was down for the day, and the Google logo was covered with a black rectangle.

According to the New York Times, the organized effort to oppose the legislation began in the fall. The first alarm was raised by venture capitalists. A meeting in November brought in Tumblr, which hosts 40 million blogs. Tumblr posted an alert, which reached many in the tech community, and Reddit (another site with many tech company users), also became a hub for communication and organization against the legislation. According to Fight for the Future, a nonprofit organization that helped organize the protest, more than 100,000 websites participated in the protest.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) is an opponent of the legislation and has co-authored an alternative bill with Representative Darrell Issa (R-California). He told the New York Times that more than 14 million individuals - more than 10 million of them voters - had contacted Congress to oppose the legislation. “It’s going to be a new day in the Senate,” Sen. Wyden told the New York Times. “The way citizens communicate with their government is never going to be the same.”

Maybe someone anticipated that the Internet -- a disruptive technology that seems to be reshaping how we do everything -- would one day be able to do this, but I didn't. What an amazing series of events. Let's see what happens next.