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This Site Will Blackout Against SOPA and PIPA

I’m joining Wikipedia, Reddit, and millions of other concerned web users across the United States to blackout my site on January 18, 2012. WordPress is even against this. Traction is happening. SOPA appears to be dead in congress but PIPA is still alive and just as bad.

When you land on on Wednesday you will hopefully see this site blacked out completely.

UPDATE: WordPress.com has joined the chorus and made available instructions on how to blackout your WordPress.com site in protest:

More importantly, we are making it possible for you to participate in the protest. There are two options: a “Stop Censorship” ribbon and a full blackout. The blackout portion will be in effect January 18 from 8am to 8pm EST, while the ribbon will be displayed until January 24. Here’s how to join in:

1. Go to Settings → Protest SOPA/PIPA in your dashboard.
2. Select if you want to join the blackout or show a ribbon.
3. If you choose to join the blackout, you can edit the message that will be shown on your site during the blackout.
4. Preview what your protest will look like.
5. Click “Save Changes” button to activate your protest.

That’s it! Easy-peasy activism right at your fingertips.

The “Stop Censorship” ribbon will display in the upper corner of your site and links to americancensorship.org. It will display until January 24, 2012 (the Senate vote date).

If you choose to do the blackout in addition to the ribbon, then we will black out your site from 8am to 8pm EST along with the official strike. You can customize the message that will appear on your blacked-out site to tell people why this issue is important to you. Your site will return to just displaying the ribbon after the strike is over.

For those wishing to do this manually, if you are using the WordPress.com CSS Extra option or the full version of WordPress, you can do it manually by changing your stylesheet to feature:

html {background:black;} 
body {display:none;}

If you are using the self-hosted version of WordPress, you may use the following:

If you are on WordPress.com and don’t have the CSS Extra feature and you wish to participate, you can use a banner instead. You can use the graphics from my National Blackout Day of Protest article or these updated ones which mention PIPA here. Hopefully, WordPress.com will come up with an option to make this easier, but until then, let your voice be heard anyway.

NOTE: If you are up for a little bit of code, check out [HTML] Non-self hosted – Stop SOPA – Pastebin.com as an alternative.

Protest against SOPA and PIPA protect our web rights

stop sopa and pipa and protect our online rights

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.

This entry was written by Lorelle VanFossen and posted on January 17, 2012 at 1:09 pm and filed under Blogging News, WordPress, WordPress News with tags , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

11 Comments

  1. Jennifer
    Posted January 17, 2012 at 1:18 pm | Permalink

    Hi Lorelle, even those of us who don’t have the Custom Design upgrade on WordPress.com can use the code in a text widget to black out their site on the 18th. Both codes were originally posted in the WordPress.com Support forums.

    Reply
    • Lorelle VanFossen
      Posted January 17, 2012 at 1:48 pm | Permalink

      Excellent. I’m really hoping that with all the support WordPress has thrown behind stopping SOPA and PIPA that they might come up with something today. We’re watching and hoping. Thanks!!

      Reply
  2. Emily Suess
    Posted January 17, 2012 at 1:53 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for sharing the info. I’ve added the widget to my site.

    Reply
  3. Vincent
    Posted January 17, 2012 at 2:00 pm | Permalink

    Think big, think global!

    SOPA could effect ALL the world’s web users, not just American users. Unfortunately, so many people and organisations are only focusing on the American audience, leaving the rest of the world ignorant of the potential detrimental effects of SOPA.

    Almost every Australian I’ve spoken to has no idea SOPA exists.

    Why not inform all who will be effected instead of just 0.5% of the world’s countries?

    Reply
  4. Maria
    Posted January 17, 2012 at 4:57 pm | Permalink

    I’m also blacking out my two most visited sites tomorrow. Our strength is in numbers. We need to get the message across.

    Reply
  5. Pamela
    Posted January 17, 2012 at 5:50 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for sharing. This is an important issue for all of us.

    Reply
  6. keroiam
    Posted January 17, 2012 at 9:57 pm | Permalink

    thank you so much for this! updating my settings now!

    Reply
  7. Jennifer
    Posted January 18, 2012 at 12:38 am | Permalink

    And WordPress.com officially enters the protest http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/join-our-censorship-protest/

    Reply
  8. Ayush Gupta
    Posted January 19, 2012 at 2:10 am | Permalink

    I am also against SOPA. I have added pop-up on my blog

    Reply
  9. csoeder
    Posted January 19, 2012 at 2:13 pm | Permalink

    I maybe should have done my homework ahead of time – I temporarily made all my posts private except for a notice on the front page. Clunky but meh.

    Solidarity!

    Reply
  10. Florian Schmid
    Posted January 20, 2012 at 9:11 am | Permalink

    On our Webpage we included your graphics to protest against goverment’s censorship. BTW: The homepage is the one of our local fire department in a town called Kolbermoor near Munich in Bavaria. (;

    Reply

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