On January 18th, many sites across the internet will be going dark for 12 hours to protest SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and PIPA, the Protect IP Act. This site will be taking part as well.

On that day, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will be holding a hearing to examine the impact of DNS and search engine blocking on the Internet community and related industry. The Senate will be voting on PIPA on January 24th. See americancensorship.org for more information on these bills and how to get involved.

If you’ve got a WordPress blog and want to join in, I recommend installing the SOPA Blackout plugin. It’s dead simple to set up, replaces your content for the day, and spits out a 503 so that search engines don’t freak out.

Both SOPA and PIPA undermine the core structure of the Internet, and pave the way for even more nefarious uses of censorship in the future. Contact your representative, and help us defeat these bills!

Update: SOPA has been shelved! Unfortunately, PIPA is still moving forward, so we’re not quite there yet.