Print Culture and Online Publishing
The Wikipedia Homepage on Jan. 18th, 2012 Today is a big day for the internet! Visit the English-language version of Wikipedia and instead of the familiar start page, you'll see the ominous image above with a message prompting you to "Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge." By denying its Anglo-American users access to the site, Wikipedia is protesting two anti-piracy laws making their way through the United States Congress that it and many other internet content providers (especially social networking sites and blog hosts) claim are overly restrictive. These and other issues surrounding the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act are both important and complex. You can read more about them in today's Washington Post . (If you have a subscription, you can also check out a story in today's New York Times .) But what caught my attention was another story in the Times , about a website called ResearchGate designed to encourage scientists to collaborate, s...