You will probably be aware by now that the English version of Wikipedia has closed itself down for 24 hours in protest to proposed legalization in the US over piracy. Today we are looking at how you can still access Wikipedia during the SOPA blackout.
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?
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