Wikipedia said it will shut down the English version of its online encyclopedia for 24 hours starting tomorrow, in protest of two controversial bills in the US Congress. The bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate, would lead to the censorship of web site and web development tools, according to critics.

In a press release, Wikipedia said, "If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States."

SOPA is opposed by a who's who of Internet giants, including Google, Facebook, and Yahoo, but these companies are not using their web sites as a protest. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo criticized the action in a tweet, saying, "Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also opposes the bill, saying that the bills would negatively affect developers as well as Internet users:

Perhaps worse, EFF has detailed how this provision would also decimate the open source software community. Anyone who writes or distributes Virtual Private Network, proxy, privacy or anonymization software would be negatively affected. This includes organizations that are funded by the State Department to create circumvention software to help democratic activists get around authoritarian regimes' online censorship mechanisms. Ironically, SOPA would not only institute the same practices as these regimes, but would essentially outlaw the tools used by activists to circumvent censorship in countries like Iran and China as well.

On Saturday, the Obama administration issued a statement in a blog post that some in the media have reported as signaling the death of the legislation:

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

However, Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales said the two bills are not dead. Computerworld reported a series of Twitter posts from Wales:

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's cofounder, said on Twitter on Monday that "Rumors of the death of SOPA may be premature" and added that "PIPA is still going strong". "But the best action for twitter might be to let us continue to use the service to organize our protests", he said.