When Michael Vensamoye got to his International Relations class an hour early on Wednesday, he knew how to pass the time.
The 18-year-old telecommunication freshman pulled up Reddit, a website he frequently browses when he's bored.
But when it loaded, Vensamoye found himself looking at a different page than he expected.
Instead of displaying hundreds of aggregated links, Reddit showed a black page full of information about the U.S. House of Representatives' Stop Online Piracy Act and the U.S. Senate's Protect Intellectual Property Act.
Reddit was just one of more than 7,000 websites that blacked out in protest of the two Internet censorship bills on Wednesday.
In Florida, at least, the blackout may have worked.
Around noon Wednesday, PIPA co-sponsor and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio wrote on Facebook and Twitter that he is dropping his support for the bill.
Earlier in the day, Republican Rep. Dennis Ross, also from Florida, tweeted that he believed SOPA was dead.
"Not having the support of the tech community on #SOPA is like not having Police support for a Crime Bill," Ross tweeted. "Feels like we're being #RickRolled."
If each bill is passed in its current forms, the law would allow entertainment companies to shut down a website that hosts or links to pirated content. For example, one illegal video could merit taking down all of YouTube.
Sites from WordPress.com to Wikipedia went on strike to spark viewers' awareness of the bills.
Like Reddit, many blacked-out sites posted potential consequences of the bills and urged users to contact their congressmen. Tumblr offered users the option of blacking out their own blogs for the day.
According to The New York Times, 4.5 million people digitally signed Google's petition against SOPA and PIPA.
Back at UF, the blackout inspired Vensamoye to take action. He said he didn't really understand SOPA until he read Reddit's blackout page.
"I signed a petition, and then after that I started to read more about it and why it's a bad idea," Vensamoye said. "I just wanted to see why everyone was making a big deal about it."
