Following through on their threats to shut down for a day over controversial proposed anti-piracy legislation, a coalition of websites including the hugely popular user-generated encyclopedia Wikipedia went black as midnight struck the East Coast.
Visitors to English-language pages on Wikipedia, regularly ranked as one of the five most popular sites on the Internet, with an estimated 2.7 billion monthly pageviews in the U.S., instead found only a headline stating "Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge." Stating that the proposed SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy bills "could fatally damage the free and open internet," the message said Wikipedia would be blacked out for 24 hours and asked visitors to contact their congressional representatives, providing a search box to look them up by ZIP code.
Other sites that shut down and displayed similar language included classified listings site Craigslist and technology blog BoingBoing, while a note on the social news website Reddit said it would begin its blackout at 8 a.m. Eastern time. Hundreds of other websites were scheduled to go dark, according to SOPAStrike.com.