Exactly 14,683 "lolz" after launching in 2007, I Can Has Cheezburger is celebrating its fifth anniversary this week, just before all Cheezburger sites will go black Jan. 18 to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

The humor website features the lolcat meme — photographs of cats with text placed on top of them (see the one I created on the right).

Cheezburger and the more than 50 sister sites it has spawned or acquired such as FAIL Blog, Know Your Meme, Memebase and The Daily What will be shut down for a period of time next week, according to a tweet from Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh.

All Cheezburger sites will also be instituting a blackout on January 18th to protest SOPA and PIPA. Now, go ask Wikipedia to do it. — benhuh (@benhuh) January 12, 2012

A handful of other popular sites reportedly will go black Wednesday. Reddit, for example, also plans to participate in the blackout from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. to fight SOPA, which if passed would create a “blacklist” of websites that infringe on copyrights.

Cheezburger is ringing in its birthday with a collection of staff members' favorite lolz.

"Reaching our fifth anniversary means that we're not just seen as a cat website company," Cheezburger editor in chief Emily Huh told Mashable. "It's amazing to see that for five years, we have been a humor destination for people around the world and people continue to make Cheezburger a daily place to visit."

Huh says the things she remembers most are the cards, comments and emails Cheezburger receives from fans revealing that the site has helped them through difficult phases in their lives or brought them closer to relatives and friends.

So what's next? "We're always thinking of new sites to share with our users, and we're building up our playground where users can create and share their own sense of humor with others," Huh says.

One newer project is Cheezburger Sites, which is beta and allows people to create their own website using existing content from Cheezburger. For example, users have created sites for the Pepper Spray Cop incident, Ocean Marketing fiasco and Meme Dates.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, 101cats; text by Brian Anthony Hernandez