Lone Star Gridiron joins Wikipedia, Google, Craigslist and thousands of other sites in blacking out to protest SOPA.

Millions of Americans oppose SOPA and PIPA because these bills would censor the Internet and slow economic growth in the U.S.

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA.

The Senate will begin voting on January 24th. Please let them know how you feel. Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.

What does it boil down to?  If passed, major corporations have the right to shut down ANY website (including your favorite Texas high school football sites) if they feel it infringes on their ability to make money.

Contact your senator or representative

Sending a message to our elected leaders’ underlings has never been easier. Old-fashioned phone calls count for a lot; they take effort to make, and so they indicate opposition in a way that a mass form e-mail never will. The official Senate site lists the phone numbers and links to contact forms for all senators, while the House has a handy tool that lets you search for your representative by ZIP code and state.

If you’re having trouble thinking of something to say, various anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA organizations can help. Public Knowledge has a form for sending letters to senators describing why PIPA is “overbroad … ripe for abuse … [and] speeds fragmentation of the Internet.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation is providing a similar service for contacting both senators and representatives, as is AmericanCensorship.org.

You can also sign several petitions. This one urges President Barack Obama to veto SOPA should it ever come to his desk and has more than 51,000 signatures; it led to the Obama administration criticizing portions of SOPA, saying that the administration “will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

Another petition backed by Craigslist and reddit is aimed at Congress and has 117,000 supporters. Want to go further and convince your fellow humans that SOPA is bad? If you’re already an expert on SOPA or PIPA, another site lets you volunteer to to explain it to newbies on the phone or in person.