I think that's a great idea. The vast majority of people do nothing until it hits them personally, that's why there's so much apathy. Cut Wikipedia for a week, something used by so many people, and then normal people will start caring. Show Americans what it can look like to be behind a firewall by having many popular sites blank out for a week, and by the end of the week the whole country will be in an uproar.
There's nothing more powerful to make people move and contact their representatives than blocking them from their farmville, celebrity news, homework help (wikipedia) and so on.
That's not even the main impact. Think about all of the people accessing Wikipedia every day - students, teachers, randoms - who don't read or watch the news. Ever.
All of these people who will probably never hear about SOPA, even if it's passed, will suddenly realise that their First Amendment rights are under threat and will hopefully be incredibly, incredibly angry.
I don't think the mainstream news media cares about Wikipedia. Plus, the site's process and product are a direct challenge to the legacy news oligarchy.
Eh, I would say (sadly) that the mainstream news media practically depends on Wikipedia to fill in background info for half of their stories. Gaffes by TV reporters have occasionally been traced back to Wikipedia vandalism. Sometimes Wikipedians then cite the misguided journalist(s) when adding the falsehood into the article [1], a circular phenomenon of "fact-creation" that has been lampooned by xkcd [2].
That is cynical to the point of being shortsighted. Even assuming the "news oligarchy" really operates as something resembling a unified entity, and regardless of said unified entity's feelings vis a vis Wikipedia - an outage would make headlines.
I am not saying all editorial coverage would be uniformly supportive, but it would certainly be newsworthy.
This would be the ideal outcome but if meatspace strikes are any indication, affected people often resent or openly turn against the strikers, not those that force them to strike. It won't be hard to spin it as "Internet paralyzed after Wikipedia's attempt for political blackmail" or somesuch.
Agreed. Block it for the americans, let the rest of the world get it fine. Let Americans see what its like when big copyright cartels don't want to allow a certain piece of work to shown in their country. Let them learn that this could be the future of the internet for them.
There's nothing more powerful to make people move and contact their representatives than blocking them from their farmville, celebrity news, homework help (wikipedia) and so on.