Over the weekend, the Stop Online Piracy Act was dealt a major blow as the legislation was delayed until “outstanding concerns” have been addressed. SOPA will not move forward in the House as the official vote was been cancelled and the bill has been yanked from the floor. Representative and SOPA opponent Darrell Issa cheered this as a win for the internet community – but he warned that SOPA’s Senate cousin PIPA is still a major concern.

He’s right, and SOPA is still a concern as well. While it has been delayed, SOPA is not dead (just ask SOPA author Lamar Smith). It is entirely possible that SOPA could resurrect once a “consensus is reached.” SOPA must be destroyed while vulnerable.

And presumably, that’s why many sites will still participate in a scheduled blackout on Wednesday, January 18th to protest the legislation.

Do you support sites like Wikipedia going dark in protest of SOPA and PIPA? Or do you feel that it’s the wrong move? Let us know in the comments.

Here are some of the bigger sites that will officially go dark on the 18th:

• reddit
• Wikipedia
• Mozilla
• Failblog, rest of the Cheezburger Network
• Boing Boing

Smaller sites can get in on the protest as well. A site, sopastrike.com, has been set up by theFight for the Future non-profit. It allows anyone with a website to join the strike. The site’s list of all registered blackout participants contains hundreds of small websites.

If you want to participate in the blackout, you can use the Simple Stop SOPA WordPress plugin. It will blackout your site and show the following message in white:

This site has been blocked in protest of the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) two bills which will allow the government to censor the internet. Find out more at americancensorship.org or the video below. This website will return at 8pm.

It will also show this video about SOPA and PIPA. If you haven’t already seen it, it’s a nice video that explains the dangers of the legislation.

(Source: maloriebrooke)