In the wake of this week's passage of the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by the U.S. House of Representatives, hacktivist group Anonymous is calling for an "Internet Blackout Day" on Monday in protest.

Specifically, Anonymous is calling upon website owners to take down their normal pages and replace them with a page that explains site owners encourage colleagues to do the same.

The call to action is similar to the Jan. 18, 2012 blackout day that had more than 7,000 websites  including a number of the Web's more noteworthy sites, like Wikipedia, Reddit, Google, and Mozilla - going dark or altering their homepages to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). While SOPA and PIPA were ultimately shelved, they do share commonalities with CISPA in the sense that both attempt to use heavy-handed techniques to deal with Internet-themed issues.

In SOPA's case, the bill looked to thwart online piracy by imposing the equivalent of cyber "death penalties" against sites shown to be hosting copyright-infringing content. Internet services providers would be asked to prevent its members from accessing said sites  creating what amounts to "The Great Firewall of America," as described by a New York Times opinion piece at the time.

CISPA, on the other hand, would allow companies to share information about cyber threats with the government and vice versa, with increased protection against any privacy lawsuits that their users might bring as a result.

"Whenever these prerequisites are met, CISPA is written broadly enough to permit your communications service providers to share your emails and text messages with the government, or your cloud storage company could share your stored files," reads a FAQ by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a chief opponent of the legislation.

Although CISPA passed the House by a vote of 288 to 127, it still faces some fairly significant hurdles. Not only does the bill have to make its way through the Senate, it also has to survive a previously threatened veto by the White House.

For more, check out What is CISPA, and Why Should You Care?