Over the last few weeks, you've heard a lot about the Stopping Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, otherwise known as Sopa and Pippa. These are two bills that the movie music industry are trying to push through Congress. But thanks to your calls, your emails, and the petitions that you've signed, Congress knows that the public does not support these two bills. Now you're probably wondering, where did this all start? And where is it all going from here? The past few weeks have actually been the culmination of over a year's worth of discussions, meetings, and negotiations between content owners, congressional staffers, technology companies, and DC-based public interest groups like PK. To understand the real story, you need to go back to the summer of 2010. Usher and Will I Am ruled the charts, and in May, US immigration and customs enforcement and coordination with the MPAA and RIAA, confiscated domain names from nine movie music and software websites, accusing them of being havens for copyright infringement. The next month, public knowledge started a series of meetings with senate staffers and the Obama administration agencies to discuss concerns with properly targeted websites. In September, Senator Leahy introduced the Combating Online and Fringement and Counterfeits Act, known as KoiKa, in the United States Senate. KoiKa was designed to go after so-called rogue websites. However, it was overly broad, lacked key due process protections, and disrupted key technical underpinnings of the internet. Public knowledge and others immediately organized one-on-one meetings with key senators and their staff, and officially lodged objections through written letters. Those meetings were designed to convince KoiKa supporters that the bill was bad and recruit senators who could block its passage. We also began alerting the public about the threat of KoiKa through our blog, our email, Twitter and Facebook. In November, public knowledge coordinated letters from a broad range of groups from libraries to schools, engineers to human rights groups, law professors to technology companies condemning KoiKa. By the end of the year, KoiKa was functionally dead. However, coming into this year, the senate continued to consider introducing similar legislation and public knowledge in others continued to meet with senators and staff, and officials at ICE to explain to them why the proposals were bad ideas. Public knowledge also submitted testimony to the Senate hearing on websites dedicated to infringement, warning them not to overreach. In May, Senator Lee, the senator who introduced KoiKa, introduced the preventing real online threats to economic creativity and theft of intellectual property act. Otherwise known as Pippa. Although the name changed, Pippa managed to retain many of the problems from KoiKa. Public knowledge in others continued to negotiate with senate staff about removing particularly bad parts of the bill, while at the same time informing other groups about the bill. In early October, public knowledge entered into meetings with House staff to discuss our concerns with Pippa's rumored cousin in the United States House representatives. The stop online piracy act are otherwise known as SOPA. The House staff asked public knowledge for their concerns, but never provided a copy of the proposed law. The coalition began to broaden, but at the end of October SOPA was officially introduced in the House. SOPA actually managed to take Pippa and make it worse. Public knowledge and our allies redoubled our efforts to recruit opponents to the House bill and to convince supporters that they did not have all the facts. In addition to one-on-one meetings with key staffers on both sides of the debate, public knowledge and others reached out to allies that did not normally focus on internet policy, but nonetheless understood that SOPA would have had a negative impact on the issues that they focused on. Those allies began drafting letters in opposition to SOPA. On October 26th, the House announced a hearing on SOPA. This was a great opportunity to bring the public's voice into the process. Public knowledge and allies began organizing a massive public awareness campaign. On November 16th, the hearing was held. During the hearing, opponents of SOPA pointed to letters of opposition from one of the broadest, most diverse coalition of opposition ever assembled on an issue before Congress expressing deep reservations about the accepting SOPA. Explaining how the bill would undermine security and stability of the internet, a white paper by five leading DNS engineers and internet security experts, a letter from the anti-fishing working group. At the same time, Congress was receiving tens of thousands of calls, emails, and letters from the public demanding that SOPA be stopped. At the end of the week, an ideologically diverse collection of representatives, including Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, Libertarian champion, and Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul, and the House Oversight Government Reform Committee Chairman Dera Issa, came out against the bill. On December 8th, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and Republican Representative Dera Issa, introduced the online protection and enforcement of digital trade, or otherwise known as the Open Act, as an alternative to SOPA and PIPPA. So, like I said, your emails, your phone calls, and the petition that you signed, have done a great job informing Congress where the public is on Protect IP and the SOPA Online Piracy Act. But the content industry, the movie and music industry, are still going to be here, and they're still going to be fighting the past their bills. Public knowledge will also be here, but we need your help. Sign up for our email list, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter. And we will do what we can to inform you of what is happening here in Washington, D.C., and letting you know what you can do to help. Thank you.