LAS VEGAS—Reddit on Tuesday announced plans for a Web site blackout on Jan. 18 in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate companion, the PROTECT IP Act.
From 8am to 8pm Eastern next Wednesday, Reddit.com will display nothing but information about SOPA.
"Instead of the normal glorious, user-curated chaos of reddit, we will be displaying a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action," the site said in a blog post.
SOPA would expand the ability of the Justice Department to go after "rogue" Web sites overseas that traffic in fake goods like counterfeit purses or prescription drugs. According to the bill's sponsor, Rep. Lamar Smith, the DOJ would have to get a court order against an infringing site, and if granted, could request that the site be blocked. Search engines would then have to remove links to those sites.
Critics, however—including Google, Facebook, and Twitter—are concerned that the bill is too far-reaching and broad, and could potentially harm Web sites that don't actually contain infringing content or were acting in good faith.
Also on Jan. 18, Reddit.com will play a webcast of the hearing at which Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit.com, is scheduled to testify. The hearing is being spearheaded House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican. Issa has proposed alternative legislation to SOPA, dubbed the OPEN Act, which would let the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) handle "rogue" Web sites instead of the Justice Department.
The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by SOPA sponsor Rep. Smith, held a hearing on SOPA on Dec. 15, but some opponents of the bill complained that the panel did not include enough of those who were against the bill. The Jan. 18 hearing will feature some of those detractors, including the CEO of Rackspace Hosting, the ACLU, and Sandia National Labs. The exact time for the hearing has not yet been announced.
Rep. Issa and Sen. Ron Wyden will be here at the Consumer Electronics Show tomorrow to discuss the OPEN Act and SOPA.
The House Judiciary Committe will take up SOPA at some point this month; it adjourned last month for the holidays without voting the measure out of committee. The Senate is scheduled to address the PROTECT IP Act on Jan. 24 at 2:15pm.
Reddit, meanwhile, has made headlines over its SOPA efforts, with some users calling for coordinated campaigns against pro-SOPA members of Congress who are seeking re-election. That prompted talk of whether a site like Reddit can have an impact in the political process. We'll have to wait until November to see how that pans out, but Reddit certainly has someone's attention. Last week, Reddit announced that it served over 2 billion pageviews during the month of December, more than double the traffic it did a year before.