Minecraft Website Offline for SOPA Protest - Jan 18

Posted in minecraft

Notch has informed all Minecraft fans that the minecraft website along with mojang.com and playcobalt.com will be offline on Jan 18th 2012. This is a direct protest against SOPA.

Notch has frequently cited his opposition to the SOPA idea and its damaging affects against internet freedom. If you haven't heard, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) will allow the US government to close any website it suspects of piracy or illegal file sharing. This might be something as stupid as a user uploading a copyrighted document or leaving a comment with a link to a movie. The law will be so broad that any shister lawyer could interpret it to their advantage.

As the protest gathers pace, other big names including Wikipedia and Reddit have joined the blackout. Their websites will be offline in the same way as Mojangs. The Blackout of Wikipedia will surely highlight the problems with SOPA to several billion people!

Interestingly enough, Twitter has failed to join the SOPA protest.

Can I still play Minecraft and Cobalt?

Even though the minecraft and cobalt websites will be offline, the login servers will still be online. So you can carry on playing Minecraft (SMP) as usual.