Olympics to Have Live Online Coverage, But Not For Americans

Rytsarsky writes "According to this AP story (mirror), live video from the Olympics will be viewable online. However, 'the footage will be highly restricted to protect lucrative broadcast contracts, which are sold by territory - $793 million paid by NBC alone. Web sites must employ technology to block viewers from outside their home countries, so U.S. Web surfers won't benefit from the BBC's live coverage. They'll have to settle for highlights posted after NBC broadcasts, which are already largely tape-delayed.'" Interestingly, this AP wire story was picked up by CNN.com (it was at this URL and this URL), ran for a few hours, and now has been removed - I guess CNN didn't think it was newsworthy. *shrug*

Re:This is what Open Proxies are for

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not necessarily(sp?) true. First of all, a proxy cannot handle the requests for all the traffic (most likely , as most proxies are slow). Secondly, many irc servers and other sites nowadays can traceback through a proxy to detect the original ip of the client.

I had a user who was banned and tried using proxies for IE and it still would not let him connect =)

Re:This is what Open Proxies are for

[gorbachev]

That's why you check in advance whether the open proxy reveals the originating IP address or not.

If the proxy is slow, use another one. I do it all the time.

My home country's laws about alocohol advertising used to require advertisers to block all access to websites advertising alcoholic products produced in my country to the residents of the country. All foreigners could access the sites all they could. It really didn't take long to find an open proxy outside the borders to check out what was on the site (wasn't worth the effort).

Re:This is what Open Proxies are for

[wfberg]

That's why you check in advance whether the open proxy reveals the originating IP address or not.


IRC servers check to see whether your connection is from an open proxy by connecting to it/portscanning; by definition IRC connections don't contain HTTP headers that reveal the originating IP address.

Re:This is what Open Proxies are for

[gorbachev]

I used to work for a company that had proxy servers in all continents. The US proxies were configured to block just about everything, but not access to the other proxy servers. Kaching! :)

Anytime I couldn't get to a site I needed to (at one point, they blocked every commerce site out there, including book stores I was using to buy books I needed for work), I would just point my browser to one of the foreign proxies.

Worked for all the IM clients as well. US proxy blocked all IM traffic, the foreign ones didn't.

Re:Deep Throat said ...

[Santana]

It has always been so since the begining

español [rd.com]

English [rd-india.com]

All the myths around Olympics ("to win is not important", "amateurs only", "the torch", "the olympic spirit") was invented by Pierre de Coubertin who founded the modern Olympic Games

Re:Should this be YRO?

[NanoGator]

"Paying the bills for what exactly?"

Television networks like NBC make money from advertisers, remember?

Re:Should this be YRO?

[Gadzinka]

Yeah, sure, advertising companies are paying for sports events. Perheaps even for training of the sportsmen?

Couple of years ago there was quite a scandal, when Polsat (commercial TV in Poland) absurdely expensive exclusive rights for FIFA World Cup and decided they will air the coverage only on their encrypted, subscription-only digital satelite platform. They imagined World Cup as a huge drive to sell subscriptions.

Among the arguments why this is bad was one fact: in football (or should I say soccer?) over 50% of money for the clubs comes from public, one way or another, advertisers give much less money, and only for best sportsmen at the peak of their career. I've been told that in other sports (the ones that are on Olympics, I guess) public/adv funds are more like 70/30 or even higher.

So, who pays the bill for this event...?

To finish the story, state owned public television secured the transmissions by some kind of mandatory licensing.

Robert

Re:This is what Open Proxies are for

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

How do you find an open proxy that's fast enough for streaming video? I can hardly find one that's fast enough to use the web comfortably.

That's because they are all loaded down with spam transmision.

Is this really a big deal?

[eskwayrd]

'live' means while it happens. The bulk of Olympic events will take place during daylight hours in Greece. That's middle of the night in North America.

Folks who work regular hours, have families, etc. will only be able to appreciate video from the Olympics well after the events are over.

Unless I'm missing something, those folks outnumber night shift workers, kids with nothing better to do, and (gasp) geeks who decide not to visit the 'big room' because it's too bright. And by a wide margin.

Re:This is what Open Proxies are for

[wfberg]

Methinks I should elaborate. Scanning for open proxies is NOT a feature of the IRC protocol. IRC servers simply scan for open proxies in the same way people that generate those open proxies lists do. They connect to ports that are known to be used by proxy services.

Once you connect to a modern IRC network, the IP you're using will be portscanned. If it finds any services listening on known proxy ports (i.e. open proxies) the IRC server won't let you connect because you may be using an open proxy.

(If you're using a non-open proxy, i.e. one that doesn't allow connections from everyone, or more specifically, from the server that's trying to portscan you, you can still connect).

They don't retrieve the originally originating IP, they just look at where the connection is apparently coming from, and if it's a proxy, refuse the traffic precisely because it cloaks the origins.

There is no voodoo involved.

Re:It's all about the money...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's beyond a trademark, at least in USA. It's specially protected by Act of Congress. That's what the 36 USC 380 in addition to the marca registrada on the rings, word "Olympic*", phrase "altius fortius*" etc. The rationale is that the activities of the USOC, said to be primarily that of training athletes, is not financed with federal funds, as it is in most other countries, and therefore freed the USOC to raise money however it saw fit. Congress has protected other trademarks such as the Red Cross, Daughters of the American Revolution, etc, see here: [dnso.org] but none so openly profitable as the Olympic Committee.

Re:Work Around?

[zx75]

First step towards doing so... Remember that Canadian addresses do not have zip codes!

They are postal codes, and they are a completely different formatting than the US zip.

No tape delay on CBC

[KenAndCorey]

CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) normally shows the Olympics [www.cbc.ca] without a delay. I know this television channel is often available in the United States, especially those near the Canadian border.

Re:Live For Americans with Tivo

[dnoyeb]

Well this whole situation sucked 4 years ago. They are not even covering all events, and that means if they dont cover it, you CAN'T see it in USA.

Its fucking annoying.

I could not watch Tae Kwon Do last year because of this Bullshit.

WTF are the olympics about, profit?

Damn the IOC, and the money hearders.

I dont have such friends in foreign countries, except perhaps Canada, and i just have to be lucky to see it on Canadian channels...

ASS HOLES!

Re:This is what Open Proxies are for

[kerincosford]

More than that, the BBC will almost certainly handle this in the same way that they've handled existing BBC Broadband streams - access will only be available to customers of a (long) list of UK ISPs, who also peer the content. It works very well for the BBC and ISPs alike - the BBC can avoid crippling bandwidth costs, and can't be accused of using public money to provide TV to the world at large, while pretty much every UK ISP can boast about their "massive selection of broadband content".

Re:Live For Americans with Tivo

[roger_and_out]

I really feel sorry for you Americans. It was my misfortune to be staying in NC during the '96 Olympic Games. After the luxury of the BBC's coverage, what I got to see from Atlanta was severely limited and very censored. I say censored because if a sport didn't have an American competing in it, or the American competitor was not doing well, THEN IT DIDN'T GET SHOWN.

OK, so the BBC's output is heavily UK biased but that is understandable and expected. But,the BBC covered minority sports as well as the main ones. The coverage went out over two channels. There were hundreds of hours of LIVE coverage. (Almost ALL the US coverage was from tape and heavily edited.) How many of you from the US realise that there are eighteen hours a day of action from the games almost every day?

Was I glad to get back to the UK for the last three days of competition? Oh yes!