Category: Internet

Most people would say that the “Six Strikes” Copyright Alert System has been an utter failure. We’ve not yet heard a single success story. In fact, we’ve not heard anything about it since it launched earlier this year. A new report suggests that Comcast may already be tiring of this method and is now working on a new plan that would encourage pirates to buy content instead of punishing them.

Variety reports that Comcast is working on a new anti-piracy plan that approaches pirates as potential consumers instead of criminals. It’s a shocking development for an industry that has been hellbent on treating pirates as nothing but criminals. Even the consumer education-focused CAS treated consumers like criminals with its myriad of punishments.

In stark contrast to the CAS, Comcast’s new plan wouldn’t tell pirates that their efforts are destroying the livelihoods of millions, or that their efforts will lead to the downfall of Hollywood. Instead, Comcast would send a simple pop-up ad to BitTorrent users with links to legal alternatives. It would happen while the content is being downloaded so pirates would be faced with a moral conundrum – continue downloading the content in question or just pony up the cash for it.

Comcast may be proposing nothing more than a sophisticated guilt trip, but it’s still a far better alternative to the punishments in the CAS. That being said, Comcast isn’t ready to sell its new system as a CAS replacement. It’s instead being billed as a complement to the CAS. Of course, that could change if CAS remains a target of criticism.

We won’t be able to see the results of Comcast’s ambitious new plan for a while though as the company’s engineers have not even begun work on it. It’s not said when work will start on the program, but they’ll be working alongside NBC Universal to make it happen. In the meantime, Comcast will have to convince other cable companies to embrace the future of treating pirates like customers. If the past is any indication, this will be hardest part.

Still, credit must be given where credit is due. Comcast’s new plan sounds like a step in the right direction. The pessimistic side of me is saying that the company will do something to screw it up, but I want to remain optimistic for now. Piracy has always been a service problem, and it looks like Comcast is taking a step in the right direction.

Google is getting sick and tired of the entertainment industry stamping its feet and demanding that it do more to block pirates from its search results. TorrentFreak reports that Google’s U.K. policy manager Theo Bertram said during a panel on online piracy this week that blocking links from search results is mostly a pointless exercise because there are simply so many other links that pop up in their place. The better solution, he said, would be for advertisers to give the company a list of websites where they did not want their ads to appear and ask Google to make sure that those sites are starved of advertising revenues.

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Although the idea of Google Fiber rolling into your neighborhood and obliterating incumbent cable providers may be a pipe dream in the short term, at least one analyst thinks that Google’s fiber-to-the-home network will pose serious challenges for both the cable and telecom industries in the long run. Per MarketWatch, Bernstein analyst Carlos Kirjner has issued a new research note explaining why Google Fiber is “an attractive risk-return profile, with very limited downside and potential for material economic upside” that could disrupt the American Internet service provider landscape.

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Kim Dotcom’s new Mega file hosting service has gotten the attention of Hollywood. Warner Bros. and NBC Universal have asked Google to remove Mega from its search results, claiming that it is hosting copyrighted content on its servers. Dotcom responded to the requests in a statement to TorrentFreak, calling it the requests the same “unreasonable content industry behavior” he has had to endure for years. He still blames Hollywood for shutting down his Megaupload service in 2012, which he believes is “the ultimate illegal takedown by the content industry.”

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Vermont Telecom made headlines in late April when it announced it would bring Google Fiber-like Internet speeds to its customers for only $35 a month. Now another rural ISP has started to offer gigabit Internet, but at a more expensive cost.

Cedar Falls Utilities, a small city-owned company out of Cedar Falls, Iowa, announced this week that it is the first community in Iowa to offer gigabit Internet service to its customers. It even put together a low-budget video announcing the new Internet option:

CFU’s gigabit offerings is more in line with what we’re seeing in towns like Chattanooga. The city offers gigabit Internet service to residential customers, but the prices ensure that only the well-to-do can afford it. In this case, gigabit Internet with CFU costs $267.50 a month, or $272.50 a month if you live outside of city limits.

Residential customers are getting a steal, however, as gigabit Internet for businesses costs $950 a month. For both residential and business customers, the speed is set at one gigabit down and 500 megabits up. In comparison, Google Fiber offers one gigabit down and up.

Even if the price is ridiculously high, it’s still a good sign to see more local ISPs offering gigabit Internet. The trend may soon force the hands of the major ISPs to start offering faster Internet services. Let’s just hope they don’t exploit their customers by charging ridiculous prices. Knowing ISPs, that’s probably not going to happen though.

A simple formula is all that’s required to rule the internet these days. Cats + Something Adorable = Internet domination. As is proven by a video meme which has a halfway decent chance at blowing up. If nothing else, people will be viewing this video of cat boarding for the next few days. And having an “ahhh” or chuckle in the process.

Enjoy.

Yahoo is apparently determined to show that it can do more than pay $1.1 billion for a bunch of teenage girls’ blogs. Unnamed sources tell Bloomberg that Yahoo has submitted an offer to buy video streaming website Hulu, a sign that the company is still considering ways to counter the enormous video streaming clout that Google now holds with YouTube. Yahoo was interested in buying a majority stake in French video streaming website Dailymotion earlier this year but that deal fell apart after the French government reportedly threatened to block it. In making an official bid for Hulu, Yahoo will be competing with Time Warner Cable, which is considering buying a 33% equity stake in the company. It’s unknown at this point whether Yahoo’s bid for Hulu will just be for a similar shared stake or if it plans to be more aggressive and buy a majority stake in the firm.

There’s not a lack of online privacy protection bills floating around Congress at the moment, but it can’t hurt to have one more.

On Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul introduced the Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act, or S. 1037, to the Senate. Like other bills before it, the proposed legislation aims to require law enforcement to obtain warrants when accessing any kind of personal information online, including email, chat logs, online bank accounts and more.

Paul said that his bill will “reassert Fourth Amendment protections” online:

“Congress has passed a variety of laws that decimate our Fourth Amendment protections. In effect, it means that Americans can only count on Fourth Amendment protections if they don’t use email, cellphones, the Internet, credit cards, libraries, banks or other forms of modern finance and communications.

Basic constitutional rights should not be invalidated by carrying out basic, day-to-day functions in a technologically advanced world, and this bill will provide much needed clarity and reassert Fourth Amendment protections for records held by third parties.”

Paul’s bill enters the Senate only a month after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Sen. Patrick Leahy’s Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2013. Unlike Leahy’s bill, however, Paul’s bill would ensure all online data held by third parties is protected by the Fourth Amendment.

In a perfect world, Paul’s bill would join forces with Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s Online Communications and Geolocation Protection Act to create powerful Fourth Amendment protections for all.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where Congress is content to put a bandaid on a bullet wound. In other words, we’re probably going to get a bill that requires a warrant when obtaining emails, but only under very limited circumstances. The majority of your personal data stored online would still be subject to warrantless searches.

[h/t: The Hill]

Simpsons fans will likely recall the classic episode in which Homer Simpson gets tossed out of an “all-you-can-eat” seafood restaurant after he devours not only its entire supply of shrimp but two of its decorative plastic lobsters. Ars Technica reports that an IT professional in California did something similar with his unlimited FiOS plan after he used up a whopping 77TB of data over the span of just one month. If you’re wondering how one human being could use that much data in just a month, consider that he had been using his home FiOS connection to deliver friends and family dedicated video streaming, VPN support and peer-to-peer file sharing while “running a rack of seven servers with 209TB of raw storage… in his house.”

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Yes, the major cable companies are losing paid television subscribers and yes, they have stunningly low customer satisfaction ratings. But as The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson ably explains, they aren’t going anywhere because they’re still making money hand over fist providing home broadband connections to tens of millions of households. Essentially, cable companies have been losing TV subscribers since the 1990s but have more than made up for this lost revenue by increasing their total number of Internet subscribers and squeezing more monthly revenue out customers “both by charging more for television and by getting households to buy more than just TV,” Thompson writes.

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Google Fiber has taken the United States, and the world, by storm. Google is looking to shake things up with extremely fast Internet speeds available at reasonable prices, while at the same time pressuring traditional industry players to adapt. But millions of Americans will be forced to settle with the mediocre speeds provided by their current Internet service providers, unfortunately. A recent report from market research firm IHS iSuppli suggests that Google is unlikely to deploy Fiber on a nationwide level. The firm believes the cost of building a national Fiber infrastructure will be too high for Google and the company is expected to remain a minor player in the U.S. broadband market.

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As screens get increasingly getting cheaper and more ubiquitous, are we going to keep counting them?

Not too long ago, I was asked to give a presentation on the state of digital media and how well brands are intersecting the worlds of marketing and technology. Prior to my closing keynote, there was a panel discussion about the state of media. One senior media executive was discussing the power of “a four screen world.” I thought that he had made a mistake. I was familiar with the concept of three screens (television, computer and mobile), but four screens was something new. Eventually, he unveiled that the fourth screen was the tablet.

It’s still somewhat shocking to think that the iPad was first introduced on April 3rd, 2010, and we now live in a world where Apple is selling more iPads than any PC manufacturer is selling of their entire PC line. This has been a steadily growing trend since 2012. And yet this is the fourth screen?

The basic dilemma for marketers is this: there are now too many screens to count. Set aside PCs, tablets, smartphones, and TVs (connected or otherwise), for a moment. Your car, your thermostat, your washer and dryer, your refrigerator are all on their way to being “smart” as well — connected to the internet and to each other, featuring screens that offer up all sorts of information, from usage data to content, like a fridge that suggests recipes based on the food stored inside.

This means the future is not about three screens or four screens or fourteen screens. It’s about one screen: whichever screen is in front of me. In a world where screens are connected and everywhere, the notion of even counting them seems arbitrary, at best. If you don’t believe me, speak to somebody currently sporting Google Glass.

At the same time that screens are proliferating, they’re also integrating.

My niece is nineteen years old. When she was sixteen, she would come home from school, take out her laptop, plop down on the couch, lift the computer lid, turn on the TV, plug in her iPod earbuds, and set her BlackBerry down next to her. From afar, it looked like she was running NORAD. But fast-forward a mere three years, and now she comes home from school, takes out her iPad… and that’s it.

All of that core content is now readily available on one screen. From content (in text, images, audio, and video) to communications (chatting with friends on Skype or via Google Hangouts), it’s all there on this one device that rules them all.

This convergence is happening because, no matter how many screens you buy, you only have one pair of eyes. Yes, we are seeing a massive uptick in consumers who are using companion devices (meaning, they are watching TV but have their smartphones nearby), and while the industry does refer to it as a companion device, the truth is that you’re not watching the television with one eyeball and tweeting on your iPhone with the other. You’re seeing one screen at a time.

Welcome to the one-screen world.

Here we are, today, with over a billion smartphones in the world. They outnumber the PCs. Fifteen percent of online retail sales will take place this year via mobile devices, according to eMarketer, and that’s a 56% increase from 2012. Within the next decade, virtually all mobile phones will be smartphone, meaning six billion people will be constantly connected. We already live in a world where more individuals have a mobile subscription than access to safe drinking water.

And yet, according to a recent survey by Adobe, 45% of marketers say their firms still don’t have a mobile presence. Businesses are still splitting hairs of what is the web, what is the smartphone, what is the tablet, and what is TV. Instead of hunkering down and figuring out what the customer’s new expectations are when everything from their washer and dryer to their television and smartphone are hyper-connected to one another, most marketers are just worrying about how they’re going to advertise on a mobile screen. Advertising? That’s not the revolution here. Now, brands don’t just advertise on someone else’s mobile site, they can build their own apps, tools, and programs of engagement that make mobile a different kind of media. They can create value through offering a mobile service or app that is truly useful. They can touch their consumers in ways that are both contextual and location-aware. This is the proverbial “last mile” that all marketers were hoping for: contextual, personal, and by location.

If ever there was a time to embrace the notion of the one-screen world, this would be it. Increasingly, consumers are rolling these screens up into one. They’re streaming video from their tablets and laptops to their TVs. They’re watching TV shows on their phones. They simply want the content they like on the device they prefer, when they want it.

The rise of mobile gives marketers a tremendous opportunity to rethink what their jobs really are. Don’t send me a coupon or bombard me with ads for the latest washing machine; don’t blast me with a text message while I’m in a department store’s appliance center. Create an app that lets me control my washing machine, so I can start my washing on my way home from the office, so it’s not sitting wet all day in the washer.

Remember, at the end of the day, your customers only have one pair of eyes, and they’re only looking at one screen: the one that interests them.

Internet service providers are pretty awful. It seems that most Americans agree if a recent survey is to be believed.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index has released its report for 2013. This year is particularly interesting as ISPs have been rated for the first time. How did they do?

The survey shows that Vierzon FiOS, the company’s fiber-based wired broadband service, has a satisfaction rating of 71. From there, the scores keep getting lower and lower until it bottoms out with Comcast at a 62.

What about the other major ISPs like Time Warner Cable and ATT? Time Warner came away with a 63 while ATT scored a bit higher with a 65. The average aggregated score among all ISPs was 65.

To put this all into perspective, ISPs were one of four industries to have an average score below 70. The others were the airline, subscription telephone and social media industries. It’s really kind of sad when ISPs are lumped in with an industry that has been the subject of bad standup comedy for decades.

So, why do consumers hate their ISPs so much? The ASCI lists the usual suspects – reliability, speed and highly monthly costs. It doesn’t help that many are also unsatisfied with the current monopolies or duopolies held by many ISPs preventing them from switching to somebody else.

There is hope, however, and that hope is Google Fiber. The ASCI says that services like Google Fiber may eventually shift ISPs to offering faster service for lower costs. It’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, but I can dream, right?

[h/t: BGR]

Major Internet service providers in the United States have long taken a beating in customer satisfaction surveys, but the latest survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index has the grimmest news yet for American ISPs: They now have the lowest customer satisfaction ranking of any industry in America, worse than even airlines, health insurance companies and gas stations. The survey shows that American consumers are particularly unhappy with ISPs’ call center service, with the variety of Internet plans they offer and with their quality of online video streaming.

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It has been widely reported that Apple will debut a new streaming radio service at its Worldwide Developers Conference next month. The company was said to be close to striking a deal with Warner Music and Sony Music to launch its iRadio service, however recent reports suggest negotiations may have hit a roadblock that could prevent Apple from debuting the service at next month’s event.

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One of the constant complaints we hear from wireless and even some wireline ISPs is that the surge in online video demand has put a strain on their networks that leaves them with no choice but to implement unpopular policies such as bandwidth caps. But CNET reports that Google is hoping to make help ISPs significantly ease the strain of video on their networks by pushing its new V9 video technology standard that the company says can help content providers “save about 50% of bandwidth by encoding your video with VP9.” Of course, the VP9 standard hasn’t even been finalized yet and won’t be available for general use until mid-June at the earliest. All the same, Google is promising developers that adopting the new standard will be easy and is promoting it as a free, open source alternative to rival codec H.264.

In the past year, Microsoft has increased its efforts to dethrone Google as the world’s top search engine. To accomplish this, the company has launched a “Scroogled” advertising campaign that looks to shine a light on Google and its sometimes questionable privacy practices. The company has previously attacked Google’s search engine and Gmail service, and is now taking aim at its Chrome Web browser. iCosmoGeek obtained an internal video that is believed to be created by Microsoft that mocks Google’s latest Chrome commercial. Google recently created an advertisement touting Chrome’s ability to sync addresses and passwords across smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. Microsoft’s video attacks the company, meanwhile, for tracking customers and monetizing their personal information with targeted advertisements across smartphones, tablets and desktops. Google’s original video and Microsoft’s parody follow below.

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During its annual I/O Developers Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Google senior vice president Vic Gundotra announced 41 new features for the company’s social networking site. Google+ will receive yet another redesign that looks to unify the website on smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. The redesign will adapt based on the screen size of the device from one column when viewing on a smartphone to two to three columns when on a tablet or laptop. One of the new features Google added is called “related hashtags,” which can analyze the content of a post and automatically apply a hashtag to them. Another feature, known as Auto Enhance, will analyze uploaded photos and help make them look even better by adjusting the saturation levels, brightness, contrast and color.

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As a parent, the internet is both a useful and possibly scary tool. It opens the world up for your kids and allows them to experience a ton of info that they wouldn’t have been able to access before the advent of the web, and that’s a great thing. But of course, with open information comes open information. All of it. The scope is broad, and includes things that you may not want your kid seeing in their formidable years.

I’m sure many parents can relate to this scenario: You’re browsing the web and you happen upon a saved site, or maybe check your history. And there it is – a porn link that you didn’t access. What do you do? At what age do you think you have to start worrying about this?

Well, according to a new study, it’s a lot earlier than you think. Apparently, kids are starting to look at porn by the time they reach the age of six. Yes, six.

The study comes from internet security and antivirus software provider Bitdefender, who released the results to USA Today. Bitdefender used data compiled from its various parental controls services alongside a survey of over 19,000 parents worldwide.

The survey found that kids start watching porn as early as 6, and are “flirting” on the internet by the ripe old age of 8.

Social media use is also starting earlier – 17% of kids had an account on some social networking site by the age of 10 and 25% had one by the age of 12.

“Kids nowadays are acting like young adults online — just give them an Internet-connected device, and they will find a way to things parents would like to ban forever,” says Bitdefender Chief Security Strategist Catalin Cosoi.

Of course, parents are the key. Both in limiting what young kids see on the internet, as well as having important conversations about both the good and the bad that exists on the web.

And it looks that those conversations need to start happening early. Very early.

Does the government want to regulate the Internet? It really depends on who you ask. Internet freedom fighters say legislation like SOPA and CISPA are thinly veiled attempts to regulate the Internet. The government, however, claims that it’s strictly taking a hands-off approach.

The House reaffirmed its hands-off approach in legislation it passed yesterday evening. The bill, H.R. 1580, is titled “To affirm the policy of the United States regarding Internet governance.” If you couldn’t tell from the title, it’s simply a resolution saying that the United States will continue supporting the multi-stakeholder approach in regards to Internet development.

It’s encouraging then that the bill was passed unanimously. Of course, no congressman would be caught dead voting against the bill as it would suggest that they were in favor of some rather unpopular suggestions made during a U.N. meeting on Internet governance late last year.

The bill’s sponsor, Greg Walden, praised the multi-stakeholder approach to the Internet on the House floor last night, and confirmed that the bill is meant to send a message to other governments:

“Government’s hands-off approach has enabled the Internet’s rapid growth and made it a powerful engine of social and economic freedom. This bipartisan bill is designed to combat recent efforts by some in the international community to regulate the Internet, which can jeopardize not only its vibrancy, but also the benefits that it brings to the entire world.”

Now, this is a good thing. It’s nice to see that at least the House is all for an Internet free from government control, but it’s unfortunate that the House sees a difference between control and intervention. SOPA, PIPA and CISPA wouldn’t hand over control of the Internet to the government, but it would give the government untold powers to intervene.

It’s much the same argument that countries like Saudi Arabia and China made during the ITU conference last year. They weren’t arguing that the Internet be placed entirely under their control. Instead, they argued that they should be given power over their corner of the Internet to intervene when things got out of control. Granted, CISPA and SOPA were never advocating something like the Great Firewall of China, but they could spiral into something similar if allowed to take effect.

In short, the Internet is a precious resource that has flourished thanks to the current multi-stakeholder model. It’s encouraging to see the U.S. government continue to recognize this, but it’s high time the U.S. government also recognizes that its attempts to regulate the Internet would violate the very legislation the House passed last night.

[h/t: The Hill]