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JumpTV Hopes to Succeed where ICraveTV failed.
SubtleNuance writes "32BitsOnline is reporting in this article that a Montreal, Canada startup called JumpTV.com will launch a service similar to the foiled ICraveTV.com. Using BorderControl.com, a more robust -and controversial- system of assuring a users geographical location, the startup is hoping to succeed where its predecessor failed." It figures out where you are (based on your IP) and then gives you television from you area (if its got it) in the form of a an online VCR. How long will this one last?
Ask yourself: what is JumpTV trying to do? Are they implementing a solution that will classify visitors according to political boundries with a 100% accuracy rate? Or, are they simply doing this to give the appearance of implementing such a solution, in order to avoid future liability?
Clearly in this situation, it's the latter. Tech companies often have to do lame things just to avoid liability, and this is one of those cases. The question is, will a court of law recognize the effort as sufficient? My guess is no, as the solution they offer can easily be circumvented (the animated flags on bordercontrol.com sure are pretty, though).
It was not so much the fact that non-Canadians could receive Canadian TV transmissions - oh, I'm sure those re-transmission issues still bothered American broadcasters and content providers, but it wasn't the killer issue.
No, what got iCraveTV in the end was the ad revenue. There were ads around the iCraveTV window, and not a cent of it was going back to the copyright holders in any way, shape, or form. iCraveTV was profiting off copyrighted works without the holders' permission, and that is what got them in the end.
JumpTV is doing things the "right way" in the eyes of the major content providers by getting copyright approval the same way the cable companies are classed up here - as retransmitters. They'll pay fees into a communal royalty fund all cable companies dump money into.
Now, from what I've read of the posts here, it looks like the BorderControl system is easily fooled. Gee, there's a shock. They're in "test" mode right now, so they may work these issues out by launch in 2001.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Why don't these people court the networks and do it right?
Well, they are going to the Copyright Board to get approval; if they get it, the company will pay a royalty into the same fund the cable companies dump money into.
For that matter, why aren't there US network affiliates in Canada?
In fact, there used to be a couple affiliates in Ontario back in the '50's. They were eventually purchased by either CBC or CTV (I forget that detail), but a lot of Canadians can still receive US TV signals if they live near the border; Torontonians can receive Buffalo signals, and Windsor/Essex County is absolutely lousy with Detroit stations. Many cable provider here in Southern and Central Ontario (and almost certainly BC) carry US network affiliates out of the nearest US city, and pretty much every provider in Canada carries the so-called "superstations," [opinion]which tend to suck if you ask me.[/opinion]
I doubt a US affiliate could exist today in the current regulatory environment; it would somehow have to broadcast 50% Canadian content based on CRTC regs. Unless Canadian-produced TV shows start taking over US TV, this probably wouldn't happen.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Don't forget the classic form, 31337.
- Moebius (2krad4u)
Does the station that provides local content need to be a network affiliate? The cable systems in my region got together and funded a cable channel that provides local news and weather, sort of a local version of CNN.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I think most people here DO get it. That's the point. They're trying to solve a legal problem with a technical solution. It's almost always FUNNY when people do this.
Besides that, they're trying to cover themselves legally in a country where "justice" is increasingly up for sale to the highest bidder. They're up against CBS, NBC, FOX, etc. They're GOING to lose. If they did real-time DNA checks to a birth records database, they would STILL lose because the big companies would just appeal to a judge they've bought out.
BTW: What does it take for me to move north of the border? It seems to be an increasingly appealing proposition these last few years.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Why the heck would I want to go onto the web to watch my local stations when I have a perfectly good IdiotBox to do that with?
This is the sort of technology which will obviously be favored by local broadcasting (which are still firmly rooted in a 1920's frame of mind), worried that their lose viewers to other broadcasters in other markets. What only seems fair if the locals suck and don't want to take the risk of changing content and the way to they provide it.
It would be too bad if local businesses get into webcasting and then beg the government to block my access to webcasts from outside my area. If this isn't a violation of my rights, it should be.
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
For that matter, why aren't there US network affiliates in Canada?
:9
I wasn't aware that candians had the same low standards for television content that US audiences do.
I lived in Michigan and could sometimes catch canadian TV, which often had many things on which were much cooler than I could find on local stations. At least Tim Horton's has finally crossed the border, now Michganders can enjoy some real donuts!
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Although with the olympics going on, I wouldn't mind actually having a television
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Actually I think just about every cable company in Canada carries US network stations, no matter what city you are in. For example here in Alberta every city, including Edmonton which couldn't even pull in a ghost of a signal from south of the border, carries a full raft of channels from Spokane, Washigton. In fact the PBS station in Spokane gets the majority of their viewer donated funding from Albertans.
In Vancouver, the only US signal you can get by antenna is KVOS in Bellingham (which is actually kind of a Vancouver station - they originally had their studios in downtown Vancouver and when buying programming they must compete with the native Vancouver stations for market area rights). However the local cable carries 6 or 7 broadcast stations from Seattle/Tacoma.
(Conversely, the only Canadian station you can get on Seattle cable is CBC. They tried to remove it a few years ago but met with vocal protest from a group of loyal local CBC fans.)
So basically, any major city in Canada has all they major US networks available on cable, relayed from the nearest US city, no matter how far from the border they are.
Trickster Coyote
Are you ready for the red pill?
Ideology is for ideots.
Considering the fact that you can tunnel packets through a host in another geographical location using SSH or other methods, this method is inherently flawed.
For the Olympics, NBC has a deal with hundreds of American ISPs where they transmit the streams to the ISPs, whose customers are located only within the U.S. Perhaps JumpTV would have better success if they tried something like that, though I suspect they don't have the same clout that NBC does to get something like that implemented.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
What kind of dumbass VC would fund this?
Try to check them with 10.0.0.1 or 192.168.0.1. You are in -- Netherlands! :-)
Besides, if you use an anonymizer or a proxy server, it is its IP address, not yours that applies.
A snail-mail letter sent to your real street address in the right area with some activation code would do much better than this silly check.. Of course, then you ask your aunt in Montreal to forward this letter to you and you can see her TV channels etc..
Try med.harvard.edu, according to BorderControl.com it is in Morocco. Now, gettng private networks wrong is one thing, but this is kinda silly.
Y'know, Netherlands might not be so bad... I hear there's a lot of pr0n that's aired on normal TV over there...
;^)
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Jacco /var/log
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# cd
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
This should be used to authenticate country of origin?
From the article:
Fenton [the system administrator(sic!)] said he has tried many times to fool Border Control, but has yet to outsmart its massive database of Internet protocol (IP) addresses linked to geographic information. (Web surfers can test the technology themselves at http://www.bordercontrol.com/ )
And keeping geographical info on IP addresses in an apparently static database?
I can't explain all this otherwise -- it is just a joke. I don't know, who made the joke though -- 32bitsonline, this JumpTV, or the authors of this "Border Control".
Or do they really mean it?
Why do we need local network affiliate broadcasters to relay the network feed? Why not just provide the network feed to anyone who wants to watch or distribute it, provided they don't modify it without permission.
What happens when it becomes practical to distribute high quality video streams via the Internet? Canada blocks direct broadcast satellite transmissions from the USA, apparently because they can't regulate it and mandate "Canadian content". Why shouldn't I be able to watch the CBC and BBC, in addition to NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS and the other American networks. How about the goat pr0n channel from Tierra del Fuego?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
They don't want to say how they achieve this (it's their trade secret) but I would guess they are using the RIPE/ARIN etc. databases. I mean, the WHOIS databases and traceroute give me a fairly accurate indication of where the IP address is located, and at least they are free ;-)
Actually, they are giving away a hint about their procedure:
"It boils down to this: The first step is automatically building up different databases containing information about the 4.25 billion IP addresses available. On the basis of these databases, our input team makes an interpretation and a manual allocation for the different databases. These allocations are automatically checked for consistency and compared - once again automatically - with all available information".
They must have one hell of an NDA for their manual verification people ;-)
Jacco /var/log
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# cd
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
Why does nobody on Slashdot get it? Border Control isn't to block Americans from using JumpTV. It's to stop JumpTV from getting sued in the US (or at least, losing a lawsuit in the US). If JumpTV can demonstrate that they took reasonable measures to block Americans from using the service, they're homefree legally, and all that Big Media can do is go after American individuals who use the service (which they probably won't do, and may not even be able to do legally).
:-)
Is Border Control reasonable? Conceptually, it's a reasonable comprimise between usability and security. Anybody who knows what they're doing can use it, but then, I would hope that the more computer-savvy among us would be using their time more productively than TV. The implementation may suck, but that's probably mostly irrelevant legally (it will probably get fixed up with time).
We're now in a world were companies are forced to take measures they know will be ineffective, in order to satisfy legal requirements. It's not just the law that's moving too slowly (although it scares me even more when it moves too quickly)--society as a whole hasn't adjusted to the net. I can effectively "be" almost anywhere in the world in just a few seconds, at least to the extent that I can be doing things that are subject to the laws of different countries. The result is the vast number of logical inconsistancies and flaws in our social fabric.
The mess with intellectual property is one example. We've created an artificial scarcity of an unlimited resource (information) so that information will fit into traditional markets, which are the most efficient way of allocating scarce resources, but aren't so hot with unlimited resources.
It's funny that watching JumpTV from my place in Canada could be perfectly legal if I'm dialing into a Canadian ISP, but, if I forget to change my settings after a quick trip to the States, I could be committing a crime.
Just as a little tweak to all those Slashdotters south of the 49th parallel, have you noticed the recent trend towards greater 'Net freedom in Canada and less freedom in the US? I totally admire the US Constitution, and wish Canada had something just like it, but your government seems to be ignoring it more and more. By contrast, the Canadian government seems to be fairly with it when it comes to the Net. Here are some examples of Canadian freedom: the ruling that the CRTC (our FTC) can't regulate the 'Net, Ontario's encouraging citizens to use strong crypto, the CSE's Public Key Infrastructure project... The US has DMCA, COPA, COPPA, UCITA, and is also the home of the RIAA, the MPAA... Too bad about our taxes... Oh well, I guess you can always Blame Canada for all those copies of DeCSS hosted up here.
To all the nitpicky karma whores: if you find some minute flaw in my post, please don't flame the hell out of me for it--use your imagination to figure out what I meant, and just read things that way. I am so bloody sick of getting a billion replies because some inconsequential detail of my post was slightly wrong. Show some adaptability. And yes, I know about the Canadian Charter of Rights. Not quite the same as the Constitution. The charter starts by saying "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
> It figures out where you are (based on your IP)
> and then gives you television from you area (if
> its got it) in the form of a an online VCR.
Of course, I can get the local stations just using an antenna and my TV or my All-In-Wonder tuner.
What would be REALLY good is to be able to watch TV from Japan/Mexico/wherever they have _interesting_ shows, and that I would LOVE to be able to stream over the internet.
Of course, I suppose that people in other countries feel the same way about wanting to see American TV, which is what caused the whole problem with iCraveTV (since it interferes with the licensing fees US stations charge to foreign stations to be able to pay their shows).
Limiting the business plan to something that fits within the current legal situtation results (i.e., check location and only allow access to local stations), doesn't give any added value to what we have already. So, unless they have some other interesting ideas waiting in the wings, I can't really see them being able to attract too much interest.
An (admittedly cursory) glance at bordercontrol.com suggests that the bulk of their screening is done based solely on a user's IP address. Even that database is probably fallible, but that's beside the point.
You can tunnel your request through a host in another country via SSH. You can use proxies for Web stuff. All you need to do is to find someone who'll let you use their box for this -- it'll probably be on a fairly small scale, as bandwidth isn't always cheap. (I've a friend in Vancouver who'd probably be quite glad to let me use his DSL line for this. :)
And it'll be hard as $PROFANITY to stop this -- how can they know that my bud isn't actually using the service himself, as opposed to routing traffic down to me in Missouri? And even if they get all draconian on us and start blocking individual users, I've got other friends in other jurisdictions...
This is not gonna work. Sorry, JumpTV, you'd better skip down to live 5 of your business plan ("take the money we made from naive investors on our IPO and buy a small island named after some dead French saint") real quick-like.
knows where I am! It says my IP address of 10.1.1.43 is located in the Netherlands! I even tried one of my other IP addresses, 192.168.3.15, and it said I was in the Netherlands! That thing sure is smart!
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
The term "leet" is derived from the word "elite" .. which is pronounced "e-leet" .. hence the shortening.
.. if your board was "elite" that meant you carried pirated software, amongst other things such as cracking utilities and such.
.. in the early BBS days high ascii was used in certain cases, and now you will frequently see phrases such as "3y3 4m 4 l337 h4x0r!@$(%" ..
:)
The use of the word "leet" goes back to the days of BBSes (perhaps earlier, that's when I first heard it)
The phrase "leet" has evolved from the early use of the word "elite" and has shifted more towards script kiddies than piracy and real cracking, though it is still used freely in both respects. Also, as you pointed out, the use of 3's for e's goes back to the way these "leet" folk have continualy changed their "accent" in talking online
I know this is probably not the whole story, but its my part from my perspective.. I unfortunately have never been extremely 1337
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