Comcast Apologizes For Super Bowl Porn Glitch 526
DrinkDr.Pepper writes "Just after the last touchdown by the Cardinals, with 3 minutes to go in the game, approximately 30 seconds of pornographic material was shown, seen by an unknown number of Comcast customers in Tucson, Arizona who were watching the game in standard definition. Comcast has apologized (they used the word 'mortified') and is issuing a $10 credit to any customer who claims to have been impacted. Various news accounts suggest that the incident was a malicious act, but no one knows how it was done or by whom."
Is there a difference? (Score:5, Interesting)
With the Superbowl commercials being what they were this year, I'm surprised anyone noticed the difference. GoDaddy in particular is getting out of hand, though I was not impressed by the Doritos or NBC commercials either. (At least the Conan commercial was just amusing innuendo.) All around, it was a rather embarrassing year to be watching the Superbowl with the family.
Irony... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a broadcast. It may invoke revenue clauses. (Score:5, Interesting)
Laugh about the porn clip (I did, here in Tucson, I yelled "FTW!")
But depending on the origin of the video, Comcast may be on a very real hook for broadcasting copyrighted material without license, and could conceivably be exposed to distribution royalties for a much larger audience than the one that is supposed to be limited to a specific, accountable pay-per-view arrangement.
I would be very surprised if lawyers were not working this out in a damage control mode.
Malicious or ignorant? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:isn't this going to get them fined? (Score:2, Interesting)
I could see someone sueing them under the pretense "my baby got scarred from this".
This has happened before with Comcast (Score:3, Interesting)
comcastsuperbowlporn.com traffic (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.intotemptation.net/2009/02/03/super-bowl-porn-postmortem/ [intotemptation.net]
Unfortunately for him ... he had no plan to monetize the traffic at all.
How fast do you think traffic will drop off? My guess is ... down 80 percent in 30 days ...
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:2, Interesting)
I would like to point out that it used to be standard for a 20-year-old to marry a 12-14-year-old and start having sex, and she'd have a baby a year or so in. We teach our kids about sex in school, at 9; they have to wait 9 more years before they're "ready for" actual pictures of it, according to the law. In Nevada you can have sex with a 14 year old if you're 35, but you go to jail if you show her a picture of your penis.
There's knee-jerk reactions in both directions here, both on the fundamental "SHIELD ANYONE UNDER 90 FROM PORNOGRAPHY" (yes we have people trying to BAN ALL PORN and all possession of porn) level and on the "in nature you'd see naked people all the time, we invented clothes to deal with the cold and used to have sex in community caves" level. Be mindful of the arguments and of the realities when you're engaged in these discussions.
Re:I think (Score:4, Interesting)
Our brains are hard-wired for taboos because they helped primitive societies avoid disasters.
There is a lot of "noise" in the taboo "signal", for example: taboo words. But some taboos (against incest, or eating certain things) were socially useful. Even the common taboo against homosexual sex could have been beneficial to primitive societies because such practices were significantly more likely to spread disease through the population. Obviously, modern medicine makes this a non-issue, today.
I would say it is unrealistic to expect a society to have no useless taboos, because they are physically part of our brains. But if we stop using government to enforce useless taboos, we will have advanced.
Re:I think (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Other TV hacks (Score:3, Interesting)
What about Spaghetti Cat? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMyHuCVaRaE [youtube.com]
A view from Europe (Score:5, Interesting)
PS - if you need Cheerleaders, you don't have an atmosphere.
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Malicious or ignorant? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey, since yours is the only comment modded 4 or higher with any technical knowledge, I have a question for you. We got my mom an HDTV a couple years ago, and she was only paying for basic cable, no digital boxes in the house at all. When we set it up, I did a "channel scan" and the TV picked up some HD channels with numbers like 121.1 (as an example). Many of these were just the big networks HD feeds, like ABC, CBS, etc. But there was a block of channels even higher up that were HD movies. And we'd be watching them, and then all of a sudden they'd flip to a different movie, or rewind itself and play again. I guess we were 'intercepting' some neighbors' on-demand movies. Could this be what happened in AZ during the superbowl? For all I know, that's what you just described, so pardon my ignorance.
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
Injecting signals into cable TV (Score:4, Interesting)
Although the tap to each home attenuates the signal quite a bit, it is possible for people to inject signals into the cable system. It won't go beyond the first amplifier unless its frequency is in the uplink band and that signal won't be redistributed. But it does mean people can distribute weak signals around their neighborhood. On frequencies the cable company isn't using, it won't take a lot of signal to communicate with your neighbors. For example you could run your own neighborhood LAN over the cable wires.
It would take a LOT of signal power to take over an existing signal. You'd have to boost it as much as the attenuator tap reduces it, plus the additional amount to take over the signal on that channel. But it would be possible. So what I'm curious about is just how widespread this porn was seen in Tuscon.