The music and movie industries in America are close to tricking Congress into passing a bill that would be detrimental to the very future of the internet as we know it.

The “Stop Online Piracy Act” and it’s Senate companion “PROTECT IP Act” (SOPA PIPA) are both slated to be taken up in their respective houses when they return at the end of January.

For those of you who aren’t yet familiar with SOPA or PIPA, this short video featuring Julian Sanchez from the Cato Institute explains how internet censorship is the wrong answer for solving internet piracy. 

Indeed, as Sanchez pointed out in a lengthy article discussing the phony figures (with painstaking detail, Sanchez shows how the music and movie industries are either misleading or flat out lying to Congress) of how much internet piracy costs the U.S. economy, bills like SOPA and PIPA would result in only (ineffectively) blocking U.S. internet users from the pirated content. It does nothing to actually stop the problem of internet piracy around the world.

So, where do we go from here?

Recently, internet giants such as Yahoo, Google, and Facebook have stirred rumors about a single day “blackout” to highlight the dangers of internet censorship.  Reddit has already set a date for this action, January 18.

But, for those of us who don’t own or work for a major tech company, there is another option — targeting the cosponsors of SOPA and PIPA to help them realize how unpopular their position really is in America.

[CLICK HERE TO SEE A LIST OF SOPA’s HOUSE COSPONSORS]

This is of particular importance in the Senate, where Harry Reid has already filed cloture on PIPA, S. 968, for January 24.  Harry Reid needs 60 Senators to pass PIPA.  Currently there are 40 cosponsors.  Senators Rand Paul, Ron Wyden, and others have threatened to filibuster S. 968, but they need our help!

If we can mobilize against the cosponsors and generate enough opposition, we can keep this bill from passing.

[CLICK HERE TO SEE A LIST OF PIPA’s SENATE COSPONSORS]

If your representative or senators are among those listed, please contact them immediately and urge them to drop their support for internet censorship!