Top Stories for the Week of January 16 - 20, 2012

If you experienced numerous blackouts this week, and you aren't Linsday Lohan, that was the Great Web Blackout of 2012! Wikipedia and Reddit joined in with dozens of other sites that painted their front doors black to protest piracy-targeting legislation (the SOPA and PIPA bills) that also could limit online freedom! Poynter quickly prepared a terrific gallery of the blackened pages. The bills, which could become US law, attack offshore piracy by potentially making it legal for the government to shut down a US site if any part of it links to a supposed illicit source of protected intellectual property. Forbes Tech analogizes: "It would be a bit like requiring the manager of a flea market to shut down the entire market because some of the merchants were selling counterfeit goods. "It's kind of an Internet death penalty," CNET's Privacy Inc. says in its helpful FAQ. "It's bad," Gawker reported, while also offering a workaround for slipping past Wikipedia's Wednesday blackwall in case you couldn't wait a day. "The internet - yes, THE ENTIRE INTERNET - is mad about SOPA because the bill overreaches in trying to destroy what they dramatically call 'rogue' websites. Some of its provisions, like forcing search engines like Google to delist foreign sites deemed dedicated to piracy, sounds suspiciously like something China would do." Pop Culture Brain offered an open letter opposing SOPA from artists including Neil Gaiman and Trent Reznor. Flavorwire presented a severely redacted version of that letter.