The blackout you initiated a few years ago drew a lot of attention to Wikipedia. What was the rationale behind it?
A few years ago, the US House of representatives introduced the SOPA Bill (PIPA was the corresponding bill in the Senate). Under its original version, the bill intended to set up a technological surveillance system similar to what the Chinese government had implemented. It would have enabled American officials to block and censor overseas websites that were allegedly violating copyright without judicial process or oversight. For example, a small website owner in Denmark wouldn‘t have had the legal resources to challenge a US government ban on his site for alleged copyright infringements. These measures would have seriously endangered the open internet. We debated this piece of legislation internally and concluded on closing our site‘s English version for 24 hours in the US. Our community then voted to forbid access to the English Wikipedia globally. The impact was phenomenal. A senator declared that 10 million people contacted Congress that same day. The House of Representatives phone system crashed because so many people were calling in. Our maneuver drew tremendous press attention on this law and fueled citizen pressure on Congress, which eventually succumbed and abandoned it. We must be vigilant because freedom-destroying laws are bound to arise sooner or later.