North Americans have grown so jaded about protest movements (Occupy Insertcityhere, anyone?) that it’s easy to forget that sometimes these things really can work – if the object is clear, the messaging is strong, and the execution is sharp. Witness the campaign by Wikipedia, along with other online entities large and small, against two pieces of legislation in U.S. Congress. The would-be laws, SOPA and PIPA, would have placed harsher restrictions on content-sharing over the Internet – anathema to Wikipedia and other organizations (like Google ) that rely on user-contributed material. In protest, Wikipedia shut itself down for the entire day on Jan. 18. That not only showed how much the world has come to depend on it for finding factoids and settling bets; it also showed how much political power could be mustered by a simple boycott. Wikipedia’s campaign was well-reasoned and well-explained, as exemplified in an open letter from Sue Gardner, Canadian-born executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “Although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral,” she wrote, “its existence is not.” True, Wikipedia risked a lot with the shutdown, but the proof of the soundness of the strategy is in the result. Within days, several of the congressmen who’d sponsored the bills abandoned them, and finally the legislation was halted altogether. A “wiktory” for the Internet…