Everyone's favourite Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has defended the user generated encyclopaedia's move to shut down for 24 hours in protest over potential web censorship legislation.

Some had levelled criticism against the site for blocking non-US users who have nothing to do with US policy as well as American internet surfers.

Wales told the Telegraph, "The general sentiment seemed to be that US law, as it impacts the internet, can affect everyone.

"As for me, what I am hoping is that people outside the US who have friends or family who are voters in the US, will ask them to make a call to their senator or representative, and I hope we send a broad global message that the internet as a whole will not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement."

No likey

It's a fair point; whatever passes in the US will affect huge swathes of non-US web users, as well as providing incentive and inspiration to governments in other countries around the world.

What's more, the bill promises to seek court orders against websites outside US jurisdiction – making the issue a global one.

The Stop Online Piracy Act has already met with opposition from the Obama administration, but the black-out will go ahead regardless.

Wales cited one UK Wikipedia user known only as The Yeti, who said: "This belief that the world's most powerful nation has the right to censor anyone on the planet and extend its laws anywhere it wants just because someone in the US doesn't like something is more than worrying.

"It's a thin edge of the wedge… One day's inconvenience is nothing."

Wikipedia will be offline from 5AM GMT on Wednesday 17 January until 5AM GMT on Thursday 18 January. So, better find out where the apostrophe came from, what puce is and everything there is to know about the Age of Enlightenment now to tide you over.

Apple has the ebook market in its sights for its media event on Thursday, with the latest leaks suggesting that it has 'GarageBand for ebooks' in the works.

By that, we mean a one-stop ebook formatting shop that allows easy creation of interactive, iBook-compliant interactive ebooks. Doesn't that sound fun?

What it may mean is an end to all those horribly formatted, cheaply produced ebooks that are occasionally ripped verbatim from Wikipedia and seem to pop up no matter what you search for in the Apple ebookstore.

They'll still be ripped verbatim from Wikipedia, but at least they'll look a bit better and, perhaps, feature swizzy interactive stuff.

Digital destruction

But it's digital textbooks that will be the headline news at Apple's New York event, with expected announcements to include textbooks on iBooks and improvements to the iTunes University.

Ars Technica's source adds that this digital textbook mission was Steve Jobs' pet project in the final years of his life, and was set to be announced alongside the iPhone 4S in October 2011, but pushed back due to Jobs' grave health.