Google has today announced that over seven million people signed the online petition to Congress during the internet protest yesterday. When users visited Google yesterday they were greeted by a black box over Google’s icon, and a message that said “Tell Congress: Please don’t censor the Web!”, and as Businessweek are reporting the message provided a link to a special page.

This explained Google’s opposition to the legislation, and offered users a chance to join a petition urging Congress to stop it. Many internet companies say that both the acts would promote online censorship among other things. The music and movie industries along with the US Chamber of Commerce are obviously in favor of the legislation, as it will provide them the means to fight against piracy on websites outside the US.

Wikipedia have said that over 162 million visited the English version of its site and saw the blackout page that it had put up. Over eight million US users visited the blackout page and looked up their elected representatives via the site to protest against the proposed laws.

Google took to its social network site Google+ to thank people for signing its petition and added the proposals “would censor the web and impose burdensome regulations on American businesses”. Did you sign the Google petition, and what are your views on SOPA and PIPA?

The easiest way is to use the sites mobile version, which according to a report on The Telegraph will be available throughout the day. And even though it is designed for mobile devices you can still access it on a PC by visiting http://en.m.wikipedia.org/.

A number of mobile applications are also working with Wikipedia such as the websites iPhone app, and you can get to it by using the iPhone’s Safari browser. Users of the Android platform are also catered for as well with the official app still working. The devices will identify themselves as mobile so it will work without problem.

But users of the iPad will be out of luck as the device uses the full website, and is currently not available. Currently the main site will display a page for a short time before covering it with a special dark homepage, which is in protest to the SOPA piracy law. Visitors can then either click the X button on a tablet PC, or hit the escape button in some internet browsers on a PC.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer doesn’t seem to be supporting this at the moment for some reason. There are cached versions that are accessible via Google, and some versions of Wikipedia content are still available on Facebook. Also Spanish, Italian, French, and other non-English versions are available.

Do you agree with the Wikipedia protest?

The co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales took to his Twitter account to reveal the site blackout will still go ahead. According to a report on The Telegraph Wales told his followers that he wanted “to melt switchboards!” He added that presently that there is no hint that the Stop Online Piracy Act is completely dead, so urged followers “to send Washington a BIG message”.

He also feels that the Protect Intellectual Property Act that is also under consideration by the Senate was a risk to websites. Wales believes that around 100 million English speaking users of Wikipedia will be affected by the blackout, and urged students to do their “homework early”.

The English version of the site will be closed down between 5 AM GMT tomorrow until 5 AM GMT the following day. Visitors to the site during that time will be greeted by an open letter urging them to contact Congress in protest.

Wikipedia is currently the sixth most used website in the world, and other sites such as Reddit are also joining in with the protest with a blackout. It will be the first blackout of its kind for an English version of the site, while the Italian version did do something similar back in October as a protest against libel laws.

People opposed to SOPA and PIPA say the rulings would impose unfair burden on websites like Wikipedia, who will have to check that no content on the site will infringe copyright. Currently if a site is notified by a copyright holder and then remove the material they are not liable.

The proposed new laws would make it easier for copyright holders from the US to shut off access to foreign websites, which may contain illegal copies of movies, music, and TV shows. Only last Friday the White House said that key parts of the bills would not be approved.

Do you agree with the Wikipedia blackout?