Well, Wikipedia is down and has been replaced by a black screen with a search bar to look up your congresscritter and write a protest letter. Looks like Reddit is going down at 8am EST.
Google going offline would really be chaotic and make a statement that affected everyone, but I can understand why they’re not doing it.
It’s shutdown for 24 hours. Unless you don’t visit the site during class, just do a screen gab and save it.
It looks like Wikipedia is blacking out its pages by adding something that overlays the “protest sopa” page on top of every page, but the original page is still there if you view source. Probably means one could write a greasemonkey script to edit the pages to remove the overlay if one was so inclined.
The black bar on Google’s page? I see that.
At least they are participating tonight.
Just turn off JavaScript and it’s business as usual.
They couldn’t give a damn whether Congress notices.
They care whether their users, the voters who put Congress in power, notice.
Wow. I heard it might happen…
“For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia. Learn more.”
Merged IntelliQ’s post into this thread.
Thank you, sorry about that.
I’m still able to access Wikipedia on my phone. Don’t have access to a proper computer until tomorrow, but as of now I’m not seeing any difference on the mobile version.
I reckon productivity will surge.
And it is probably a good thing for students that classes just started again. No term papers due.
Appropriately, the Wiki page on SOPA itself is not blacked out.
Oddly, though, there is a featured article for today, even though nobody would be able to read it.
From the NYT:
Damn Im so sick of that generic canned defense by politicians. There should be an autoslap app hardwired into them every time they vomit a stupid canned phrase that doesnt address the policy.
I’m in Australia: Wiki and Google are both working as normal for me. Google redirects to google.com.au for me anyway, so I can’t easily see the US version.
So the worldwide Wikipedia shuts down because the US Congress has a bill before it that Wikipedia doesn’t like.
Those of us who are not Americans, who were unable to vote for American politicians, who cannot influence American policy, and who do not live in the United States of America, are left in the dark.
Jimmy Wales, for the record, I don’t agree with the US Congress. But to punish us non-Americans who have no say in this battle? You’re crazy. You’re really making me think twice about contributing the next time you have a pledge drive.
Jimmy, if you really disagree with US policy and lawmaking, then interrupt the service of US users. Don’t upset the rest of us, who have made efforts to work with the necessary authorities. You’re asking me to protest to lawmakers that I did not, and cannot, elect. Give your head a shake, and tell me that your position is something I can do anything about. As a non-American, not living in the United States, I can do nothing.
I came here to figure out why it was still working 
Like Sparklo said, you won’t see any change if you are blocking javascript.
I think this is one of those issues, in which raising public awareness of the problem is valuable, no matter where people are living.
If Wikipedia is so important to people that they can’t do without it for a day, they are certainly going to want to know about legislation that would put its entire existence at risk.
There seem to be a lot of students out there freaking out: https://twitter.com/#!/herpderpedia
(link to retweets of, well, people on twitter freaking out that wikipedia is down, oddly enough)
As I said in the post immediately before yours, it’s having zero effect in Australia. Maybe it’s restricted to north America.