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Wikipedia To Protest SOPA With Site Shutdown

A warning to high-school students and undergrads: You may want to dust off your library cards. Wikipedia has announced it will join the sites Reddit and Boing Boing and go offline Jan. 18 to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act being debated by Congress. Lobbied by some big media companies and designed to block access to sites containing unauthorized copyright material, SOPA and PIPA have drawn broad opposition online. The White House recently stepped back from supporting the legislation and hinted at a possible veto from President Obama. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, told BBC News, “The bill is so overbroad and so badly written that it’s going to impact all kinds of things that, you know, don’t have anything to do with stopping piracy.” Somebody, quick, add that quote to SOPA’s Wiki page.