This was sort of surprising. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo tweeted in a response that blacking out your site in protest against SOPA is foolish for any business.
He was specifically referring to Wikipedia’s decision to blackout for a period of 24 hours.
This is pretty surprising because Twitter is one of the most popular services that would be affected if SOPA or PIPA are turned into laws. The service allows users to share links to web pages (which can include copyright infringing material) and photos.
Here is the tweet from Costolo:
@digiphile @jayrosen_nyu that’s just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.
— dick costolo (@dickc) January 16, 2012
In any case, Wikipedia is not technically a business. It is an organization which does not rely on advertising revenue. They can afford to protest for a day without hurting their bottom-line. Twitter probably cannot afford to do something similar even though they should!
RT @jsb: Rt @nreville Wikipedia’s shutdown for #sopastrike a perfect example of why we need more strong non-profit web companies.
— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) January 17, 2012
Twitter incidentally is already facing a block in India because of the democratic nature of the service. Indian government is targeting a bunch of social networking services that allow web users to post blasphemous content.