page_title: Italian Wikipedia
section_title: 2011 mass blanking protest
hierarchical_section_title: Italian Wikipedia / 2011 mass blanking protest
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Capture d'écran de la page principale de Wikipédia en italien le 18 janvier 2012, affichant un message de solidarité avec le black-out de la Wikipédia anglophone.
context_page_description: The Italian Wikipedia is the Italian-language edition of Wikipedia. This edition was created on May 11, 2001 and first edited on June 11, 2001. As of August 5, 2020, it has 1,626,668 articles and more than 2,010,615 registered accounts. It is the 8th-largest Wikipedia by the number of articles.
context_section_description: From October 4 to 6, 2011, following a decision adopted by volunteers of the Italian Wikipedia community, a knowledge blackout was in place. During this time, all of the site's articles were hidden and the website was blocked by its administrators, as a protest against the DDL intercettazioni (Wiretapping Bill), which was being debated at the time in the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament.
  The controversy largely centered on paragraph 29 of the proposed bill. According to a public statement by editors of the Italian Wikipedia:
  At this time, the Italian language Wikipedia may be no longer able to continue providing the service that over the years was useful to you, and that you expected to have right now. As things stand, the page you want still exists and is only hidden, but the risk is that soon we will be forced by Law to actually delete it.
  Today, unfortunately, the very pillars on which Wikipedia has been built—neutrality, freedom, and verifiability of its contents—are likely to be heavily compromised by paragraph 29 of a law proposal, also known as "DDL intercettazioni" (Wiretapping Act). This proposal, which the Italian Parliament is currently debating, provides, among other things, a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image.
  
  Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge—the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required, in order to impose such correction to any website. Hence, anyone who feels offended by any content published on a blog, an online newspaper and, most likely, even on Wikipedia would have the right for a statement ("correction") to be shown, unaltered, on the page, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the truthfulness of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources.
  The bill allowed for a fine of between €9,500 and €12,000.
  This was the first time that a Wikipedia had blanked all its content to protest. The Wikimedia Foundation officially supported the decision of the Italian Wikipedia by a statement released the same day. As of October 5, 2011 the manifesto, which replaced the Italian Wikipedia, had been viewed approximately 8 million times. On October 6, 2011, the website content was restored, with a banner across the top of each page explaining the reason for the protest.
  On January 18, 2012, the English Wikipedia was shut down for 24 hours, following a decision by contributors to protest against two bills being examined by the Congress of the United States: the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act. On that day, the Italian Wikipedia redirected users from its own main page to a black page expressing a message of support to the decision of the English encyclopedia. Users could then click to access the Italian encyclopedia's content normally.
  On July 10, 2012, when the Russian Wikipedia was closed to protest State Duma’s debating of amendments to the law "On information" (Law Project No. 89417-6), the Italian Wikipedia displayed a site-wide banner supporting the protest.
  The Italian Wikipedia approves of, and is in solidarity with, the Russian Wikipedia's protest against the proposed law being debated in the Duma. This change in the law, if approved, would permit the Russian government to create a blacklist preventing access to specific websites, like the Great Chinese Firewall.
  In November 2012, messages appeared on the Italian Wikipedia protesting the Italian Senate's Bill #3491, 3204, 3.400 and especially 3.207.
caption: The main page on January 18, 2012. The body text reads, "The Italian Wikipedia welcomes and expresses its solidarity with the protests of its colleagues on the English Wikipedia against the Stop Online Piracy act and the PROTECT IP Act. These bills, if approved by the U.S. Congress, would limit the freedom of the web and the very survival of Wikipedia."
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