Websites including the English version of Wikipedia, Reddit and BoingBoing have gone dark for a period of twenty-four hours today, in protest of anti-piracy bills currently making their way through the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.
According to a statement posted by Wikipedia, the Stop Online Privacy Act ("SOPA," as the House version of the bill is dubbed) and the Protect IP Act ("PIPA," the Senate version of the bill): "are badly drafted legislation that won't be effective at their stated goal (to stop copyright infringement), and will cause serious damage to the free and open Internet."
Current versions of SOPA and PIPA would allow copyright holders and the U.S. Department of Justice to obtain court orders that block access to websites that purportedly enable or facilitate copyright infringement. This is in contrast with current law, under which online service providers complying with the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are protected from liability for infringement perpetrated by third party users of their sites.
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