Slashdot Mirror
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*
Will the Ruling help Tivo owners across national boarders?
They were right.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Just use an open proxy in Europe and you'll be wathing the games live as well.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Should we let Ad companies dictate not only what we can or cannot see on televison, but what we can, or cannot access via Interent?
These ad guys go to far, and, of course, the media will cover up stuff like that. Free press my ass.
MLB.com does this for their game broadcasts too. I'd gladly pay for a subscription so I could watch the game when I'm at work or on the road.
The point of watching it on the web is that I don't have a TV available, so I'm willing to put up with the crappy quality, high bandwidth, etc. of an Internet broadcast.
If I had a TV, I'd watch that instead. Blackouts are meant to help ticket sales, or to push people into watching the TV station that's paying for the rights. But if TV isn't an option, then I go for radio or internet.
Can we expect to see these available for download with BT? Almost every other TV show is...
Stickin' it to The Man whenever and wherever possible!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
"Follow the money."
At least since Los Angeles in 1984 (which is as long as I've been following it), it hasn't been about sport or competition or peace.
It's been about bribery, profits, and raking in the dough.
So does any of this surprise us?
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
Where's the time that the Olympics were about sport. Now it's all about money. Look at the corruption scandal which was brought out by BBC, the numerous cases of doping discovered recently (in cycling, athletics, soccer,...). And now this, people cannot even have Free access to images about the event, just because some people again want to get more money out of it. It's sad.
IIRC, icravetv.com used a zip code based system to identify their "legal" (canadian) users from their "illegal" (american) users. Type in a Canadian zip code and off you go.
On top of that, U.S. viewers must verify their identity using a credit card from Visa - an NBC advertiser - though they will not be charged.
Not a Visa cardholder? You're out of luck.
Interesting but not surprising. I'm surprised you don't have to prove you were one of the 8% of the population that ate at McDonalds that day...
Some European broadcasters are limiting video to high-speed, broadband customers only, seeking to keep foreigners from connecting via international phone calls.
Oh fuck you, give me a break, no one is going to download Olympics video over dialup via an international call. It's just not worth it. Perhaps AmEx would love for you to pay for that call on their card?
"Of course you get frustrated you can't do everything you want, but compared to four years ago, this is incredibly much better," said Kristian Elster, who works on the Web site for Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
Maybe in Norway you can't see the shit on TV. NBC comes over the air here and you see a ton of stuff. Most of the really boring shit is on during the day and they play the important races at prime time (live or not). Watching video via the net doesn't impress me.
Fans are the ultimate winners, Joerg said. Even with some 12,000 hours of total TV coverage across Europe, "you cannot cover all," he said. "Broadband and mobile technology can complement the traditional television coverage."
No you can't and most of it sucks anyway. What's shown is generally the important/good stuff. At least in my experience. 1250 hours of coverage is a lot.
Wow.
Usually I support the pirates and get pretty beat up around here.
Now I'm looking at a full page of posts detailing how to infringe on these distribution rights.
Is this a major flip-flop or are these posters different from the usual crowd around here?
stick it to the man!
free the bits!
of us Americans when I say, "That sucks."
These aren't the sigs you're looking for.
Alright slashdotters! You just solved Katie Jones' domain name dispute. Where are you going next? To the Olympic coverage problem!!!
so, what's to stop a high-speed provider in the UK from setting up a squid proxy with the "forwarded_for off" line in the config? I mean, come on, really this is utterly retarded.
"This above all, to thine own self be true"
This is the first time I've ever considered using a proxy outside the US to view content. Isn't usually the other way around?
Otherwise, maybe you could watching BBC live olympic coverage online too.
Thats fine I suppose....
But is it really that important?
I look at it this way... if the people who run the olympics are so deeply in corperate broadcasters pcokets that they are willing to put up restrictions like this... do I even want to give them the benefit of watching?
I think not. I thought it was bad enough when I realised how political the whole Olympic Games were. Now that it seems to be going more and more corperate, its finnaly the last straw.
I will not be watching a single Olympic event, on the internet, on TV, hearing it on the radio etc. They are, as far as I am concerned, a complete non-event so much so that they may as well not even happen. The entire circus is dead to me.
I shall, from this day forward acknoledge the olympics in only 2 ways.
1. As a part of History. Obviously they happened. They caused traffic jams in whatever city they were in, etc.
2. I shall henceforth encourage all others who mention the Olympics to join me in not watching it.
Wont you join me too? Does it really matter? Sure its cool to watch people run around and compete at physical things, but is it really worth supporting these large corperations that are happy to engage in agreements that take away your choice as a consumer just to squeeze a few more dollars into their already overflowing coffers?
This is simple greed, and I have a personal problem with it. Hence, I will do something that even the libertarians out there can't disagree with. I am voting with my eyes and my dollars. I am not watching the olympics and avoiding anything that supports is.
Its not that this is the be all nd end all, it was entirely too nationalistic and corperate long before this, this is just the straw that broke this camels back.
Wont you join me?
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
"He's not fucking smart enough to think that we need to play perestroika with the Olympics"
Perhaps you meant 'glasnost'?
And no, I'm not talking about the Olympic story.
Since when does a CNN story VANISH?
I hate to put on the tinfoil hat, but CNN is a division of Time/Warner, one of the monstrously-huge media entities trying to get so-called "intellectual property" the same status as "real estate" - they want a piece of "intellectual property" to be eternal, like land, where it can be kept - and milked - forever, without any expiration.
They clearly want to profit forever off all works that are created, and they want to use technology to do it, and they want to force the use of technology through legal means. In short, they want to sell you a license to think.
Now, let's look at CNN: this is a gigantic news organization that is the main source of news for millions of Americans that seems to have yanked a relatively innoculous story about "intellectual property."
I've heard of CNN changing stories, and moving them, but I've never seen once totally removed - and a search of CNN for keywords in the original AP article finds nothing.
It is very clear that the MPAA, RIAA and other gigantic entities that want much more restrictive laws on copyright and viewing licenses would prefer to have these laws passed without reference to the American public.
They don't want people to know what they are doing until it is done.
Now, we have a relatively tame story about Olympics, but just interesting enough to perhaps make Joe Six-Pack think for a moment, "Hey, why to those Frogs and Brits get to see stuff that I have to pay for?"
Is it possible that this is why the story was removed?
Could CNN be filtering news that could irritate the American masses into seeing that the Fair Use Doctrine, Limited Copyrights and a cornucopia of other rights currently enjoyed by Americans are slipping away?
That scares me.
You don't have rights to see anything on television. It's a privilege, a service provided by private companies.
Then you mention "free press" which is irrelevant, because this isn't the government suppressing anything.
Isn't tax payer money going to support our USA teams? If so I think we have a basic right to see them perform.
I'm a little upset that the olympics is now becoming a pay per view type event with exclusive deals to big companies to distribute. This was once an event that unified the world in healthy competition, all in good fun. Now it's gone corporate and is gouging people.
I'll admit I could care less about a lot of the events, but that's possibly just because I never get to see them and appreciate them. As it is, I never know what events are going on or when. The athletes I don't know by name etc etc.
The olympics IMHO has a PR problem. They are failing to reach younger folks who would normally be the ones to care about this and are therefore losing ground to the X Games and similar events. I don't even know anyone these days that gives a shit about the olympics. Most people I talk to about it just shrug and forget it.
Ok, so we just bounce off somewhere overseas and it wont know the difference..
They do this now with races, they black out the local area and penalize the locals that dont get to go... but let everyone else in the world see what is happening..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What's boring to NBC and you may be quite interesting to another American. Of course, NBC will broadcast those sports that appeal to the largest group of American TV watchers. But that shouldn't give them the right to totally prevent others from watching other sports. At least, they wouldn't be given this right in a free country.
The CNN execs probably decided it would play better on CNN International, rather than add to the antiAmerican bashing by the liberal media.
I'm curious. What are you thinking of? I've seen relatively little bashing of America by the American media. Criticism of Bush, sure, but he's hardly America.
If I criticize one of my town official's actions, am I bashing my town?
May we never see th
2: I think the Olympics are a tedious pile of shite, so I don't have to!
(Wait, that means the BBC has blown an ungodly amount of money on something I have no interest in, and it'll be sport, sport, sport all summer long... So, actually, no changes there. Carry on!)
You must think in Russian.
What you think sucks is probably what I want to watch.
I don't give a damn about track and field, but just TRY to watch a reasonable amount of coverage for cycling.
Same with the winter olympics. They should change it to the "Figure Skating and Snow Skiing World Championships", because that's all you ever see. More bobsled. More luge. More biathlon.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The Olympics have always been broadcast in the US with substandard coverage and a ridiculously low useful-programming-to-commercials ratio. Want to watch an actual long-distance track event? You're SOL. Want to see an event before hearing the results? If it's deemed ratings-worthy, you'll have to wait for prime time. And why? So that execs can line their pockets with ad revenue. There is no freedom of the press because corporations run the country. When are consumers going to stand up and say that they've had enough of this? It's ridiculous! Seriously, watch a taped broadcast of anything from 10 years ago. There are less commercials per break, and less commercial breaks per show. We're getting less and less while networks make more and more, and why? Because no one does anything about it! Now NBC has a monopoly on Olympic coverage in the US and they're actively preventing anyone from circumventing the monopoly. I don't know about anyone else, but I, for one, will be streaming Olympic coverage as much as possible, even if I'm not watching it, as a sort of silent protest.
This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
I mean seriously, all you need is another geek in another country to put up a proxy server on a high speed connection and we have video. Or just stream it on-line themselves with some of the P2P streams out there.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Since its their page, and they are under NO legal obligation to retain them, they can pull any story at any time.
This is a danger of online media, its a bit harder to pull a story out of a newspaper after its in the subscribers hands..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's been my observation that of the 1250 hours of broadcast Olympic 'coverage' that the average US citizen has available to them during the Olympics, less than 10% of that time is actual event coverage.
I will grant that I really do not want to see each elimination heat of the 1600 meter relay. I suspect that watching a bunch of guys and galls standing and shooting at targets for hours at a time would probably get old as well. (For a lot of people anyway.)
What gets really old for me however is watching 2 hours of interviews, "background" material, someone pacing an athlete during his or her training in the years before while some narrator discloses how this athlete fought tooth and nail from some long ago disaster. All leading up to a 10 minute tape delayed presentation of the athlete finishing whatever event he or she was a part of, with a 5 minute tape delayed award ceremony with the (you probably never heard of this person more than 3 hours ago) now celebrity athlete being one of the three medalion winners (or part of one of the teams on the stairs.)
Of course that two hours of 'history' is part of four hours of time, the other half of the time being spent providing ad space for the Olympic sponsors. After the half hour spent for the "main event" (10 min of event, 5 min of Awards, 15 min of ads) you might get part of a half hour to wrapup that 'highlights' some of the other events that happened that day, mostly to explain how whichever US athlete was in the event did that day. (But only if they came in close to or as a medalist, and only if whatever producer happens to be running the show that night thinks the event might interest someone with his or her own narrow view of what the Olympics should be.)
1250 'hours' of 'coverage' is probably Wonderful TV, but what the US population sees is hardly coverage of the Olympics.
Then again, that's my opinion.
-Rusty
You never know...
No no. Free has nothing to do with media coverage of an event. A free market causes control of the event by a single entity because they were willing to pay for it.
Free means that you can leave this country at your own will to watch them live in Athens.
Isn't that our airwaves use to broadcast television?
Looks good for your age..
In other news... ;)
:) ;)
The Olympic Games are off-limits to those wearing clothing clearly sporting logos or slogans of companies who are direct competitors of companies sponsoring The Olympic Games.
This is a measure mostly aimed towards preventing a group of people wearing shirts that would spell out a company name which would be clearly visible in any televised broadcast, but e.g. a cap sporting Pepsi, when Coca~Cola is the sponsor, would be forbidden as well. Or vice-versa, can't say I care which one's sponsoring
In additional news, athletes are once again told not to write about the olympics online. This is the same measure taken last time around in Australia - though not enforced too strictly.
And in entirely unrelated news, but on a level of "Boohoo - us poor Americans"
Boohoo, us poor rest-of-the-worlders - we can't bid on Google IPO stock
Global company - global search engine - Americans First (Only?)
Why bother watching it in the first place? It's become so commercial that the athletic spirit it's supposed to embody seems to have been lost to an orgy of advertising and product endorsements (for the people who win the medals). Thanks but no thanks. I'd rather play UT 2004 than sit through the olypics.
Jim Lynch
Tech Analyst and Community Manager
"...aren't most proxies open by mistake? And you'll get heavily fined (or worse) for using them? _ Lemme guess... you work for NBC?
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
'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.
eskwayrd = m^2c^4
I, however, find it incredible that NBC would offer "1,210 hours of coverage spread across NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, USA, Telemundo and a high-definition channel" and none of it live. All I'm going to see is whatever bits of the highlights-they-deign-offer-us-in-lieu-of-full-cov erage [broken /. lameness filter turned 'coverage' into 'cov erage'] that happen to be on as I'm surfing past NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, and USA on my way to something worth watching (we don't get Telemundo or any high-def channels).
NBC offers the worst sports coverage of any American network, so naturally they get the Olympics. The fact that the IOC cares more about the $$$ than the quality of the coverage speaks volumes about the true nature of the Olympics. If I wanted delayed coverage I'd read about it in tomorrow's newspaper, which is exactly what I will do for the few sports I care about. And I'll bet I get the results from the newspapers before NBC shows us the highlights.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) normally shows the Olympics without a delay. I know this television channel is often available in the United States, especially those near the Canadian border.
Come on, they can't offer live coverage, what if a terrorist showed a thigh on the screen ? Or if women were shown in skintight swimsuits ?
THINK OF THE CHILDREN !
hah!
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
*I* pay the bills, monthly through my cable channel. If that's not enough to support the networks, I'd vastly prefer that they cut out ads and increase prices, giving me the option to simply pay or go without. That the ad companies hand money to the networks does not give them the moral high ground; they're not doing us any favors, they're leeching off of society. The advertisers vastly prefer the status quo, and are terrified of the day when they won't be given the chance to shove ads down the world's throat.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Actually didn't Mr. Bush get like 1200 on
his SAT's? I wish people would stop
saying he's stupid or an idiot. Sure he
may have a speech inpediment but like millions
of other Americans he has found a way to succeed
regardless of that. Mr. Bush knows exactly
what he is doing. He is a very intelligent
man and it is his decision to disregard
the environment, squash scientific and medical
research, withhold basic human rights from
large subsects of the American population,
erode our constitutional liberties, and I also
believe (and have believed since the day he
was elected) that he ALWAYS had the intention
of invading Iraq. As for that often maligned
peice of legislation, the Patriot act...do
you really think that they really threw that
together all of a sudden as a result of
the terroist attacks in New York, Washington D.C.
and in Pennsylvania? Nope, they had that
ready and waiting for the opportunity to
introduce it and it would be likely to be passed.
Ask yourself...what were they waiting for.
Why did they introduce such a controversial
piece of legislation at the time of a national
crisus?
Bush knows exactly what he is doing.
I'm not going to stoop to calling him an
asshole or a jerk but I wonder why millions
of people are so fooled by this man. How
could a cretin fool so many people, to the
point they are willing to put their vote down
for him?