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A group known as the Internet Defense League will launch Thursday with a cat signal shining into the night sky and onto the buildings of several major cities. The IDL's goal? Efficiently fight off future Internet censorship legislation.

Hopefully this signal won't accidentally stir Batman from his slumber.

When Batman makes his triumphant return in "The Dark Knight Rises" at midnight on July 19, keep an eye on the evening skies if you live in San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., or London for an illuminated "cat signal" spotlight.

The cat's face, similar to Batman's infamous bat signal, stands for the Internet Defense League, and symbolizes a team that acts like the Super Friends of Internet freedom. The IDL's slogan: "Make sure the Internet never loses. Ever."

Meow! (Click to enlarge.)

The amusing idea comes from Fight for the Future (and Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit), a team that rallied 115,000 Web sites and 3 million e-mails to Congress to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Protect IP Act (PIPA), and other Internet censorship bills.

Building on previous successes, the group's latest project wields the support of Web sites and groups such as Mozilla, WordPress, Reddit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with "many more" to be announced at the official launch, according to the IDL's Web site. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kans.) plan to attend Thursday's press conference publicly heralding the group, according to Adweek.

The IDL says it still needs many thousands of dollars to fund its goals, but the group told Crave it has enough to shine cat signals in San Francisco, Washington D.C, and New York. Interested parties can donate on a Kickstarter-style page that offers several benefits for small donations -- donate $30 and get a personal "cat signal torch light," for example. The group plans to host parties celebrating its launch at midnight in the aforementioned locales, as well as in an oddball additional location, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

"While the Internet Defense League idea was brewing, people started calling it 'a bat signal for the Internet,' and we ran with it," Holmes Wilson, one of the founders of Fight for the Future and a member of the IDL, told Wired of the decision to choose a cat as the symbol. "Except that if the Internet has a mascot, it's definitely a cat, not a bat."

The IDL hopes the cat signal brings awareness to the idea of quickly mobilizing people when the Internet faces major challenged, similar to an "Internet Emergency Broadcast System," says the IDL Web site. "With the combined reach of our Web sites and social networks, we can be massively more effective than any one organization," the site continues.

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Look in the sky! It's a 'cat signal' for Net freedom