In January of 2012, an unprecedented coordinated protest took place online in opposition to two federal bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). More than 115,000 websites published protest content or even completely shut down for the day in an attempt to shut down these internet blacklist attempts. The extreme anti-piracy bills would have jeopardized online community platforms and innovation set bad examples for internet censorship globally and threatened security online. But the protest was a success.

Defeating SOPA/PIPA didn’t happen overnight. Advocacy groups like Public Knowledge fought long and heard for years to raise the alarms about these censorship efforts.

Speakers:

Special remarks from Senator Ron Wyden

Maura Corbett, CEO & Founder of the Glen Echo Group

Laurent Crenshaw, Head of Policy at Patreon

Ernesto Falcon, Senior Legislative Counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Moderator:

Michael Petricone, Senior VP, Government Affairs at ‎Consumer Technology Association