Today, I am not in the mood for jokes. This news are neither about the HTC Desires nor about Android. However, it’s a monumental day, not only for the U.S., probably for the whole future of the “Internetz”.
The “Stop Online Piracy Act” has shown up for the first time in 2011 and was handed in by the republican delegate Lamar S. Smith.

SOPA is a threat to the freedom of the web. Supported by the “old media’s” corporate groups (e.g. Hollywood), it’s disguised to protect copyrights, but allows the government to make sensitive restrictions to the Internet. Multiple popular webpages like Wikipedia, Reddit and even xda-developers.com have “gone dark” for today in order to raise awareness and to get people involved (According to sopastrike.com there are over 7,000 pages “going dark”!). For further information, Wikipedia has summed up everything, including all recent events concerning the legislation. (here, click!)
Even the White House has released a statement against SOPA after 2 petitions with a total of more than 100,000 votes.

Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, and threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation’s most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs. It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders.

Source: WhiteHouse.gov

Due to the central role in terms of  internet-structure these restrictions can and will also effect countries outside the U.S. .

Google released a statement too and calls for action!

(Editor’s note:) Get involved, join the protest! Against censorship and inhibition of innovation! Sign as many petitions as you can. For a free Internet!