BLACKOUT

Online Piracy Vote Canceled

House, Senate bills both delayed indefinitely.

It must have been really tough around the Senate without Wikipedia. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Friday that the vote on a controversial—and highly unpopular—online piracy bill had been delayed indefinitely. The House later announced a similar measure for its equivalent bill, known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. The bills had caused Wikipedia and several other websites to go dark Wednesday in protest. While a number of high-profile senators had pulled back their support of the bills in recent days, it placed Democrats between two powerful interest groups: Hollywood, which supports a crackdown on online piracy, and Silicon Valley, which believes the bills in their current form would hinder the Internet’s business model. One of the Senate bill's sponsors, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, said delaying the bill is a victory for "overseas criminals" who would "drain our economy."