Don't try to settle any bets using Wikipedia today. Or browse Reddit. Or check Boing Boing.
These websites, along with an estimated 7,000 others, according to Politico, will black out their pages in protest of the U.S. House of Representatives' Stop Online Piracy Act and the U.S. Senate's Protect IP Act.
SOPA and PIPA are bills not yet approved as laws that would give entertainment companies the power to take down domains that host or link to anything they consider pirated.
Neither bill has been finalized for presentation, so language can still be changed. According to the White House website, the Obama administration is against Internet piracy but will not support legislation that restricts freedom of expression or thwarts online innovation.
Today, many blacked-out websites will take their normal content down and post information about the bills.
The English-language Wikipedia will be blacked out for 24 hours, while Reddit will be down from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., according to their respective websites.
Google will not black out, but its main search page will include a link for users to learn about the bills. Twitter and Facebook will operate as normal.
Other blackout participants include TwitPic, WordPress.com and Minecraft. The Cheezburger Network - which includes Fail Blog, the Daily What and Know Your Meme - will black out, and so will MoveOn.org.
Gerald Haskins, UF senior lecturer and Internet law expert, said he thinks the blackout will spread awareness.
The recording and motion picture agencies behind the bills are up against large Internet corporations, he said.
"It's not David versus Goliath. It's Goliath versus Goliath," Hasksins said. "I think it could be a big fight. "
Dylan Sutton, an 18-year-old environmental engineering freshman, is not so sure. People need to protest by contacting their representatives, he said.
"Although it does raise awareness, the congressmen don't care unless you tell them you care," Sutton said.
Grooveshark, a Gainesville-based music streaming website, will help its visitors do just that.
Instead of blacking out, the site is dedicating part of its advertising space — essentially, the "skin" people see when they first visit the homepage — to protest the bills.
Visitors can enter their information and the Grooveshark page will find the contact information for their representatives, said Paul Geller, senior vice president of external affairs.
Grooveshark will also hide an Easter egg that will take visitors to a censored version of the site, where song titles and album names are blacked out.
Geller said he thinks the overall Internet blackout will be revolutionary.
"I don't think there's ever been a concerted effort by Internet businesses to stand up to censorship before," he said.
