TorrentFreak

The place where breaking news, BitTorrent and copyright collide

How To Access Wikipedia During the Blackout

googleTomorrow Wikipedia will go dark to protest the pending PIPA/SOPA anti-piracy bills.

Sort of…

As with most “blockades” there are plenty of ways to get around it.

For the Wikipedia addicts who can’t live without the beloved encyclopedia for a few hours, here are a few options gain access.

1. Disable JavaScript

Since Wikipedia’s blackout implementation uses javascript, it’s a piece of cake to bypass it. Just turn of javascript support in your browser and Wikipedia is fully accessible again.

2. Wikipedia mobile

Another option is to visit the mobile Wikipedia site, as it’s unaffected by the blackout.

3. Google cache

The third option is to use Google cache. Just search for the page you want and load it via Google cache instead of accessing the Wikipedia site directly.

4. Download Wikipedia

The last option is to just download the entire Wikipedia via BitTorrent

Blackout? I don’t think so…

wiki

This post is from the News Bits section of TorrentFreak where we present stories from around the web in a concise summary format. Full TorrentFreak articles can be found here. If you have a tip please let us know. News Bits have their very own RSS feed
  • http://www.jazzsequence.com chris

    Doing this sort of defeats the purpose of the blackout, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be a better case to support the SOPA/PIPA blackout by *not* trying to circumvent the blacked-out pages and just *deal* with it for a day?

    • Duke

      Isn’t the purpose of the blackout to raise awareness of the issues and problems involved with things like PIPA? I imagine most of the readers of TorrentFreak have a pretty good idea that these things are bad, so the blackout has little purpose for us other than to get in our way.

    • Reader

      Yeah, but odds are the average non-educated person won’t understand this at all, so they’ll likely still receive the full horror of being deprived of access to the website they want because of corporate greed.

      • Reader

        Corporate greed on wikipedias part? if thats what you’re saying then you are completely backwards

        • Reader

          No, on the part of the MAFIAA

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002800915443 Robert Frost

      I agree.

      If a way around it is explained and detailed out in the article – what’s the point?

    • Mr. Putin

      It shows a point… that even if SOPA does start to censor websites… we can easily bypass it >.> :P

    • Anonymous

      Yes, but it shows that there are ways around the blockades that the government want to impose.

    • Anonymous

      The Internet always finds a way to route around censorship, even if it’s for a good cause..

      Deal with it :)

    • Guest

      Some of us NEED Wikipedia, I needed to get the sources from the page about neuroplasticity for a paper; and I needed it before I could start writing anything! After reading this I just downloaded a previous version of Wikipedia, and now I have it. This article won’t be read by *everyone*, so it does no harm. I’m glad this article is here.

      • http://www.jazzsequence.com chris

        You know…back in the old days there was this thing called called the library. It had lots of books and stuff.

  • http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja

    The regular user can’t even begin to imagine that it’s this easy. I think the idea here is to spread information on these awful bills and while easy to defeat, the blackout is welcome and will most certainly reach its goal.

    • http://www.jazzsequence.com chris

      Yeah, I just can’t help but feel like if there is information like this floating around about bypassing the blackout in the same way that there’s a browser plug-in to bypass DNS-based blacklisting, then it sort of waters down the effect of the blackout. I suspect it would have been fairly easy for TorrentFreak readers to figure out at least two of, if not all three ways to bypass the Wikipedia blackout (mostly depending on whether you have a smartphone).

      • robert

        Obviously Wikipedia isn’t trying for a hardened, impossible to penetrate blackout. If that’s what they wanted to do it would be simple for them to do so.

        The entire point is to raise awareness, nothing else. Each visitor that sees the blackout page will interpret the message in their own way. Most will probably have never even heard of SOPA, PIPA, etc.

        It’s just a message, not a bullet-proof blockade. I think it’s clever.

  • Anonymous

    Oh god. Thanks to you, I’ll never get rid of my Wikipedia addiction. stupid javascript.

  • Pingback: How to Take Wikipedia Offline So You Can Keep Using It During Tomorrow’s Anti-SOPA Blackout « The College of Arts and Sciences – Gathering Point for Technology at the University of Oregon

  • http://tinyurl.com/ANoiXioNA-personal-info ANoiXioNA

    some of the scripts floating around are fukin mental…… (great)

    Serious blackout with a hint of … my browser is fuked ( my favorite ingredient)….

  • Alyssa Blindy

    The blackout is a complete simulation of SOPA. Only the educated people can get around it, while everyone else has to suffer. The censorship will not work on those who are educated. It also does, sort of, deprive innocent people. You see?

  • john smith
    • http://twitter.com/wildreason David Ryder

      You can actually download Wikipedia from Wikipedia, for free.

  • Rekrul

    If these blackouts depend on Javascript, I’ll probably never seen any of them. I have Javascript disabled 90% of the time. It makes sites load faster and I have less problems with them. I only enable it when I absolutely have to, like to use the comments here. Although I hit the stop button as soon as the comments appear, otherwise it keeps on loading for like another minute…

  • http://twitter.com/rahlquist rahlquist

    if they really want to raise awareness shut down the major irc networks, Then since people would have nothing to do, they could call their reps…

  • Pingback: How to Take Wikipedia Offline So You Can Keep Using It During Tomorrow’s Anti-SOPA Blackout [Sopa]

  • stc5056

    You can access Wikipedia FOREVER if you contact your congressman RIGHT NOW.

  • http://twitter.com/kfriedson Katelyn Friedson

    you can also access wikipedia in other languages, and just translate to English

  • Tmacster1

    It’s just to raise awareness. Thankfully I don’t need Wikipedia because college is closed tomorrow. Wiki definitely has been apart of my school life that’s for sure. The overall concept of the blackout is to raise awareness. It can easily be by passed. They just didn’t spend the time locking down wiki completely… Because that’s not there intent behind the black out. There’s many ways to bypass said blackouts. But like myself I can last 24 hours without it.

  • Andrew

    If you are interested in taking a look at the scripts that Wikipedia is using they are posted over here: http://blog.andrewpearson.org/2012/01/how-to-bypass-wikipedia-sopa-pipa.html

    The webpage also discusses how to bypass the blackout.

  • Chilly8

    There is another way around it. The main page is blacked out, but not the articles themselves. If you need to access a Wikipedia article, you can simply Google the term you want, and then access that article from Google.

    • Chilly8

      I think Wikipedia has just got wise to that. That method did work, though they have changed it where accessing an article through Google no longer works. I would imagine the Wikipedia folks must be reading these articles as well.

  • suppy

    http://youtu.be/oJ5hBi2r9tY heres an easier way i found on youtube

  • John

    As quoted from the Wikipedia – SOPA & PIPA – learn more page.

    “Our purpose here isn’t to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it’s okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message.”

    as mentioned in a previous comment above, its educating the masses.. sort of what Wikipedia is all about.

  • Zackria
  • http://twitter.com/#!/Topperfalkon Topperfalkon

    They have completely disabled editing of Wikipedia articles for the day though, even normally unprotected articles.

  • bob

    lol just press the x at the top bar to stop loading the page after the page has loaded, and then it wont go to the black screen. Yeah they really put a lot of effort into this blackout

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

NewsBits

Even more news...

  • 404 Fail: Six Strikes’ Piracy Alternatives Go Missing

    After years of negotiating and planning the “six strikes” copyright alert system finally saw the light...

  • Google Doesn’t Believe Kim Dotcom is Real

    Those who enter Kim Dotcom into Google’s search box will get millions of results. Still, Google...

  • Nintendo’s Miyamoto: Piracy More Concerning Than Used Games Market

    In an interview with Computer and Video Games, Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto says that his company...

  • Monitoring BitTorrent Activity on a Network Using WireShark

    As all readers should know by now, BitTorrent activity is public and can be easily logged...

  • The Pirate Bay Suffers Downtime

    The Pirate Bay is not responding at the moment and most proxies appear to be down...

MostDiscussed

Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.

CopyQuote

Left Quote

“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.

Peter Sunde Left Quote

PopularArticles

A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.