Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, on Friday called off a scheduled vote on the anti-Internet piracy bill that had rallied the Web, and House leaders took steps to slow legislation as well.

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Senate Postpones Vote on Internet Anti-Piracy Bill

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced Friday he would delay consideration of measure to combat online piracy, bowing to pressure from a coalition of Internet companies, including Google and Wikipedia, that rallied consumers to their side by saying the legislation could lead to the censorship of popular sites. Read full article > >

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PIPA Senate vote to be delayed, Reid announces

Federal authorities said Megaupload was a global enterprise based on Internet piracy, and four people named in an indictment were denied bail in New Zealand on Friday.

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4 of 7 Named in Megaupload Indictment Denied Bail in New Zealand

One of the internet’s largest file-sharing sites is offline after US officials charged its founders with piracy, while hackers target US websites in response.

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Megaupload sharing site shut down

Raising revenue remains the draw for most, but some wonder whether profits from Internet play would make any significant differences to deficits.

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More States Look to Legalize Online Gambling

Wikipedia is the latest Web site to plan a blackout for Wednesday to protest two Congressional bills intended to curtail copyright violations on the Internet.

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Bits Blog: Wikipedia to Go Dark on Wednesday to Protest Bills on Web Piracy

Labour MP Tom Harris steps down as his party’s internet adviser after posting a joke video portraying the First Minister as Hitler.

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MP quits over Hitler joke video

Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter, is now working on Square, a mobile payment system. He believes the clear glass and open spaces of the office will build the trust and transparency the company must cultivate to succeed.

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Disruptions: Design Sets Tone at Square, a Mobile Payments Start-Up

The Obama administration said it wouldn not support central elements of Congressional efforts to enforce Internet copyrights, all but killing the current versions of legislation.

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White House Says It Opposes Parts of Two Antipiracy Bills

Opposes any bill that will censor Internet.

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White House Won’t Support SOPA

There are few opportunities in today’s world for a private audience with a personal hero, but the last appearance of the poet W.S. Merwin as the country’s poet laureate was, for an unusual number of people, one of them. The appearance itself was a rare one: At 82 and living on a former pineapple plantation on Maui, Merwin was well past the stage of his life when he might have regularly stumped for poetry, if he was ever that sort of poet — which he was not. And he was a bit of a recluse. Read full article > >

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Is poetry dead? Or, in the age of the Internet, does it offer us what nothing else can?

In the next decade, 75 percent of all channels will be born on the Internet. That’s the bold prediction of the day from Robert Kyncl, the head of global partnerships for YouTube. In a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Kyncl said the Web is poised to become the premium channel for entertainment distribution within the next decade. Read full article > >

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YouTube: The future of entertainment is on the Web

The video , three minutes long and posted just a week ago, is tearing up the Internet, causing appreciative reactions among heterosexual men and some yoga fans and disapproval among yoga purists. Shot in the penthouse of the Mondrian SoHo hotel in New York, it shows a gorgeous young woman performing expert yoga moves wearing only a black lace bra and panties. As she contorts herself, a man dozes in a mussed-up bed. Read full article > >

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Who owns yoga?

Influenced by cable and the Internet, the network news divisions of ABC, CBS and NBC have shifted the focus to differentiating their nightly shows.

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At ABC, CBS and NBC News, Accentuating the Differences

W e keep hearing that the world has changed fundamentally and that the old issues which used to occupy us no longer matter. The new era is about globalization, the Internet, non-state actors, the diffusion of power, the rise of Asia and the decline of the West, the end of ideology and the rise of pragmatism. It is true, of course, that the world and the international system are always in flux. Yet some of the most pressing issues this year are remarkably familiar. Read full article > >

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New Year, old problems