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Wired on Defeating the Olympics Censorship
An anonymous reader writes "As discussed on Slashdot recently, Internet footage of Olympics events are being censored for US citizens. Wired.com is covering the issue in a recent story, discussing ways of defeating these measures. Duane Wessels, developer of the Squid caching proxy, and Len Sassaman, Mixmaster anonymity software author, are interviewed. Are they correct? Is geolocation content censorship impossible?"
yes.
but that doesn't mean that it doesn't work for the tv networks purposes(which is why these clausees that make bbc & etc limit the feeds only to their areas). their purpose is just to make it hard enough that the average customer will wait for the time delayed showing in the states rather than go on and somehow proxy it.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
There is a difference between a brutal, corrupt and oppresive force preventing the masses from knowing what their government are really up to, in order to prevent a revolution (censorship, a la China, North Korea, Fox News) and a broadcaster not being prepared to pay for the rights to Internet broadcast of somebody's legitimately owned IPR.
Grow up. This is not censorship. It's licensing. Confusing the two makes you look stupid, your arguments weak, and provides ammunition to those whom you may have a legitiamte gripe with regarding IPR whilst reducing the travesty of true censorship to something akin to you not being able to watch some TV.
I'm actually pretty disgusted that you've used the word censorship like this. This will get modded down as trolling, but I really think you guys need to get things into perspective. I feel sick.
Tossing around a word like "censorship" when it really does not apply only dilutes the term and renders it ineffective when you really do mean to use it.
NBC is airing full coverage every Olympic game somewhere here in the USA. Every hour during the day right now, there is coverage on at least one of the NBC-Universal networks which include NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, USA and Telemundo. Also, in areas where digital TV service is fully functional, NBC is providing a 24/7 HD feed, but that is only available to you if you have a digital TV decoder.
You don't need to pay NBC to get the digital service, but you do need to provide the hardware to get access to it, and you have to hope that your local station has done the same. DirecTV is also offering the digital feed on their service, but you must have an HD decoder for DirecTV and your local NBC station or stations must have signed off.
Censorship is the intentional destruction of information in order to kill off a taboo topic. That's not what's going on here, NBC is simply letting its business need to sell ad content affect in what ways they're distributing coverage. And part of that means that no Internet coverage from other nation's rightsholders can be tolerated.
If you're not NBC but ESPN, you must comply with NBC's rules and limits on the usage of the TV coverage to put highlights on SportsCenter. In fact, even if you're the sports reporter on an NBC affiliate station, you have to agree to those rules or not use them.
Sports highlights are not free. There are strings attached to their usage usually dictated by the league who wants the right mix of promotion of their sport while also not giving away the store when it comes to their TV rights money.
The NBC has a government supported monopoly over Olympic Broadcast in the US. They face no competition at this point because they won a bidding war, or someone got a little cashola. There are other venues that are providing superior online Olympic Coverage. As a US citizen (not saying only US citizens can do this), I am used to shopping for the best product in a free market enconomy (although patent law is slowly erroding the variety of that market.) I have no choice in this matter.
Why do I say government supported monopoly? I am sure there is some obscure law somewhere that makes it illegal, although it is a little incovenient and impratcical, to tap into the British only BBC streams. They will not be using government funds, just government muscle.
What can you do about this? Well, if you live in the US, just boycott the NBC broadcasts completely. If a product is bad, do not use it. Everybody in the US complains about problems and issues and erroding rights, but no one does anything about it. If NBCs ratings are bad, then they get a clear message that something is wrong.
Of course, if they see their online ratings are bad, they will just paint it as no one wanting to see online coverage, as opposed to no one wanting to watch their spotty, incomplete, pleebian coverage. Peel back the paint.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Stop seeing the world in black and white. It isn't a question of who's anti-American and who isn't. It's about the issues and you are not allowing for a fair discussion if all you care about is letting others know that you are blindly patriotic.
I'm not talking about the kind where the (and by far) biggest producers and consummers of porn in the world suddenly feel pure when seeing a metal covered tit during the superbowl and take "measures" so that it doesn't happen again.
I'm talking about the one where only US athlete will be shown, when they win or could and before the dope test, so as to again falsely give the impression to the american population that they are the best. Hell on forums troughout the net most americans will tell you they've been the most cheered country during the countries announcement when, actually, they were boo'ed. This is not a coincidence, some stuff is happening before it gets on their TV. How many time in the past did world athlete did exceptionnal stuf and it wasn't even covered in american medias, all that was covered is their guy loosing, they just can't stand not being the center of attention. The country which is the least aware of the world is the one that judge it the most, how sad, one wonders why?
You don't need to have a machine... just access to one. Free shell providers are a good source for SSH accounts, if you can find one not in the US.
Besides, you don't necessarily need SSH access, just a couple fast proxies, and there are plenty of machines with those.
Most people don't know anything until somebody tells them. When somebody writes a "How-to Watch the Olypics" document, they'll be quite able to download Putty, click on the menus, and type in the numbers, verbatim.
The stupidity is overwhelming! Look, the story is not about everyone in the country being forced to watch the olympics via their computer... It's about those that already WANT to watch it online. There's a hell of a lot of broadcasters spending a hell of a lot of money, effort, and bandwidth to provide these internet streams that you're certain nobody wants to watch.
Besides, there's always the PVR angle. Anything you can play on your computer, you can output to your TV. Even if you don't want to hook up your computer to your TV, maybe you would just like to record this stuff, and perhaps even burn it to DVD, or whatnot.
Personally, I like the idea just because announcers, who don't ever shut up, are incredibly annoying.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
BTW did you know that the olympic torch relay was actually thought up by the NAZIs for their Olympics?
Yes and Wagner (composer of flight of the valkyries) was an anti-semite. Does that mean that we shouldn't listen to it? Does the olympic torch coming from Nazis mean we shouldn't do it? Personally I'm kinda pissed that Hitler ruined a perfectly good moustache - but I guess with all the bad stuff he did throwing that on there won't make much of a difference.
I don't think the "showing only events the US has won" deserves a response, but I'll give one anyway. The events that NBC shows are the ones that US citizens are interested in, and because they are interested in them, it is more likely that a US athelete will participate. Do you think the US is going to win the women's diving events? Almost certainly not, but we still watch it.
It takes a special kind of person to deride an international event based on the ideals of self improvement, national pride, and respect for other countries.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
But then again, once upon a time the Olympics didn't cost 6 billion dollars to organize either. It's a sad reality, but keeping sponsors happy is the only thing that makes such an event possible nowadays.
6 billion dollars is a lot of money in any country. But it's especially a lot in a country of 10 million inhabitants.
Anti-Americanism is the instinctive belief that nothing the US (or its citizens) can do no right. American jingoism is the instinctive belief that the US (or its citizens) can do no wrong. They're really the same thing; we see far too much of both these days; and they of course feed each other.
Just more proof that Enlightenment democracy is hard.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach