The SOPA/PIPA Blackout

As anyone has probably figured out, America's internet protested against the bills known as SOPA and PIPA today. They protested not by "occupying" anywhere, but by actually affecting places that would be hardest hit by these bills.

As you can see, sites (usually affecting only the United States, such as Wikipedia) are redirecting traffic to your local representatives and the like to remove support for SOPA and PIPA. By all accounts, it's working.
Alright, so enough with the acronyms. What does this all mean?

There are of course plenty of video's out that explain what these two bills contain. I like this one from Fight for the future:

Essentially, what you're looking at here is the ability to remove sites that are deemed "copyright-able" and then remove them. This could be potentially devastating, if only because of the greed that tends to run rampant among those with the power to do what they want. There are already bills that help to protect against piracy, and you can see how effective those have been. The point being, if these bills were to pass, the freedom to post what you want when you want, without regard to who was singing in the background etc, would be greatly diminished. 

I'm not the most effective avenue for conveying how dangerous this can be, I'll admit. I would highly recommend dropping by 'website