Tumblr Censorship, from geeksaresexy.net

Instead of the usual stream of pictures and text on their dashboards, all media was covered with grey bars. Some images even had “CENSORED” stamps across them.

At the top of the screen, there was a banner that read “Stop The Law That Will Censor The Internet!”

When users clicked on the banner, they were redirected to a page that urged them to contact their congressperson to stop the Protect-IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), two bills recently brought forward in Congress.

After users viewed the page, the censorship went away, and the microbloggers were once again free to scroll away on the site, but the banner remained at the top of the site.

It’s Tumblr’s latest change to its site, but it’s there for a purpose. The two pieces of legislation that Tumblr is protesting are extremely controversial and will affect not only the social media site, but just about every site on the Internet.

Proponents argue that it would stop online piracy by letting corporations shut down unauthorized sites that are now outside U.S. jurisdiction. An example could be stopping the online pirated movie trade stemming from overseas.

Opponents, though, view it as a form of censorship, arguing that downloaders will be able to find ways around the restrictions through entering IP addresses instead of domain names and worrying that corporations will abuse their power by shutting down sites they feel aren’t filtering well enough.

An online video points out that Tumblr might be targeted the new law because of its heavy use of remixing copyrighted material into its user-generated content – which may be one of the reasons for the site’s demonstration today.

And whoever thinks that youth wouldn’t respond to a message like this appears to be wrong. It seems like Tumblr users are taking the message and their Internet rights very seriously.

User-censored posts are popping up all over the site, such as one that reads, “Everything is |||||||| fine.   |||||||  ||||||| trust your government.”

Other users are simply reblogging the site’s message to contact your local congressperson, or outlining the details of the bill.

Tumblr appears to be the first site to take on a demonstration approach to the bills, but other media giants, including Google, AOL, Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, Yahoo, Mozilla and Linkedin, wrote an open letter to Congress outlining their issues with the bills.

Though it’s great that Tumblr is taking a stand on the issue of Internet censorship and raising awareness of the issue to a younger generation, it’s still too early to tell what the government’s take on the bills is. There’s really no precedent to a piece of this magnitude, so it’s impossible to tell at this point if lawmakers believe it is as flawed as these companies do.

There’s no word yet on how the entertainment companies behind the bills are reacting Tumblr’s stunt, but judging by users’ reactions, their efforts aren’t falling on deaf ears.

Think of it this way: Do you want your content censored?

Reach writer Jennifer Schultz here and follow her on Twitter @neon_jenn.