The CTIA found that the number of wireless subscriber connections has surpassed the number of people in the U.S. and its territories. It also found a 111 percent increase in wireless data traffic.

While the situation is by all means challenging, the massive eruption of content that sparked it is both encouraging and exciting.

“We’re in this exciting arms race where the creation of content is happening so fast it’s exceeding even these amazing improvements in computing power, these amazing improvements in storage capacity, and particularly, these amazing improvements in connectivity,” said Bruce Mehlman, the former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Tech Policy and the Co-Chair of the Internet Innovation Alliance.

To help solve this problem of congestion, Congress is currently examining legislation that would free up more spectrum from broadcast radio and television companies. While everyone agrees that more spectrum is needed, the dispute is over how it would be distributed and, specifically, the FCC’s role in this process.

In the past, the FCC has had a very active position in managing the auctions. In other words, it has had the power to place restrictions on auctions or conditions on spectrum based on the bidders’ market dominance and spectrum holdings.

However, the bill that’s currently in the House would remove this power from the FCC, which is a move that is sparking a lot of debate. Former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt recently called the proposed bill “the single worst telecom bill” he’d ever seen.

The House argues that previous government allocations are the reason that the current “spectrum crunch” is happening. It also believes that limitations in auctions would result in less revenue to help reduce the federal deficit.

As Mehlman explained to us, Congress is remembering what happened in the controversial 2008 spectrum auctions as well as the recent failed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile. He sides with policymakers on this issue because he believes the previous restrictions are to blame for the current problems.

In a post on the Internet Innovation Alliance, Mehlman wrote:

Many in Congress fear FCC micromanagement and seek open auction rules free from FCC interference. The FCC, of course, objects to Congressional micromanagement of their micromanagement, seeking maximum flexibility to set auction rules.

The irony here is that these auctions are needed because the last time this spectrum was assigned, policy makers limited its potential use and transfer. Thus much of the spectrum is under-utilized and our economy suffers for it.

In our recent interview, he expressed concern that the same issues would continue if the FCC were permitted to keep its authority.

“The biggest challenge is if the FCC gets its way and follows through with what many in the House fear they might do, which is limit who’s allowed to compete, I think the very spectrum crunch these very auctions are expected to alleviate doesn’t get alleviated… then problems continue,” pointed out Mehlman.

“I think most people would concede the reason there’s inefficient use of spectrum is because of old government decisions on who could and could not use spectrum,” he continued. “Logically, you want less government constraints in the future.”

Some mobile companies are perfectly happy with the FCC’s authority over the auctions as a group of them led by Sprint and T-Mobile sent a letter to lawmakers asking that the Commission’s position remain the same. AT&T and Verizon are not part of this support since they believe the FCC would favor the smaller carriers.

Incidentally, not everyone agrees that auctions would solve the issue. Rick Whitt, Google’s Washington Managing Counsel, recently indicated that auctions would not completely eliminate the spectrum crunch saying, “Auctions will fall short of meeting that gap.”

Mehlman told us that he agrees with Whitt in that content will likely be created faster than bandwidth can be apportioned. But, he believes that this provides an even greater urgency to get policy in place that would encourage an open marketplace.

“Having everybody eligible to acquire the spectrum and to subsequently sell the spectrum to a higher and better user is letting the market allocate the spectrum,” he said. “If we had done that the first time, we would have less congestion, we’d have more high speed wireless, and, I think, we’d have the same amount of competition.”

“We don’t have a problem with lack of competition, we have a problem with a lack of investment, [and] we have a problem with a lack of spectrum aggregation to meet the marketplace needs,” he added.

Even though Sinclair Broadcast Group CEO David Smith said it was doubtful that Republicans and Democrats would be able to agree on legislation for a broadcast television auction this year, Mehlman thinks it is a possibility. As he explained, this legislation is part of larger jobs bill that both sides want to see pass.

Should auctions be open, or should the FCC have a say? What do you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

The bill bans members of Congress from using knowledge gained in the performance of their duties to gain an advantage in the stock market. While the practice is already illegal for most of the population, members of the legislature were not specifically included.

The House version of the bill is slightly different than the version passed by the Senate – a fact which leads some to call it “watered down.” Since the bills are different, the two houses will have to work toward a version of the bill they can both agree on before it can go to the President for passage.

The House’s passage of the STOCK Act generated a significant amount of buzz on Twitter. Check out a sample of what people are saying below:

The bill Congress approved not only finances the radar-to-GPS switch, it will also allow for unmanned drone flights in U.S. airspace within the next four years. This, of course, is assuming these flights will be of a non-military nature, because Predator drones are already in use over the United States. As for the radar-to-GPS approval, ABC News provides details:

The bill authorizes $63.4 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration over four years, including about $11 billion toward the air traffic system and its modernization. It accelerates the modernization program by setting a deadline of June 2015 for the FAA to develop new arrival procedures at the nation’s 35 busiest airports so planes can land using the more-precise GPS navigation.

If you want an example of what TRACON-strapped air traffic controllers are currently working with, you can watch the following video from AirBoyd’s YouTube channel. It’s a 38 minute play-by-play of Florida air traffic controllers talking a passenger in after the pilot passed out.

While the story itself is incredibly compelling, the video also gives you a great example of the technology that’s available to the FAA:

Instead of time-consuming, fuel-burning, stair-step descents, planes will be able to glide in more steeply with their engines idling. Planes will also be able to land and take off closer together and more frequently, even in poor weather, because pilots will know the precise location of other aircraft and obstacles on the ground. Fewer planes will be diverted.

The FAA’s goal is to have the GPS system in place in the 35 busiest airports in the U.S., and the bill’s authorization of $63.4 billion over the next four years will clearly facilitate the switch.

The last remaining hurdle for the FAA is President Obama’s signature, signing off on the program; however, considering the current President’s spotty record in relation to NASA, is there a guarantee the bill will get executive approval?

Seventy groups, most of them involved with the blackout protests from a few weeks back, have sent an open letter to Congress asking them to hold back on any further legislation that would attempt to hurt the Internet in the name of protecting intellectual property.

They encourage Congress to “take a breath, step back, and approach the issues from a fresh perspective.” They then ask Congress to take into account the concerns brought forth by technologists, law professors, international human rights groups, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and individual Internet users. They say the concerns “are too fundamental and too numerous to be fully addressed through hasty revisions to these bills.” They also take a stab at attempts to push through bills in secret by saying their concerns should not be “addressed by closed door negotiations among a small set of inside the beltway stakeholders.”

The letter touches upon Congress’ willingness to accept the statistics on piracy provided by trade groups even when they are clearly found to be wrong and biased.

Congress must determine the true extent of online infringement and, as importantly, the economic effects of that activity, from accurate and unbiased sources, and weigh them against the economic and social costs of new copyright legislation. Congress cannot simply accept industry estimates regarding economic and job implications of infringement given the Government Accountability Office’s clear finding in 2010 that previous statistics and
quantitative studies on the subject have been unreliable.

The groups take time to point out that current efforts are guided by a “narrow, single-industry perspective” that have taken down lawful blogs and Web sites. They say that Congress has focused on areas “where some rights holders believes existing law is too weak, without also considering the ways in which existing policies have undermined free speech and innovations.”

They end the letter with the demand that any further legislation brought forth to tackle these matters be brought forth to the public to allow sufficient debate from all interested parties.

The groups that signed the open letter should be familiar to those who followed the SOPA protests. Some big players Cheezburger Network, Mozilla, Reddit and WordPress are included. Wikipedia and Google are absent from the list, but they both have enough power to petition Congress individually so maybe they feel that they don’t need to sign the open letter to make a point.

You can read the whole letter below:

Public Knowledge-Internet Letter to Congress

Specific members include: Cliff Steams, Joe Barton, Marsha Blackburn, G.K. Butterfield, Henry Waxman, Edward Markey, Diana DeGette and Jackie Spier.

In the blog post, Google reminds people of five points:

• We’re still keeping your private information private — we’re not changing the visibility of any information you have stored with Google.
• We’re still allowing you to do searches, watch videos on YouTube, get driving directions on Google Maps, and perform other tasks without signing into a Google Account.
• We’re still offering you choice and control through privacy tools like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager that help you understand and manage your data.
• We still won’t sell your personal information to advertisers.
• We’re still offering data liberation if you’d prefer to close your Google Account and take your data elsewhere.

There are some more specifics about the control Google offers users in the letter.

In the letter, Google notes that the old policies have restricted the company’s ability to combine info within an account for web history (search history for signed in users) and YouTube. “For example, if a user is signed in and searching Google for cooking recipes, our current privacy policies wouldn’t let us recommend cooking videos when she visits YouTube based on her searches – even though she was signed into the same Google Account when using both Google Search and YouTube,” Google says in the letter.

Below is the full text of the letter:

Dear Members of Congress:

Pablo Chavez
Director of Public Policy
Google Inc.

Ever since the giant internet-wide SOPA protests that went down last Wednesday, people have been celebrating the death of both SOPA and PIPA. While SOPA author Lamar Smith did say that he won’t bring the bill up in committee until “wider agreement on a solution” is reached, the bill is just a zombie requiring a headshot at this point. Likewise, PIPA isn’t 100% dead, but Harry Reid did postpone action on the bill “in light of recent events.”

Even if we can’t call SOPA and PIPA totally dead, we might be able to safely say that they’re mostly dead. And we can say with confidence that the internet protests had a big impact in those decisions. Seriously, just look at how congressional support for the legislation shifted in just one day.

But as we declare victory over SOPA and PIPA, the internet is quick to remind us that we must remain vigilant. And right now, that means turning our attention to another crappy piece of legislation, the innocuously titled H.R. 1981, Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act.

Let’s get right to the beefy bits regarding why this bill is bad news. Here’s a tidbit from section 4 concerning the retention of private records:

A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.

And if that language is a little hard to decipher, here’s the summary on the Library of Congress website:

Requires a provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service to retain for at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account unless that address is transmitted by radio communication. Bars any cause of action against a provider for retaining records as required. Makes a good faith reliance on the requirement to retain records a complete defense to a civil action. Expresses the sense of Congress that such records should be stored securely to protect customer privacy and prevent breaches of the records.

The implications here are that all of your online movements will be tracked, stored, and made accessible without any real just cause. Oh, and it takes away your ability to have any recourse in the matter. All of this data could not only be used by law enforcement, but as the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out, “that same data could become available to civil litigants in private lawsuits–whether it’s the RIAA trying to identify downloaders, a company trying to uncover and retaliate against an anonymous critic, or a divorce lawyer looking for dirty laundry. These databases would also be a new and valuable target for black hat hackers, be they criminals trying to steal identities or foreign governments trying to unmask anonymous dissidents.”

Here’s what the ACLU has to say about the bill:

[The] legislation would create a sweeping new provision requiring Internet companies (email, cloud, social networking, and more) to collect and retain hundreds of millions of records about the identity of online users. The bill, HR 1981, the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011,” – if only it were that narrow! – is a direct assault on the privacy of Internet users and overlooks some key fixes that could actually help to address the very real problem of child exploitation.

If only it were that narrow indeed. You see, H.R. 1981 does something that is certainly not a first for bills in the U.S. Congress: it wraps a giant turd in cotton candy.

It takes an issue that most people can get behind and uses it to pass through crappy legislation that wouldn’t have a chance on its own. H.R. 1981 includes some alright stuff – as in, do you want stricter punishment for interstate commerce transactions that promote child porn? Sure! How about bolstering laws about protecting child witness? You bet!

Giant, sweeping data tracking provisions, however? No thank you.

One last thing about H.R. 1981 – it’s sponsored by Lamar Smith, who seems hell bent on destroying the internet.

The bill has already passed in the House Judiciary Committee and was placed on the Union Calendar on December 16th. As The Next Web points out, this means that the bill has been given “expedited consideration” and could be on the fast track to passing.

But if the internet community has shown us anything last week, it’s that buzzing about a topic on social media and bringing attention to something with coordinated protest can actually sway the opinions of those in power. Spread the word, sign a petition, call your congressperson. If you want somewhere to start, here’s a list of the 39 cosponsors of the bill.

[Lead Image via Reddit]

This past week, an innocuous YouTube video was posted titled, “Anonymous Message to Congress.” The video was made in response to the shutting down of MegaUpload on Thursday by the federal government. This, as we reported, led to Anonymous’ largest coordinated attack in their history with over 5,000 people taking down over 10 federal and industry Web sites.

What is your opinion about what Anonymous are doing? Share your thoughts here.

The video, which you can watch in its entirety below, is phase one of #OpGlobalBlackout.
They do recognize that MegaUpload contained copyrighted content, but say that the take down was not about copyrighted materials. Anonymous demands that MegaUpload be reinstated within 72 hours.

Anonymous claims that they have gained access to the servers for the United Nations, PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, US Bank, Capital One, Chase Bank, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. If their demands are not met, they will take down all of these servers.

For the banks, Anonymous claims that they have the account info of every client at these banks. They want to reassure citizens, however, that they are not going to compromise their information. They only want to make a statement to Congress.

As for Congress, they have a very special message – “To those who support PIPA and SOPA. To those congressmen who want to vote yes on these bills. We are not fucking playing.”

This has essentially turned into a game of chicken between Anonymous and the U.S. Government with the Internet in the crossfire.

Mike Masnick provides an embed of the government’s case against MegaUpload:

He raises a rather interesting point about the government’s case against MegaUpload in that…

The indictment points out that Megaupload did not have a site search, by which users could find material. That’s interesting, but it seems like an odd piece of information in making the case. Other copyright cases have specifically found that having a search engine is part of an inducement claim — so there’s an argument that the idea not to have a search engine wasn’t so much “conspiracy,” as it was an attempt to follow the guidance of the court and to stay legal. To use the lack of a feature, that previously was shown to be a problem, as evidence of a conspiracy is crazy. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Here’s what some people are saying about #OpGlobalBlackout:

What do you think of this “Message to Congress”? Let us know in the comments.

Early Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that he will postpone an upcoming procedural vote on the Protect IP Act “in light of recent events.” And now, Stop Online Piracy Act author Lamar Smith says that his House Judiciary Committee will not move on the bill until “there is wider agreement on a solution. He added this is a statement:

I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy. It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.

This comes after the Congressman vowed to continue pressing SOPA. Just yesterday, he said that “the opponents have not come up with suggestions to reduce online piracy – the problem is too big to ignore.” He went on to say that he was prepared to move forward on the bill.

And earlier this week, Smith released a statement that said he expected markup of SOPA to resume in February.

There has been a huge nosedive in Congressional support of SOPA and PIPA ever since the giant internet protests launched against the legislation on Wednesday. While it’s true that neither Lamar Smith or Harry Reid’s announcements today mean that the bills are dead or even dying, it does represent the fact that both feel they lack the support to move forward at this time.

By the time the SOPA Opera tool moved over to Pro Publica, the amount of opponents of the legislation had grown – but just a bit. The support was still overwhelming – at 80 to 31. TechCrunch captured this screenshot on January 18th (the day of the intern-wide SOPA Blackouts):

Then something big happened. The internet collectively freaked out over SOPA and PIPA for an entire day. You remember Wednesday, right? Wikipedia was blacked out and Google’s homepage logo was covered with a giant black censor bar. Tons of other sites went dark for the protest and internet users took to Twitter in droves.

And that protest appears to have visibly shifted Congressional support of SOPA / PIPA. Seriously, look for yourself:

Notice: It’s pretty much inverted. Support for SOPA in the House of Representatives has taken the biggest hit. As it currently stands, only 26 confirmed supporters of SOPA exist. There are now 100 confirmed opponents. Bill author Lamar Smith has said he plans on bringing SOPA back to the table in February, so it will be interesting to see what transpires in the House over the next few weeks.

In the Senate, it’s a bit of a different story. There have been some changes, but support still outweighs opposition 37 to 22. There have been some key defections in the past couple of days – most notably Senators Orrin Hatch and (bill cosponsor) Marco Rubio. The biggest news came just today as Senate Majority Harry Reid announced that he is postponing a procedural vote on PIPA “in light of recent events.”

There’s no telling how this move could shake up the Senate support of PIPA.

The pre-SOPA Blackout and post-SOPA Blackout visualizations are stunning. Even if you could make the argument that support for the legislation was already waning, Wednesday’s internet protests can at least be called a catalytic enzyme or something like that. Whether the protests were the direct force that swayed many members of Congress or they just happened at the perfect time, it’s hard to deny that they signal a turning point in the legislation.

It’s a positive sign that the internet community has Congress thinking about the legislation and wanting to make changes. Internet users must be vigilant – amended version of these bills will emerge for consideration again. Remember, “postpone” and “delay” don’t mean “kill.”

While reports are coming in that 4.5 million people signed Google’s anti-SOPA petition yesterday, Wikipedia has shared the information gathered from the 24-hour total blackout of their English-language page. The press release states that during the protest, 162 million people landed on the Wikipedia blackout page and that, of those visitors, 8 million U.S. readers looked up their representatives via Wikipedia in order to protest SOPA and PIPA. The report goes on:

“The Wikipedia blackout is over and the public has spoken,” said Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director. “162 million of you saw our blackout page asking if you could imagine a world without free knowledge. You said no. You shut down the Congressional switchboards, and you melted their servers. Your voice was loud and strong.”

During yesterday’s black out, people communicated their reactions on Twitter, which ranged from celebration and humor to unbelievably risible outrage (the latter of which was mostly students, so remember that when you think about how they’ll be in charge of a lot of things some day).

Wikipedia points out that, after the blackout started, several related worldwide trends materialized on Twitter such as #factswithoutwikipedia, #sopastrike, and “Imagine a World Without Free Knoweldge.” Incredibly, in the initial hour of Wikipedia’s blackout, “#wikipediablackout constituted 1% of all tweet” and “more than 12,000 people posted comments of support on the Wikimedia Foundation’s blog post announcing the blackout.”

Wikipedia sums up:

For Wikipedia, this fight has never been about money, but about knowledge. As a community of authors, editors, photographers, and programmers, Wikipedians invite everyone to share and build upon the work already begun.

In a little over a decade, Wikipedians have built the largest encyclopedia in human history. Wikipedia’s mission is to empower and engage people to document the sum of all human knowledge, and to make it available to all humanity, in perpetuity.

The Internet has enabled creativity, knowledge, and innovation to shine. As Wikipedia and other websites went dark, readers directed their energy to protecting the free and open Internet.

We thank our readers for their support.

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder and commander-in-chief, reflected on the “unprecedented, historic shuttering of the largest repository of free knowledge in the world”:

Additionally, Wales humbly noted on his blog earlier today that, while he appreciates the kind sentiments thanking him for his bravery many supporters have sent his way, the “fight for free knowledge is for everyone”:

I want to push back a little bit on it and reflect on where the real bravery is in the fight for free knowledge for everyone. I live in a country which respects the freedom of speech. I am at no risk of prison or physical violence or monetary fines for my views. If the worst that gets thrown at me is MPAA head Christopher Dodd saying that an Internet uprising is an “abuse of power” then I will survive just fine.

I know of Wikipedia volunteers in authoritarian countries, though, who are incredibly brave. Hossein Derakhshan is a young man I first met at Wikimania 2005 in Frankfurt. A Wikipedia editor and blogger, he is serving a 19 and a half year sentence in Iran for his writings on the Internet.

I know of a Chinese Wikipedian who was visited by the police for setting up a mirror of Wikipedia multiple times during the era when China banned Wikipedia.

There are many more like them, all around the world.

These, and people like them, are my heroes. They are the people of true courage. I’m a very fortunate man in life, and I’m proud to stand up for freedom of speech and the right to access to knowledge in every circumstance that I can. But my courage, if it is courage, is nothing compared to the courage of those who are really risking life and limb to speak truth to power.

Let us take a moment today to honor them.

So now that the scores are being tallied after the first round of Internet versus SOPA/Congress, how did yesterday’s Wikipedia blackout affect you? Were you one the millions who contacted your Congressional Representative? Chime in below with your comments/thoughts.