If you haven’t already noticed, several of the Internet’s most popular sites, namely Wikipedia and Craigslist, are unavailable today. There are a lot of people who will try to visit these sites today and they’ll be met with a surprise: they’re blacked out!

On this monumental day many popular websites are voicing their displeasure with with two potential bills that are set to be voted on by the U.S House of Representatives in the next couple weeks. These bills, if passed, could mean that sites like Craigslist and Wikipedia may cease to exist, marking the most historical shift in Internet history.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and Prospect IP Act, or SOPA and PIPA, as they’re commonly referred to as, were intended to “promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation.” Proponents of the bill claim that it will protect against intellectual property and copywrite infringement, especially from foreign sites. Opponents, and there are many of them, say it violates the First Amendment, and that it would cripple the Internet.

As a result of these pending bills, many websites are speaking out by “going black.” Google, Yahoo, Amazon and eBay, while not “blacked out,” have expressed their disapproval of the bills. Here’s a complete list of companies opposing the bill.

Congress’ approval rating is at all all-time low, and many would argue that they have an utter disconnect with the average American worker, many of whom are still suffering from unemployment or underemployment from a recession that started years ago. While it’s not surprising to see Congress failing at legislating the economy, they know even less about technology. This ignorance puts Congress in a perpetual state of reaction, where they’re constantly “behind the eight-ball.”

Now you might be asking yourself, “what exactly does Congress hope these bills will do specifically? Who are they targeting?” This bill essentially pits content creators and providers, such as movie studios and publishers, with technology websites that disseminate it, such as Google and Facebook. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is one such proponent of the bill, and he tweeted on Saturday, “Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying” (referring to Google’s efforts to shoot this bill down).

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark argued on his blog that the legislation would provide a “means by which bad actors (with lots of money and lawyers) can take sites down.” For Newmark, and others, the concern is that they would have to then “police” every aspect of their site content.

The bills are designed to take action against websites that sell fake drugs, pirated films, and other counterfeit products, all the while possibly stealing consumer’s credit card information. However, the bills could threaten legitimate websites and search engines, such as Google, the most visited website on the Internet. Wikipedia, which thrives as a non-profit encyclopedia website dependent on user input, would not survive if these bills pass.

Congress has proven time and time again that they live in a reactionary world, and this couldn’t be truer for technology. That is why I agree with Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly media, a successful media company that merges books with blogs, when he says, “[t]he solution to piracy must be a market solution, not a government intervention.”

The bottom line is that SOPA and PIPA threaten free speech, security, privacy, creativity, innovation, and economic growth. Congress’ solution to the piracy problem seems to a be a microcosm of their actions in general: overreact to new trends with legislation that does more harm than good.