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]

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.

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]

The Hill reports that the Senate approved the Marketplace Fairness Act by a wide margin (69-27) with plenty of bi-partisan support. The passage was met with applause from retail organizations, including the National Retail Federation. The organization’s president and CEO Matthew Shay said that passage in the Senate is a “significant step for sales tax fairness.”

Now the bill must go before the House where it is expected to meet far more resistance from representatives opposed to any new tax legislation. Anti-taxation groups and small online businesses will also be doubling their efforts in the House to ensure that the bill doesn’t pass, or that it at least contains some protective measures to ensure small businesses aren’t hurt by it.

Despite these challenges, the NRF says it’s not worried. In a statement, Shay said that he’s looking forward to working with the House to ensure the bill’s passage:

“This bill and its companion in the House will level the playing field for all retailers – both online and off – while safeguarding states’ rights. And the bill does it all without raising taxes, new government mandates or adding to the deficit. NRF and our broad cross-section of members will work closely with our bipartisan sponsors in the House, Reps. Womack and Speier, and Chairman Goodlatte to ensure that efairness is debated honestly and on its merits. When brought to a vote, we believe the House will pass the bill and it will be signed into law.”

The NRF might have its way as well considering that the Marketplace Fairness Act has the support of the President, and more importantly, the support of many prominent Republican governors around the country. Their support may go a long way in convincing those currently opposed to the bill that it might not be such a bad idea after all.

Either way, the debate over online sales tax is going to get a lot more interesting in the coming months. The House is noisier than the Senate, and there’s going to be a lot of political grandstanding on both sides of the issue. You might as well break out the popcorn now.

Ars Technica got its hands on an internal Microsoft email that lays out its policy regarding Internet connections on the next Xbox:

“Durango is designed to deliver the future of entertainment while engineered to be tolerant of today’s Internet. There are a number of scenarios that our users expect to work without an Internet connection, and those should ‘just work’ regardless of their current connection status. Those include, but are not limited to: playing a Blu-ray disc, watching live TV, and yes playing a single player game.”

It’s pointed out that the above email seemingly confirms that the next Xbox will route through a set-top box to deliver an Xbox-branded TV experience to consumers. It’s good then that Microsoft won’t be forcing any kind of online connectivity on those who just want to watch TV.

Going back to games, what does this mean for all those rumors of DRM and blocking used games? Well, the next Xbox could still incorporate DRM that’s similar to what many PC games now do. The console would use an Internet connection for a one-time activation, and then the game could be played offline afterwards. It could also be used to block used games from being played on the system so there is still some concern there.

That being said, the next Xbox will at least be partially consumer friendly. That’s only a good thing as it looked like Microsoft was readying to shoot itself in the foot in the upcoming generation if it were to move ahead with an always online DRM scheme.

We’ll find out more about the next Xbox, and hopefully more clarification regarding any DRM, at a dedicated event on May 21.

The plaintiffs in the case, Charles Schmidt and Christopher Orlando Torres*, are the creators of Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat, respectively. They allege that Warner Bros’ use of the characters in various Scribblenauts games amounts to copyright and trademark infringement. The game’s developer, 5th Cell, is also named in the suit.

Here’s what Schmidt and Torres are accusing Warner Bros of:

Plaintiffs accuse Warner Bros and 5th Cell of including, without any licenses or authorizations, the Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat characters in their original Scribblenauts videogame released in 2009, the 2010 Super Scribblenauts, 2011 Scribblenauts Remix, and the 2012 Scribblenauts Unlimited. Defendants are accused of shamelessly using identifying “Nyan Cat” and “Keyboard Cat” by name to promote and market their games. Plaintiffs claim that Warner Bros and 5th Cell’s trademark infringement was willful and intentional and are requesting an award of treble damages

Maybe the best part of this whole thing is the lawyers’ descriptions of the memes. Especially Nyan Cat:

“Nyan Cat is a cartoon. Nyan cat, a character with a cat’s face and body resembling a horizontal breakfast bar with pink frosting sprinkled with light red dots, flies across the screen, leaving a stram of exhaust in the form of a bright rainbow in its wake.”

The lawsuit explains hows both videos were viral sensations, Keyboard Cat being named to many “greatest viral videos” lists and Nyan Cat winning the 2012 Webby award for “meme of the year.”

Both Schmidt and Torres have copyrights for their memes registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Schmidt has two pending trademark applications and Torres has one.

*It’s important to note that Torres created the Nyan Cat animation, but is not the one to set it to that famously annoying music and throw it up on YouTube.

[Milord & Associates via Ars Technica]

Home base being Kansas City, the location of Google’s Fiber’s first installment. The next town to be blessed with Google’s super-fast internet is Shawnee, Kansas, which is located south-west of Kansas City. Google won’t have to expand their service that far to accomodate the people of Shawnee.

“Shawnee, which is right outside of Kansas City, is known as a tight-knit community and a great place to do business. We’ve also been impressed by Shawnee’s vision to keep their citizens informed and involved using the Internet. Recently, the City modernized their website, so that locals can easily access city info—from crime maps to fiscal reports to streamed audio of city council meetings.

This is a great example of how access to information via the web can help make communities stronger. Google Fiber—and widespread connectivity throughout Shawnee—will be a great complement to the great work the City is already doing,” says Google Fiber Community Manager Rachel Hack.

Google says that they don’t yet have an estimate on when things will get underway.

Today’s announcement comes during a period of many expansion announcement for Google Fiber. Last month, Google announced that Fiber would we coming to Austin, Texas by mid-2014. Less than two weeks later, it was Provo, Utah that was added to the list.

On the heels of Google’s 1Gbps advances, other ISPs have announced plans to up their game. We’ve just recently seen ISPs in Vermont and Tennessee detail plans for Gigabit internet. Not to be outdone, AT&T has also announced plans to build a 1Gbps Fiber network in Austin. Call it the Google Fiber effect, but it has people thinking. And acting.

[Image via Facebook]

Ars Technica reports that Sabam, the Belgian equivalent of the RIAA, have taken Belgium’s ISPs to court demanding they pay 3.4 percent of what they get from customers to content owners. In other words, Sabam is suggesting that ISPs pay an Internet tax to make up for what it perceives as lost revenue due to piracy.

Apparently, Sabam has been trying to get reach an agreement with ISPs over such a “tax” since 2011. It only brought the matter to the courts when the deal fell through. ISPs are saying an Internet tax to be paid to content owners “lacks any legal basis,” but content owners obviously don’t think that way.

Now, this situation brings up a really intriguing concept. Would you be willing to pay a few extra dollars per month on your Internet bill to continue pirating content? Even if you didn’t pirate content yourself, you would still be paying for those who did. Would that be fair to all the people who buy their content from legitimate sources? Such a tax would remove the need for efforts like the Copyright Alert System and other three/six strikes systems that punish Internet users for downloading pirated content.

Of course, the flip side to such a “tax” is that it would embolden content owners and other industries to demand similar fees from ISPs. ISPs would then pass off the extra cost to the consumer resulting in even more expensive monthly subscription fees.

Still, it’s an interesting proposal – is there a way to only charge those who pirate to satisfy content owners without threatening the sanctity of the Internet? Some have suggested that torrent trackers go private, start charging a monthly fee to downloaders, and pay those fees directly to content owners. It sounds good on paper, but content owners probably wouldn’t go for it. They’re already neurotic about people promoting content on BitTorrent so I highly doubt they would be fine with supporting “paid piracy.”

TorrentFreak reports that The Pirate Bay has moved yet again. Those looking for the site will now be directed to a .sx domain. The .sx TLD belongs to the small island nation of Sint Maarten, a constituent country owned by both The Netherlands and France.

So, what prompted the move to a new domain? It seems that the Swedish authorities have finally moved to take the .se domain that The Pirate Bay operated under for over a year. While they were at it, the authorities also filed a motion to seize the .is domain that The Pirate Bay recently moved to last week.

The folks behind The Pirate Bay saw this coming earlier this year, and have long since vacated the .se domain. Those visiting the site’s .se domain will be redirected to the new .sx domain though. If the authorities are successful in seizing the domain, those visiting the .se or .is domains will no longer be automatically redirected to whichever home The Pirate Bay decides to move to.

Of course, this latest development might bring a novel legal fight to the forefront as Sweden argues it has jurisdiction over the .is domain because it’s owned by a Swedish national. The company that operates the .is domain – INSIC – told TorrentFreak that Sweden’s argument may not hold much weight in court because the domain is still owned by INSIC, an Icelandic company subject only to Icelandic laws.

In short, The Pirate Bay might get to keep the its .is domain if Sweden’s jurisdiction argument doesn’t hold up in court. Even if it does, The Pirate Bay can fall back on its new .sx domain. If that fails, The Pirate Bay still has hundreds of TLDs in which it can fall back on. Like I said last year, The Pirate Bay is in a war of attrition and it’s winning.

Today, the company announced a pilot program for the Nielsen Digital Program Ratings which will track TV content viewed online. The pilot starts with a handful of big-name partners – A+E, ABC, AOL, CBS, The CW, Discovery Communications, FOX, NBC and Univision. The pilot is set to begin in May and run through July, but Nielsen is already announcing that the Digital Program Ratings will see a commercial launch. The pilot program is simply serving to “fine-tune” Nielsen’s methods before they hit primetime, or, later streamed on the internet time – whatever.

“The pilot for Nielsen Digital Program Ratings is a major milestone for the industry,” said Eric Solomon, SVP for Global Digital Audience Measurement at Nielsen. “As a companion product to Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings, Nielsen Digital Program Ratings will enable clients to better understand the online audience for their programming by harnessing the same methodology Nielsen already uses to measure the audience for related advertising.”

Nielsen says that they will start by measuring TV content viewed online, on computers. For instance, CBS will be able to see Nielsen’s numbers for how many streams their online content got on their official site. During the pilot, initial results will only be shared with clients, but Nielsen hopes to make the data public when the program sees a full launch later this year.

Of course, Nielsen plans to expand the program to “additional content types and devices” in the future. So we’re talking streams from sites like Hulu or YouTube, made on and iPad or Xbox.

Nielsen already has an presence in online metrics, including web content (YouTube videos and such). They also track websites based on visitors. This pilot program marks their first foray into tracking online streams of traditional TV content, however.

“The potential to measure video viewing of specific programs on linear TV as well as the Internet is significant,” said Alan Wurtzel, President of Research and Media Development, NBCUniversal. “It’s an important step toward reaching the ‘holy grail’ of true cross-platform measurement.”

It’s an interesting move from Nielsen, but the online viewership tracking won’t really come into its true form until Nielsen is measuring all types of online TV streaming across all types of devices. Although Nielsen is just announcing this pilot program, it’s clear that full inclusion is what they envision.