“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
It’s been more than 18 years since John Gilmore offered up his famous explanation of why the Internet is the most powerful tool for free speech ever invented. That’s long enough for an entire generation of Wikipedia-using, Etsy-shopping, Reddit-browsing and Facebook-sharing Internet users to be born, raised and apply to college. But as some members of that generation may discover on Wednesday, when they log on to their favorite website and discover it dark and silent, Gilmore’s insight has rarely been more relevant than it is today.
Some very well known and highly popular websites, including Wikipedia and Reddit, effectively turned themselves off today, acting in protest of proposed congressional legislation that they believe poses a stark, existential threat to the core architecture of the free and open Internet.
In other words, the operators of these websites have decided that two bills currently under consideration in the U.S. Congress — SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, in the House; and, in the Senate, PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act — represent “damage.” And so they’re routing around it, by any means necessary, including, ironically, purposely damaging themselves, albeit temporarily.
Posted by Den 
