The English-language version of the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia will close for a day in protest against the anti-piracy bill SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). The promotion will begin on January 18 at 9 a.m. Moscow time, said in a statement . Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation,

Gardner points out that SOPA could threaten the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia itself. At the same time, she emphasizes that the decision to block the Internet encyclopedia was made by its editors. They also voted to extend the promotion to readers all over the world.

The next stage of consideration of SOPA in the lower house of the US Congress is scheduled for January 18, in which representatives of the Internet industry will take part.

SOPA provides for a number of tough measures against pirated resources, in particular, it obliges Internet companies to stop cooperating with them at the request of authorities or copyright holders. The bill was opposed by Google , Yahoo!, eBay, Facebook , Twitter and other Internet corporations, and the Barack Obama administration joined them in mid-January .

However, as Sue Gardner writes, even despite this, Wikipedia will hold its action, since in parallel with SOPA, the Senate, the upper house of the American Congress, is considering a similar bill, PIPA (Protect IP Act), which has a better chance of adoption.

Gardner writes that Wikipedia will be blocked from users around the world because there are trends in many countries to try to regulate the Internet in violation of the freedoms of its participants. “We want the Internet to remain free and open everywhere and for everyone,” she concluded.

The English-language part of Wikipedia is the largest and includes more than 3.8 million articles.

The idea to block Wikipedia as a sign of protest was put forward by its founder Jimmy Wales in December 2011. In October, the Italian section of the online encyclopedia achieved changes to a local bill that, according to Wikipedia representatives, encroached on its basic principles: neutrality, freedom and verifiability of content.

Earlier, representatives of the news resource Reddit announced their intention to block it for 12 hours on January 18. On this day, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian will speak at a Senate hearing, a video broadcast of which will be presented on the site.