Internet Blackout on the Way for Many

Hundreds of thousands of Internet users whose computers are infected with a particularly nasty virus are now unable to access the Web.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation shut down Internet servers that it temporarily set up to support those affected by malicious software, called DNSChanger. Turning off those servers knocked all those still infected offline.

Over the past five years, a group of six Estonian cybercriminals infected about 4 million computers around the world with DNSChanger. The malware redirected infected users' Web searches to spoofed sites with malicious advertisements.

In November 2011, the FBI and some overseas partners arrested those responsible, commandeered their servers, and attempted to warn those affected to get rid of the virus.

The FBI did not immediately take down the rogue servers, as infected computers would have lost Internet access, an FBI spokesman said.

To remedy the problem, the FBI had the nonprofit Internet Systems Consortium set up temporary servers. That way, computer owners would have time to get rid of their malware.

The servers were supposed to be shut down in March, but hundreds of thousands remained infected. Nearly 211,000 computers worldwide (about 42,000 in the United States) still have the virus, according to the FBI's latest count on Monday. That's a large number, but it's a very small subset of the 1.6 billion PCs worldwide, of which an estimated 339 million are in the United States.

Still, the FBI decided to give people even more time to check for the malware, extending the deadline until July. The agency now says the time has come to cut the cord, and the emergency servers were shut down Monday morning.

Though the FBI tried to send notifications to those infected, it could not identify all of them, a spokesman said.

ARM Has Intel in the Crosshairs

ARCELONA, Spain (CNNMoney) -- The company behind the lightning-fast processor in the new iPad thinks it can soon become the predominant microchip business in the world.

Chips designed by ARM (ARMH), the British microprocessor company you've probably never heard of, are in a stunning 95% of the world's mobile phones and tablets, including the new iPad Apple announced this week. ARM's chips represent 30% of the entire semiconductor market sales, which is nearly double Intel's 16%, according to IHS iSuppli.

But ARM's ambitions are even grander.

"We want to see that doubled to 60%," said Warren East, ARM's CEO, in an interview conducted at last week's Mobile World Congress. "We think we've got the right sort of technology for everything from very, very tiny intelligent sensors, through the consumer electronic swathe, right through to servers."

ARM is in a unique position in the chip industry because it doesn't actually make microprocessors. Instead, ARM designs chips and licenses those different architectures to more than 300 companies around the world, including giant players such as Samsung, Nvidia (NVDA), Texas Instruments (TI) and Qualcomm (QCOM, Fortune 500).

The company is particularly successful in the rapidly growing mobile market, partially because it is good at what it does, but also because of the dumb luck of being in the right place at the right time.

ARM got its start in 1991 designing modem chips for cell phones. They were fairly limited microchips that were built for one purpose: to communicate with cell towers without sucking up too much of the phone's battery. But around the turn of the century, handset manufacturers began to realize that there was excess computer power left over in those ARM-based chips that could be used to build a user interface.

Soon after that realization, the "feature phone" was born, which ultimately evolved into the modern day smartphone. Taking advantage of the situation, ARM now designs chips for two purposes: the same-old modem processor and an applications processor that controls the user interface for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry OS and the like.

Demand for ARM-based chips has risen sharply of late, as the cell phone architecture made its way into disk drives, printers, cars, Internet-connected TVs, microcontrollers, and tablets. This year, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) is introducing its first server running on ARM-based chips, and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) will release a version of Windows 8 that will run on tablets powered with processors designed by ARM.

As a result, ARM's share of the overall semiconductor market has soared, doubling in just three short years. Smartphone and tablet sales will continue to help ARM's share rise, and the new markets ARM is entering could help the company arrive at its goal of doubling its share again three years from now. For instance, IHS iSuppli predicts ARM will grow its share of the PC processor market to 22% by 2015, up from practically nothing today.

Meanwhile, semiconductor behemoth Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) tried -- and failed -- for many years to get a foothold in the mobile marketplace, as ARM's 21-year old expertise in power management gave it a leg up.

But recently, Intel scored some big wins after finally convincing handset makers that its chips could play nicely in mobile. Global telecom giant Orange and Indian carrier Lava announced last week that they are planning on shipping a device based on an Intel reference design next quarter, and Lenovo launched a similar phone last month.

Motorola Mobility (MMI), which is being acquired by Google, said last month that all of its future devices will run on Intel chips. And Chinese smartphone giant ZTE said last week that it too would soon begin to ship phones with Intel inside.

Despite Intel's deep pockets and recent surge, ARM isn't fazed. The company believes its power-sipping, mobile-friendly architecture will ultimately become the world's most pervasive.

"Intel's offerings today are better than they were years ago, and undoubtedly there are going to be some Intel design wins," East said. "But I look at the capabilities of those products and see the same kind of capabilities that were in ARM products several years ago." To top of page

Highlights of the Worlds Biggest Mobile Device Gathering

(CNN) -- Mobile World Congress is the world's largest mobile phone trade show, held every year in Barcelona. It is the venue for manufacturers like Nokia, HTC, LG, and Samsung to reveal the must-have mobile devices and services of the year.

This year is likely to be no different with big launches expected from all the major players except Apple.

So what can we expect? Some phone makers have already announced their MWC line up, some have hinted, others have been rumored. Talking to sources, joining the dots, and getting the word on the street, this is what is expected at the show:

Nokia
Nokia is rumored to be launching a number of handsets at MWC this year. Some will focus on emerging markets (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), while the others, the developed ones. The phones you are most likely to be interested in will be a European version of the recently announced Nokia Lumia 900, and a low end Lumia; the Nokia Lumia 610. Both models will work with Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system.

HTC
We are expecting three handsets from the Taiwanese company; The HTC One X, The HTC One S, and the HTC One V. The top-of-the-range One X will feature the new Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor and run Android, while Pocket-lint has confirmed with sources that the One V will be a music-focused device aimed at men and similar to the more female friendly (if that is possible) HTC Rhyme that is already on the market.

Samsung
Although Samsung was expected to launch the Samsung Galaxy S III at MWC this year, the company has now confirmed that it won't. With a number of pre-MWC launches already detailed, Samsung is expected instead to focus on tablets at the show. If rumors are to be believed, it will launch a 10.1-inch version of the Samsung Galaxy Note announced in September 2011. The difference from all the other tablets it sells? It will have a built-in stylus.

LG
Following Samsung's lead with the Galaxy Note, LG has announced its LG Optimus Vu prior to the show. A cross between a phone and a tablet, it will measure 139.6mm x 90.mm, meaning it's going to be one for those with big hands and big pockets. There are also rumors that the company will announce a follow up to the LG Optimus 2X called the 3X. Expect it to have a quad-core processor too.

Research In Motion
BlackBerry maker RIM has said that there will be no new hardware at the show this year, but that it will be showing off the new PlayBook 2.0 operating system and the software operating system, BB OS 10, that it hopes will power its new phones expected later in the year.

Panasonic
Having just announced a new waterproof and dustproof phone called the Eluga, Panasonic has also confirmed it has a second handset in the pipeline to launch at MWC. It will feature a dual-core processor, OLED screen and will run Android.

Fujitsu
Japanese brand Fujitsu has confirmed that it will be launching phones in Europe following its success in Japan. The company has yet to announce which models it will be bringing the continent, however the smart money is on the waterproof quad-core Tegra 3 powered Android smartphone it announced at CES in Las Vegas in January.

Sony (aka Sony Ericsson)
Trying to pinpoint a Sony phone destined for Mobile World Congress is as hard as Sony Ericsson's transitions to Sony. We are expecting a European launch for the already announced (at CES) Sony Ericsson Xperia S though. Rumors and leaked internet photos suggest maybe a bigger screen version too, as well as an array of other Android devices.

Motorola
Motorola's MWC plans are even quieter than Sony's with the company traditionally focusing on CES in Las Vegas to launch many of its first-half-of-the-year handsets. There is a suggestion that Motorola has teamed up with Intel to launch one of the first Intel-powered smartphones, but that is still to be confirmed. Motorola doesn't have a press conference at the show, but Intel does.

Google Back in the CrossHairs For Privacy Violations

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- In the latest high-profile flap over online data privacy, Google has been caught bypassing the privacy settings on Apple's Safari Web browser, letting advertisers track users in unintended ways.

A Wall Street Journal investigation published Friday drew attention to the issue and set off alarm bells across the Web. In response to the Journal's probe, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) discontinued its use of the tracking code.

The actual consequences were pretty limited: Google's code was being used only to target ads, and users' personal information was never collected. But it was yet another prominent example of a tech company drawing fire for a slipshod and sneaky way of handling private data.

The Google imbroglio revolves around the company's ad network, which serves advertisements across a wide range of websites.

Sites use files called "cookies" to follow users' movements and log-ins as they travel through the Web. Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) Safari has far stricter tracking restrictions than any other major browser: By default, it blocks third-party cookies. That's a big problem for ad networks, which rely on those cookies to measure their campaigns and to enable some ad functions.

That's what tripped Google up. It wanted to give viewers who were signed into Google's network the ability to use Google's +1 button to tout ads that caught their eye.

To do that, it exploited a loophole in Safari, essentially tricking the browser into thinking that the viewer had interacted with the ad. That fooled Safari into giving Google permission to install a test cookie and create a temporary communication link back to Google's servers.

Google says that link was designed to operate anonymously and did not collect any personal information. But it had an unintended consequence: Other cookies were able to follow in the first one's wake. Google essentially cracked open a door and others piled in behind it.

While it admitted using the Safari workaround, Google cast the subsequent cookie flood as an inadvertent screw-up.

"The Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser. We didn't anticipate that this would happen," Google said Friday in a prepared statement. "We have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers."

Google wasn't the only one exploiting Safari's loophole. Stanford grad student Jonathan Mayer, who published an extensive technical analysis of it on Friday, found at least three other advertising companies taking advantage of it: Vibrant Media, Media Innovation Group and PointRoll.

"I think there's quite possibly a deceptive business practice here," Mayer said in an interview with CNN.

He questioned Google's claim that no private data was ever misued.

"Google released a statement that there was not personal information at play. I'm not quite certain what they mean by that," Mayer said. "They were quite intentionally moving information about a Google user's account over to Google's advertising networks."

In his technical analysis, Mayer intentionally steered clear of a broader question the debacle raises: Is Safari's third-party cookie blocking the right way to go?

It's a big departure from the industry standard. Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome all allow third-party cookies.

Apple says its motive is privacy. Safari's third-party cookie ban is designed "to prevent companies from tracking the cookies generated by the websites you visit," Apple says on its website.

But many websites rely on advertising to fund their operations, and Apple's ban wreaks havoc with tracking across ad networks. Those ad networks are Apple's direct rivals: It competes against them with its own iAd network, which serves ads through applications instead of websites.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Marketers who rely on third-party tracking cookies are effectively blind when it comes to measuring performance on the iPad and other iOS devices," ad software maker Marin Software wrote last year in a research paper examining the problem.

The block also causes problems for some Web apps that integrate content across multiple sites. The permissions that a user intentionally grants on one site can't be carried through to other, linked sites.

Facebook's "best practices" guide for its developers lists "cross-domain cookies do not work in Safari" as a common problem and recommends using the same kind of workaround Google employed.

It's not lost on Apple's critics that the company's cookie ban is a big thorn in the side of Apple's key competitors.

"Let's step back a second here and ask: why do you think Apple has made it impossible for advertising-driven companies like Google to execute what are industry standard practices on the open web?" author John Battelle, who founded an ad network and wrote a book about Google, wrote in a blog post.

"Do you think it's because Apple cares deeply about your privacy? Really?" Battelle asked. "Or perhaps it's because Apple considers anyone using iOS, even if they're browsing the web, as 'Apple's customer,' and wants to throttle potential competitors."

FCC Getting Huge on LightSquared - NO GPS FOR YOU

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- LightSquared's plan to become a fifth major nationwide wireless carrier hit a major snag this week, after government regulators said they would continue to bar the company from launching its network.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration said late Tuesday that LightSquared's network could interfere with GPS signals, despite LightSquared's proposed engineering solutions. That interference has the potential to be extremely dangerous: In addition to powering consumer navigation devices, GPS is used by the military and the aviation industry to guide airplanes and missiles.

As a result of NTIA's decision, the Federal Communications Commission revoked a waiver that would have allowed LightSquared to turn on its network. The FCC on Wednesday plans to issue a public proposal that would bar LightSquared from launching its service "indefinitely."

LightSquared wants to sell wireless on a wholesale basis, a move that would potentially add dozens of rivals to AT&T (T, Fortune 500), Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500), Sprint (S, Fortune 500) and T-Mobile to the mix. Since the company only plans to launch efficient, next-generation network technology, it believes that it can severely undercut the current national carriers' prices.

The wannabe wireless company, owned by Philip Falcone's Harbinger Capital Partners hedge fund, remains adamant that its technological solutions to the interference issues are valid and resolve the problem.

"The NTIA's recommendation relied on the flawed conclusions ... about LightSquared's potential impact on GPS," a company spokeswoman said Tuesday in a prepared statement. "LightSquared recognizes, however, that this is just one step in the process, and it remains committed to working toward a resolution."

The problem stems from the fact that LightSquared's spectrum -- the airwaves that are used to broadcast wireless signals -- is directly adjacent to the GPS industry's spectrum. As it turns out, the GPS companies have been jumping the fence for years, picking up signals transmitted through their neighbors' property. It had gone unnoticed, since LightSquared and its predecessors hadn't been using the spectrum until recently.

GPS giants Trimble Navigation (TRMB) and Garmin (GRMN) said in response that their systems were never intended to be immune from strong signals on nearby frequencies. They have a point: The spectrum LightSquared owns was originally licensed only for satellite services, not the much stronger terrestrial transmissions LightSquared wants to put there.

To do that, LightSquared needs FCC permission. The agency granted its conditional waiver last year. The FCC's technical staff expressed surprise when the issue later blew up into a major controversy with GPS device manufacturers.

But after experimenting with several potential solutions, the agency now says it sees no quick fix. And although the interference issues aren't LightSquared's fault, the FCC said its hands are tied.

"There is no practical way to mitigate potential interference at this time," said Tammy Sun, a spokeswoman for the FCC.

LightSquared has made many concessions in its attempt to gain regulatory approval, including limiting itself to broadcasting in just half of the spectrum band that it had licensed. In its view, regulators are coddling the GPS industry.

"GPS in America has become 'too big to fail,'" Jeff Carlisle, head of LightSquared's regulatory affairs, wrote in a blog post this week. "Like Wall Street, the manufacturers of GPS devices have spent years profiting off of vulnerable technology and are now seeking protection from the government instead of implementing the necessary reforms."

Time for Zuckerburg to Face the Music of the Public

Editor's note: Douglas Rushkoff, who writes regularly for CNN.com, is a media theorist and the author of "Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age" and "Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World and How We Can Take it Back."

(CNN) -- We all knew he'd eventually get around to it: Mark Zuckerberg is expected to finally bring Facebook public. The company is reported to be preparing to file for an IPO -- initial public offering -- through which anyone will be able to buy shares of the social networking company on an open stock exchange.

As a media theorist, I used to ignore these business shenanigans. Who cares if these companies are private or public, profitable or in the red? How many non-Wall-Street-Journal readers even knew what an IPO was back before the Internet created the likes of AOL, Netscape, and Google?

But the fact is we do now think about the stock market. Many of us are aware that Apple's market capitalization is fast approaching half a trillion dollars, making it either the largest or second-largest company in the world behind Exxon Mobil - depending on the week. So when we hear that Facebook is preparing for an IPO that will likely dwarf Google's entrance to the public markets in 2004, particularly considering that the company doesn't sell tangible goods or services in the traditional sense, we can't help but wonder what this will mean for the future of Facebook, its users, its competitors, and the greater economy.

The way it appears at first glance - particularly for those who have been following Mr. Zuckerberg since he launched "The Facebook" from his college dorm or, better, those who have seen the movie "The Social Network" - is that the Zuckerberg juggernaut is continuing unabated.

This new form of media -- social networking -- will not only redefine the Internet, change human relationships, create a new marketing landscape, and challenge Google, but it will now rescue and alter the economy itself. Like virtual kudzu, it will infiltrate the financial markets, creating new sorts of opportunities for this peer-to-peer "social" economy to take root. We will all make our living playing Farmville, or designing new versions of it, or investing in companies that do.
Facebook expected to be largest tech IPO

In reality, however, I don't think we are witnessing Facebook's victory over the financial markets as much as its acquiescence to them. Yes, Apple challenged Microsoft for software supremacy, just as Facebook now challenges Google for Internet supremacy. But there's another operating system churning away beneath all this high tech activity, and it's called corporate capitalism. If a company is big enough -- and that means simply holding enough money -- then sooner or later that money influences the rest of the company's activities.

In Facebook's case, it meant approaching the legal limit of 500 investors, which triggers a requirement to open the books to regulatory scrutiny. It also meant dealing with a few thousand coveted employees who took jobs at Facebook instead of Google or Apple or anywhere else because they were hoping to get in on a big thing. The promise of cashing in a few million dollars worth of stock options helps many a programmer make it through a late night of coding.

The same goes for those who invested in Zuckerberg five or more years ago and want to cash in before the "social web" bubble pops, if it's going to. Facebook was taking so long to get to market that many people had begun selling their shares privately on what are known as secondary markets, putting Facebook's valuation even further out of the company's own hands.

Simply becoming a multi-billion-dollar company changes the essence of its goals, activities, and purpose. Its bloodstream becomes filled with cash, and cash has its own agenda. For just like print, TV, or the Internet, money is a medium, too. It has biases, or tendencies, programmed right into it. The kind of money we happen to use -- bank-issued central currency -- is biased toward lending. That's why we call our system "capitalism." It's about the capital: Our money is designed to favor those who lend it to others who actually use it to build companies or create value.

The more money a company takes in, the more obligated it becomes to function in accordance with the properties and rules of money. For example, since becoming public, Google has had to prove its devotion to its shareholders' interests by cutting pet programs, showing earnings' growth, and demonstrating focus over big dreams. Out with public experiments like Google Labs, in with products like Android try to compete with Apple's iOS and G+ to compete with Facebook. No more touting that employees get 20% of their work hours to do whatever they want. It's a real corporation, now, and has to behave like one.

By all accounts, Zuckerberg was trying to delay this eventuality as long as possible. He knows that becoming the CEO of a public company will not be nearly as much fun, or as free, as running an Internet startup. However much we may not like his vision for our future, his primary purpose was to change the world. He wanted to create the operating system on which human social activity took place.

What he has ultimately succumbed to, however, is the fact that Facebook was running on top of another operating system all along. Instead of revolutionizing our reality, by filing an IPO Mark Zuckerberg is finally getting with the program.

SOPA Lobbying Dollars Going to Waste

The controversial anti-piracy bills that attracted tens of millions of dollars of lobbying for and against the proposed laws ironically were killed by free publicity.

"Old" media companies spent huge sums of money in support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). Those opposed -- Internet and "new media" companies -- lobbied hard and spent gobs too, though far less than their more organized rivals.

But Silicon Valley had a trick up its sleeve that trumped the millions of dollars more in lobbying muscle and the more established Washington presence of the old media guard: They reached out directly to their users for free.

Google, Wikipedia and others altered their homepages and websites in opposition of the bills last week, making the issue a topic of popular discussion across the country.

"The Internet really flexed their muscles during this fight, and their infrastructure helped them advocate their positions that others don't have at their disposal," said Michael Beckel, money-in-politics analyst at the Center for Responsive Politics.

It helped that the two bills were an issue that the public cared about. The opposition movement was trending on Twitter, and thousands of protesters joined in New York and San Francisco on Jan. 20 in opposition of the bills.

"When you have an issue that is salient, and the public cares about it, the money matters less," said Lee Drutman, data fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization. "Money matters more when it's a behind-closed-doors issue that hasn't faced much public scrutiny."

Lobbying analysts also note that it's really hard to change the status quo and pass legislation. Silicon Valley had the advantage of playing defense, which is a much better position to be in, experts said. There are so many hurdles to jump before a bill becomes law, so being on the opposition is always a good start.

It may have been painted as a David vs. Goliath fight initially. But the end result proved that the most money doesn't always win in Washington.
SOPA explained: What it is and why it matters

Media companies like Comcast (CMCSA, Fortune 500), Viacom (VIA), News Corp. (NWS), and CNNMoney parent Time Warner (TWX, Fortune 500) led the support of the bills, each spending millions of dollars on the issue.

Media lobbyists, including the motion picture, recording industry, cable, and broadcaster associations, also added millions of dollars to the fight, as did credit card firms Visa (V, Fortune 500), MasterCard (MA, Fortune 500) and American Express (AXP, Fortune 500).

Loads of cash were spent by the opposition as well, but most of that came from Google (GOOG, Fortune 500). After the search giant's millions, there was a steep drop off in lobbying dollars, with Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500), eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500), Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) lobbying in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

Lobbying totals are only very rough estimates because companies often include multiple bills and issues in their lobbying reports to Congress. But Washington analysts said SOPA and PIPA were among the hottest issues in the fourth quarter.

SOPA and PIPA Hears the Internet Roar

When the entire Internet gets angry, Congress takes notice. Both the House and the Senate on Friday backed away from a pair of controversial anti-piracy bills, tossing them into limbo and throwing doubt on their future viability.

The Senate had been scheduled to hold a proceedural vote next week on whether to take up the Protect IP Act (PIPA) -- a bill that once had widespread, bipartisan support. But on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he was postponing the vote "in light of recent events."

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives said it is putting on hold its version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The House will "postpone consideration of the legislation until there is wider agreement on a solution," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith said in a written statement.

The moves came after several lawmakers flipped their position on the bills in the wake of widespread online and offline protests against them.

Tech companies, who largely oppose the bills, mobilized their users this week to contact representatives and speak out against the legislation. Sites including Wikipedia and Reddit launched site blackouts on January 18, while protesters hit the streets in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) drew more than 7 million signatures for an anti-SOPA and PIPA petition that it linked on its highly trafficked homepage.

The tide turned soon after the protest, and both bills lost some of their Congressional backers.

"I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns," Smith said Friday in a prepared statement. "It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves."

PIPA and SOPA aim to crack down on copyright infringement by restricting access and services to sites that host or facilitate the trading of pirated content. (Click here for our explainer: What SOPA is and why it matters.)

Backed by media companies, including CNNMoney parent Time Warner, the bills initially seemed on the fast track to passage. PIPA was approved unanimously by a Senate committee in May.

But when the House took up its own version of the bill, SOPA, tech companies began lobbying heavily in opposition -- an effort that culminated in this week's demonstrations.

Reid hinted that PIPA may not be dead yet, saying: "There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved."

Meanwhile, alternative legislation has also been proposed. A bipartisan group of senators introduced the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN) on January 18 -- the same day as the Wikipedia site blackout.

Among other differences, OPEN offers more protection than SOPA would to sites accused of hosting pirated content. It also beefs up the enforcement process. It would allow digital rights holders to bring cases before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), an independent agency that handles trademark infringement and other trade disputes.

California Republican Darrell Issa introduced OPEN in the House, and Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden introduced the Senate version. OPEN's backers had posted the draft legislation online and invited the Web community to comment on and revise the proposal.

Soon after SOPA and PIPA were tabled, Issa released a statement cheering "supporters of the Internet" for their protest efforts.

He wrote: "Over the last two months, the intense popular effort to stop SOPA and PIPA has defeated an effort that once looked unstoppable but lacked a fundamental understanding of how Internet technologies work."

SOPA and PIPA - Its Not a Middleton

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- While Internet giants staged a massive online protest against proposed anti-piracy legislation, hundreds gathered in New York for an in-person show of opposition.

Members of the New York tech community massed outside the offices of U.S. senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand on Wednesday afternoon in a protest coordinated by NY Tech Meetup, a local networking group.

"We're here to make sure our senators know that the New York tech community, which employs tens of thousands of people, really will not take no for an answer," said Nate Westheimer, one of the protest's organizers. "The provisions that are being suggested right now would undermine the way the Internet works."

Similar protests are scheduled to take place Wednesday in San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

The online and offline protests are aimed at a pair of bills currently under consideration in Congress: the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA). The bills aims to crack down on copyright infringement by restricting access to sites that host or facilitate the trading of pirated content. (Click here for our explainer: What SOPA is and why it matters.)

Supporters, including CNNMoney parent company Time Warner, say measures like SOPA and PIPA are needed to crack down on rampant online piracy. Opponents counter that the bills are full of vague and broad mandates that could wreak havoc on the Web.

That's the line taken by those who turned out for Wednesday's protest in New York.

"We showed up because we think Congress is misinformed about the gravity of what they're proposing," said protester Dan Herman, the founder of business software maker ChatID.

Sebastian Delmont, the "chief geek" at real estate website StreetEasy, said he came "because I want to save the Internet."

Waving a placard with an anti-PIPA poem on it, he added: "Proponents of the bill say, 'Well, what is the alternative to piracy?' We've shown them over the years. It's iTunes, it's Netflix. People pirate for convenience. When they have cheap options that are convenient, they don't pirate."

Senators Gillibrand and Schumer released a joint response to the protest.

"There are two important issues in this debate: continued freedom of expression on the Internet and the ability to block online piracy. We believe that both sides can come together on a solution that satisfies their respective concerns," they said in a written statement.

The pair of anti-piracy bills have sparked an all-out war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The legislation enjoyed rare bipartisan support and had been on track for a quick passage until the tech industry mounted a fierce opposition. Now the bills have turned almost toxic in Washington.

"We're at a tipping point," a Senate Democratic aide told CNN on Tuesday.
"It will either become a huge issue or die down a bit, and that will determine the future of this."
SOPA explained: Why it matters

Schumer, who sits on the Senate Judiciary committee, voted in favor of PIPA in May when the committee approved the bill and sent it on to the full Senate for consideration. That vote was unanimous, with complete bipartisan support.

PIPA is currently slated for a Jan. 24 vote in the Senate, but the massive blowback from the Internet community has many lawmakers reconsidering. Six senators who backed the bill in May sent Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a letter last week asking him to delay the vote.

"The process at this point is moving too quickly," they wrote. "We have increasingly heard from a large number of constituents and other stakeholders with vocal concerns."

That's exactly what those protesting on Wednesday hoped to get across.

Local tech leaders, including Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) head of public policy Andrew McLaughlin, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian and tech writer Clay Shirky, made speeches at the protest, while the crowd chanted slogans including: "This is what democracy looks like."

That's a rally cry that's also popular a few blocks further south, at New York's Occupy Wall Street protest.

"This might be a very big turning point for people," said rally coordinator Westheimer. "As the generation of technologists you see today get a little bit older, you're definitely going to see them get more in politics."