Protests Against Antipiracy Bills Take to the Streets On Wednesday, as several sites around the Web participated in virtual protests in opposition to the Congressional antipiracy bills, tech communities around the United States took their demonstrations offline and into the real world. Beginning around 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, the New York Tech Meetup, an eight-year-old trade organization that has nearly 20,000 members, is calling for those who oppose the proposed bills to gather in Midtown Manhattan outside the offices of Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten E. Gillibrand, who co-sponsored some of the proposed legislation. As of Tuesday, more than 1,100 people had RSVP'd to the New York event, which is open and available to the public, said Jessica Lawrence, the managing director of the group. Several local start-ups in New York, including CrowdTap and LocalResponse, said they were planning to shut down their offices and bring all their employees to the event. Ms. Lawrence said the event would include talks and presentations from a number of speakers, including Clay Shirky, author of "Here Comes Everybody" and "Cognitive Surplus"; Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of Reddit; and Andrew McLaughlin, vice president at Tumblr and former chief technology officer for the Obama administration. Similar rallies are planned for San Francisco, where the angel investor Ron Conway is scheduled to speak, and in Seattle. The offline events mirror online efforts, which include the darkening of several major Web sites, including English-language Wikipedia (although it is still possible to access the encyclopedia's content through several clever workarounds), Reddit, Boing Boing and the comedy video site My Damn Channel . Tumblr, a blogging platform, is also giving its users a tool to let them black out what information they see when they log into their accounts in protest. Several sites have not gone dark, but have blanketed their pages with information about one of the bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act, known as SOPA; these include Google, Craigslist and I Can Haz Cheezburger, a hub for humorous pictures of cats. The mobile restaurant finder UrbanSpoon is restricting access for its users, and some news organizations, including Wired.com are protesting the legislation by blacking out content on their Web sites. Such an outpouring of support around a political cause is atypical in the tech world, which tends to limit its gatherings to technology demonstrations, social events and launch parties around new products and services. But Ms. Lawrence said this legislation - which its most vocal opponents say could lead to censorship and thwart the innovation of technology start-ups - is sparking an unusually vigorous response. "The tech community has not typically been engaged in political issues but that is changing, especially for smaller start-ups and companies that aren't as big as Facebook and Google that have someone on staff for legislative issues," she said. These small companies would be left in the dark without anyone to represent their ideas. We'll be on the ground at the event in New York live and updating our report frequently.