Online governance

Lawmakers have begun peeling away from the bills notably Senators Marco Rubio the Florida Republican who cosponsored the Senate version and John Cornyn the powerful Texas conservative They dropped out after Wikipedia's English language site went dark and Google put a black bar on its homepage on Wednesday The Internet industry was pitted against some of the best-honed lobbying groups including Hollywood and the recording studios the U.S Chamber of Commerce and the A.F.L.-C.I.O The industry has made a good case that some of the definitions of wrongdoing -- like facilitating intellectual property infringement -- were overly broad They said allowing property rights owners to direct payment companies like Visa and ad networks like Google's to stop doing business with sites they deemed infringing -- with no penalties if they were proved wrong-- could stymie legitimate online expression