The so-called SOPA blackout — protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA for short) in the House of Representatives and the Protect IP Act in the Senate — has spread across the web today, perhaps the most widespread online lobbying effort ever coordinated by Internet entities.

Sites checked by ABC News did not actually “go dark” as originally threatened. Instead, they posted appeals to users to get in touch with their Congressional representatives to argue against passage of the two bills. The bills were intended to protect movie makers, music publishers and other providers of online content who fear that in the digital age, people can copy what they’ve created and spread it without paying for it.

Internet companies have been complaining that the bills put them in the untenable position of having to be online police. They say they worry that the two bills would force them to be online police and hold them responsible if users of their sites link to pirated content.

Even if these bills are defeated others will take their place, over and over again until one will pass.

hope they realise that the US goverment is gonna do exactly what it wants to anyway and pay absolutly no attention to a few websites that they most likely never ever vist anyway

Hitler finds out about SOPA/PIPA:

Um, Wikipedia is the about the 5th most visited site on the internet. That will get some attention. I do wish Google had done an actual shutdown instead of a pansy banner protest. But of course they and most of the other companies decided that this bill which would, in their own words, destroy their business wasn't worth losing a few hours of profits.