Unlicensed spectrum is not the “Wi-Fi band”: it’s open for any person and any device to use, for any (legal) purpose, and it’s open to a wide variety of technologies.

Unlicensed spectrum has never been more popular! The reason people love unlicensed spectrum is because it is the “public commons” of spectrum that is open to anyone to use and has led to innovations that people use every day. Technologies such as Bluetooth, cordless phones, baby monitors, and Wi-Fi all come from use of unlicensed spectrum, and we expect to see many new innovations in the near future as a result of unlicensed spectrum, such as self-driving cars.

On December 11th, the Federal Communications Commission voted to move forward with much needed and long awaited reforms to our nation’s E-rate program. With a 3-2 vote, Democratic Commissioners moved forward on a process that allocates $1 billion annually for expanded Wi-Fi connections in our schools and libraries.

Whether or not you’re in Austin for SXSW, click here and sign a petition to show your support for open networks!

Events like South by Southwest can highlight the limitations of wireless Internet access. Put a large number of techies in the same city and as they all try to tweet, share photos, and stay connected they can quickly saturate Internet connections–leading to websites not loading, messages not being sent, and connections dropping.

Engineers have already solved this problem–but there are legal challenges as well as technical challenges. Policymakers in DC have to make sure that FCC rules allow people to take advantage of new wireless technologies that are already being built. They need to set WiFi free.

The Wall Street Journal has run two recent reports that describe Apple’s plan to roll out a cable set-top box. There have been rumors about this for years. Back in 2007, Steve Jobs showed a level of familiarity with obscure cable technology that would suggest that Apple engineers were looking into this kind of product back then. But Jobs was repelled by the janky technology, and instead, Apple introduced a pure streaming device–the AppleTV–that did not interact with cable TV content. But most of the most valuable content is still available only on cable, or on cable first. Lots of people seem to love the AppleTV, but there’s a reason why Apple still describes it as a “hobby.”

We have all kinds of reality-challenged folks in Washington. We got those who believe that we need to go back to the gold-standard and abolish the Federal Reserve. We got those who think vaccinations cause learning autism. To this we can now add “the folks who think we can keep finding federal spectrum to auction forever.”

Last month, we warned about how some folks in Congress (with support of the usual suspects) wanted to get some really bad law on the future of wireless included in the Payroll Tax Cut Extension. The proposed law would have:

a. Stopped the FCC from having any kind of net neutrality conditions on any future wireless services the FCC would create by auctioning more wireless spectrum licenses.

Torrentfreak recently ran a fascinating pair of opinion pieces from two lawyers regarding whether or not someone could be liable for copyright infringement if someone else used their open WiFi connection. One attorney, Nicholas Ranallo, walks through the established law of direct and secondary copyright liability, and comes to the conclusion that generally, no, you’re not liable for someone else’s infringements using your connection. The other attorney, Marc Randazza, doesn’t discuss copyright liability, but instead starts drawing out hypotheticals about the law of negligence.