THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Malayalam websites too joined the online blackout led by Wikipedia against the piece of legislation being framed in the US which allegedly damages free and open internet.When the blackout enters Indian arena, it takes the shape of an anti-government protest, especially at a time when the Union Government moved against sites such as Google, Facebook etc.Around four popular websites had blacked out since Tuesday midnight. The websites ‘marunadanmalayalee.com’, ‘malayal.am’, ‘doolnews.com’ and ‘nalamidam.com’ observed the blackout in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) proposed in the US Congress.Websites such as ‘kaduthuruthynews.com’, ‘kuruppanthara.com’ and blog ‘chayilyam.com’ flashed awareness messages about the Cyber protest. Malayalam movie and music database (m3db) had also joined the protest.By Wednesday noon, more and more blogs and websites were expressing solidarity with the protest. Joining Wikipedia, ‘Creativecommons’, ‘Reddit’, ‘Urbandictionary’, ‘Mozilla’, etc were protesting against SOPA and PIPA. The Malayalam websites also observed a blackout against the recent move of the Union Government to impose censorship on Internet.Sebin Abraham Jacob, editor of ‘Malayal.am’ and torchbearer of the blackout protest by Malayalam websites, said the protest was against the unilateral and authoritative move to restrict freedom in internet.“The US law would have implications in other countries since major websites are operating from the US. Also other countries would be influenced by the IT law introduced in US. The recent move of the Union Government to curtail freedom in internet using the existing draconian IT law is condemnable. Protesting this, the websites would remain unaccessible till Wednesday midnight,” Sebin said.
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