A dozen advocacy groups and Internet-based companies are encouraging their members to call Congress in opposition to pending Internet censorship legislation.

Internet users can visit www.AmericanCensorship.org for more information about the bills and to use a tool that makes it easy to call their senators.

Paricipants include many of those which spearheaded this month’s “American Censorship Day,” and have already driven more than two million emails and petition signatures to lawmakers, asking them to oppose the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA, S.968) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, HR.3261). Those bills would give the government and corporations sweeping new powers to censor the Internet; the PROTECT IP Act could see a vote in the Senate within the next two weeks.

Participating groups include Fight for the Future, Mozilla, MoveOn, Free Press, Public Knowledge, Stack Overflow, Grooveshark, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Demand Progress, and others.

According to Fight for the Future co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng, “The Chamber of Commerce, the Motion Picture Association of America, and Hollywood don’t seem to care if most sites on the internet exist or if new innovations are allowed to happen. They are seemingly trying to nuke them all with their internet censorship bills, SOPA and PIPA.”

She continued, “It’s shameful that these groups are trying to exploit the jobs crisis to pass their bills, when PIPA and SOPA will actually kill jobs. At a time when our economy is really hurting, we need more tech innovation and jobs, but small and big businesses owners who depend on the Internet are all at risk if these bills pass, and that’s why they’re standing up against them.”

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