Today, on 18 January 2012, Wikipedia and other sites have closed down and will blackout the internet for one day. They want to protest against a bill currently being considered by the US Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
I realise that without Wikipedia, many students, researchers and journalists will despair.
If you have urgent fact-checking questions, you can therefore post them here and I or some of my readers will answer them. This service is not offered in an effort to circumvent the blackout, but I am simply fed up with how many mistakes seep into newspapers or TV news every day already and I don’t want these mistakes to multiply today.
The Happy Hermit 
Hmmm, just for the sake of free online information, you can bypass the blackout by disabling Javascript in your browser, or by using Wikipedia from mobile devices, though the organisation are asking people to do this in an emergency only.
http://www.webopedia.com/ can help instead of Wikipedia.
But this page doesn’t even have anything about “Andreas Moser”.
I understand that the “ESC” key allowed you to bypass the blackout, as well, and get to Wikipedia anyway.
Fortunately, it looks like this and the PIPA bill are losing support. The BBC News this morning had a perfect example of SOPAs outlook. “It’s as if you discovered the automobile, then a few years later discovered that bank robbers were using the auto, so you ban all autos.” The concept of protecting ownership is very noble, but the bills are worded FAR too loosely.
I believe that way back there was a ‘conspiracy theory’ doing the rounds that governments were very keen to find any excuse to censor and control the internet. Not so glad to see that there actually was such a conspiracy, as they were busy drafting the legislation and somehow I am not surprised that it was spearheaded in the land of liberty and home of the free, which unfortunately has moved way, way out to the fascist right. But hopefully the forces of true liberty, free speech and free thought as well as the ease of communicating ideas and knowledge to all earth citizens will be saveguarded now and for future generations. Let us hope that the protest will achieve the desired results and that these two laws do not get the stamp of approval.
As a librarian, the fact that so many people use Wikipedia as one-stop information shopping makes me a bit sad. Sometimes it can be a good place to start, but there are so many other better, more reliable options available online. And teachers and professors who accept wikipedia as a source on bibliographies of papers turned in by students should get 40 lashes with a wet noodle.
Lillian Smith
Please do not engage in conspiracy theories, it makes you a target, even though i know you are not a real person.
The only real conspiracy is that which attempts to convince us that man never really landed on the moon, in an attempt to distract us from the fact that manned flight is impossible:
http://poetryandparanoia.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/here-is-some-stuff-both-poetry-and-paranoia/
Please do not distrust your government, do they not provide sufficient bread and circuses for you?:
http://thingsthattastelikechicken.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/bread-and-circuses/
you are a grate man moser