You probably woke up realizing that things aren’t quite right on the Internet this morning…

Wassup with all the “Blacked Out” sites? What’s all this SOPA Strike stuff? Is it the online apocalypse? Has the internet come to an end?

Well Google, Wikipedia, Boing Boing and many of your favorite blogs have gone “dark” to protest two anti-piracy bills that are up for debate in the U.S. Congress.

There?s a large blackout bar over?Google?s logo and the English-language version of Wikipedia sites are blacked out.

It’s a debate that’s pitted the Web against Washington. And if the goal of these protests was to get people talking, that sure seems to have worked, with every media organization on the planet talking about piracy today.

Many of these sites are using creative techniques to bring attention to the two bills ? one called SOPA, the other PIPA ? and making very clear their viewpoint on it.

So, what are these piracy bills all about? Find out below…

Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – fightforthefuture.org/pipa

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year ? that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

SOPA 101: Your guide to the Internet blackout