You may have noticed that things on our website are a little darker than normal today. Rest assured, WebRanking is not going through an EMO phase, but we have joined in solidarity with over 7,000 other websites in protest of the SOPA & PIPA acts. By going dark, we are hoping to collectively raise awareness against these bills, as we believe they would give the government strong censorship tools that could be used to inhibit free speech.

While we do believe that it is important to fight copyright infringement, we don’t believe these bills are the way to do it. And we are not alone…

Google, Wikipedia, WordPress, Mozilla, Wired, The Oatmeal, Vimeo, Minecraft, BoingBoing, icanhazcheezburger network sites, Reddit, TwitPic… these are just a handful of the sites that have blacked out or posted protest information on their websites today.

We want encourage our readers, clients and colleagues to join us in protest. If you are a marketer, Marketing Land has an excellent post by Chris Sherman today on What All Marketers Need to Know about SOPA. If you are looking for more information on SOPA, we would recommend Wikipedia’s Stop Online Piracy Act page. And if you are looking to join the protest, visit SopaStrike.com.