BBC.CNN WORLD NEWS

Wooing the young voters crucial to his re-election, President Obama today launched a passionate campaign-style appeal to students as he pressed lawmakers to prevent the cost of college from rising.

Speaking to a rowdy crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the president said he understands the financial burdens students face. “Michelle and I, we’ve been in your shoes,” Obama said. “We didn’t come from wealthy families.  When we graduated from college and law school, we had a mountain of debt.  When we married, we got poorer together.”

While the president did not call out the presumptive GOP nominee by name, he drew a sharp contrast between his background and that of Mitt Romney, who comes from a wealthier family. “This is something Michelle and I know about firsthand,” Obama said. “I didn’t just read about this… I didn’t just get some talking points about this. I didn’t just get a policy briefing on this.”

“Check this out, all right?  I’m the president of the United States.  We only finished paying off our student loans about eight years ago,” he said to laughter from the crowd of roughly 8,000. “That wasn’t that long ago.”

While young voters still overwhelmingly support the president — Obama enjoys a substantial 60 to 34 percent lead over Romney — their interest has waned since 2008.

According to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 63 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds took a major interest in the election in 2008. Today, just 45 percent have the same level of interest in this presidential election.

Obama is spending Tuesday and Wednesday visiting three key battleground states to push for low-rate college loans, wooing young voters while targeting a financial burden that hits the middle class and threatens the economic recovery.

In North Carolina Obama urged lawmakers to extend a 2007 law that cut student loan rates to 3.4 percent. If Congress does not act, interest rates will double to 6.8 percent on July 1.

“For each year that Congress doesn’t act, the average student with these loans will rack up an additional thousand dollars in debt,” the president said. “That’s basically a tax hike for more than 7 million students across America, more than 160,000 students here in North Carolina alone.”

Obama is expected to make a similar argument at stops in Colorado and Iowa.

While Romney has come out in support of the extension, the president targeted Republican lawmakers who oppose the measure. “Republicans who run Congress right now have not yet said whether or not they’ll stop your rates from doubling.  We’re two months away,” Obama said, asking those watching to call, email or tweet their members of Congress.

The White House maintains the president’s trip this week is purely official business, but it was hard to ignore Obama’s campaign cadence as he riled up what appeared to be a largely supportive crowd.

“The fact is that since most of you were born, tuition and fees at America’s colleges have more than doubled. That forces students like you to take out a lot more loans.  There are fewer grants.  You rack up more debt.  Can I get an amen?” the president asked.

“Amen!” the crowd cheered.

“The average student who borrows to pay for college now graduates with about $25,000 in student loan debt.  That’s the average.  Some are more.  Can I get an amen for that?” Obama asked again.

“Amen!” the students replied.

(Reuters) - Wikipedia, the popular community-edited online encyclopedia, will black out its English-language site for 24 hours to seek support against proposed U.S. anti-piracy legislation that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said threatens the future of the Internet.

The service will be the highest profile name to join a growing campaign starting at midnight Eastern Time on Wednesday that will see it black out its page so that visitors will only see information about the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

The information will urge Wikipedia readers to contact their local congressman to vote against the bills. Other smaller sites leading the campaign include Reddit.com and Cheezeburger.

"This is a quite clumsily drafted legislation which is dangerous for an open Internet," said Wales in an interview.

The decision to black out the site was decided by voting within the Wikipedia community of writers and editors who manage the free service, Wales said. The English language Wikipedia receives more than 25 million average daily visitors from around the world, according to comScore data.

The bills pit technology companies like Google Inc and Facebook against the bill's supporters, including Hollywood studios and music labels, which say the legislation is needed to protect intellectual property and jobs.

The SOPA legislation under consideration in the House of Representatives aims to crack down on online sales of pirated American movies, music or other goods by forcing Internet companies to block access to foreign sites offering material that violates U.S. copyright laws. Supporters argue the bill is unlikely to have an impact on U.S.-based websites.

U.S. advertising networks could also be required to stop online ads, and search engines would be barred from directly linking to websites found to be distributing pirated goods.

Google has repeatedly said the bill goes too far and could hurt investment. Along with other Internet companies such as Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and eBay, it has run advertisements in major newspapers urging Washington lawmakers to rethink their approach.

White House officials raised concerns on Saturday about SOPA saying they believe it could make businesses on the Internet vulnerable to litigation and harm legal activity and free speech.

"We're happy to see opposition is building and that the White House has started to pay attention," said Wales.

News of the White House's comments prompted a prominent supporter of the bill News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch to slam the Obama administration.

"So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery," he posted on his personal Twitter account Saturday. News Corp owns a vast array of media properties from Fox TV, the Wall Street Journal to Twentieth Century Fox studios.

Wales said the bill in its current form was too broad and could make it difficult for a site like Wikipedia, which he said relies on open exchange of information. He said the bill also places the burden of proof on the distributor of content in the case of any dispute over copyright ownership.

"I do think copyright holders have legitimate issues, but there are ways of approaching the issue that don't involve censorship," Wales said.