On Wednesday, several high-traffic websites went ‘dark’ in reaction to proposed legislation in the US that could, according to critics, seriously infringe freedom on the internet. Twitter protested by creating a host of random (and unverifiable) facts, whilst Google had its logo blocked out.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is the bill being considered by the House of Representatives and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) is the parallel bill being considered by the Senate. The proposed legislation is intended to reduce online piracy, with a particular focus on illegal copies of media hosted on foreign servers. The bills suggest that anyone found guilty of streaming copyrighted content without permission ten or more times within a six month period should receive a custodial sentence of five years.

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