Twitter slams Wikipedia’s black out protest

Micro blogging site Twitter has slammed Wikipedia’s plan to shut down on Wednesday for 24-hour to protest against highly-contentious US online piracy legislation, calling it 'foolish' and 'silly'.

Micro blogging site Twitter has slammed Wikipedia's plan to s "go dark" on Wednesday for 24-hour to protest against highly-contentious US online piracy legislation, calling it "foolish" and "silly".

The online encyclopedia said its English-language version would be unavailable in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and Protect IP, two bills aimed at combating online piracy.

Wikimedia, the foundation behind the site, discussed the move with "Wikipedians", the authors of its entries, and the company said the majority favored action, The Guardian reports.

"Today Wikipedians from around the world have spoken about their opposition to this destructive legislation," said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

"This is an extraordinary action for our community to take, and while we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that Sopa and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world," he added.

Wales has been a persistent critic of Sopa, and called "the worst internet legislation he has ever seen."

According to the paper, other tech leaders were less enamored of his move. In a tweet, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo called Wikipedia's plans to pull the plug on its website 'foolish and silly'.

Via Twitter, Radar correspondent Alex Howard asked Costolo, Google's Eric Schmidt and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, whether they would have the 'cojones' to follow in Wikipedia's protesting footsteps.

"That's just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish," Costolo replied.