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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?"
Up north of you the Olympics are on public TV, down south of you is the same thing. Wait a second only in the US is this known of. Now isn't it sad to see that people are all up in arms because the Olympics aren't coming through but don't give a damn when it's news you're not getting? I guess what they don't know doesn't hurt them.
Never mind about that, what about this!!5 65616.st m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3
The Olympics have officially sold out (probably years ago but hey) you are not allowed into watch any of the games if you are wearing clothing thats clearly showing logos of a non-sponsering company. All non-sponsership adverts were pulled from bill-boards for miles around the grounds and you arnt allowed to eat anything other than mcdonalds or drink any water (consider the heat) thats not official Olympic water (read overpriced water).
Couldnt care less about the Olympics its nothing more than an advertising platform or a test-ground for new drugs. But damn its making someone a shit load of cash and i wanna be that someone..
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
We the british public fund the BBC through our licence fee, it is because of this fee that we have impartial, and world wide recognised excelelnt broadcasts from the BBC.
This is not just restricted to BBC1 and BBC2 but also their digital chanels, where there 4 extra streams are being broadcast as well
I do feel bad for the American public have to put up with commercial crap during the games, but getting round the proxies is unfair on the BBC who are probably working hard on blocking non UK IP numbers.
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.
I was watching the Opening Ceremony, it was a great show, until they started this a tribute to Eros, the god of Love, with a pair playing in the water, and they kissed! Oh my Zeus, they kissed each other, won't someone think of the children, we need a special senate session, call the FCC and tell them to bomb Greece!!! This shameless moral corruption must not go unpunished!
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Maybe this is a good way to promote P2P broadcasting?
PeerCast is an Open Source (not sure about the license but the sourcecode is available using Subversion) P2P broadcasting system which works great! I've not tried broadcasting/viewing videostreams, just listened to radiostations, but it has support for MP3, OGG Vorbis, Theora, WMA, WMV and NSV streams.
Very easy to install and use, it's just a single executable!
You just point it to a streaming source (for example your own IceCast server, a WMV stream which you have access to or your favourite internet radiostation) and the stream is available on the PeerCast network for everybody to listen to or watch, just pointing your favourite player to a http://localhost-URL.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
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 best way to make NBC understand that they their coverage style isn't appreciated is to tell them:
nbcolympicsfeedback@nbcuni.com
They've got the monopoly so they will get the ratings regardless so the message to send them is that you'd love to watch more but find the overemphasis of successful americans and inane chatter of Costas and Couric to much to take.
I want to correct one thing. In these articles, it is always stated that the Olympics are being censored for US citizens. Nothing is further from the truth!
In Belgium, the national station has only the rights to broadcast 6 hours live per day, because they could not pay more. Furthermore, they don't have the rights to put video reports about the Olympics on their news and sports site, not even for Belgian citizens.
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
While I guess I can understand NBC's position: they've paid enormously for this, so they should be able to try and make some of the money back. There's not very many people who would be up at 4 in the morning to watch a swim meet, but there's a bunch who'll watch the same thing in the evening. Trying to sell ads for $1 million per second at 04:00 would be a disaster.
What really annoys me, though, is being forced to listen to such blatantly political commentary. What am I talking about, you ask? During the opening ceremony, those morons doing the commentary for NBC made every attempt to point out the places where Islamic groups were "causing" strife. They couldn't seem to resist talking about the problems in the Sudan caused by the Muslims. They also made every effort to talk up how much the US has helped our little brown brothers we liberated in Afghanistan and Iraq, and had the gall to complain about the torture used by the Iraqi training program! I guess torture is OK in the name of national defense but not in the name of national pride.
For all the high-falootin' ideals that the Olympics supposedly stand for, it makes me want to puke every time I hear the American media make some snide comment so they can use the forum to propegate a political agenda.
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/1 8656.htm
August 14, 2004 -- THE Greek organizers of this summer's Olympics, which began in Athens yesterday, claim that more women athletes are competing than ever before. Women are also playing a high-profile role in making the whole enterprise, the biggest of its kind in Greek history, run as smoothly as possible. Seen from the Muslim world, however, the Athens game will look like a male-dominated spectacle in which women play an incidental part.
According to officials in Athens, the number of Muslim women participating in this year's game is the lowest since 1960. Several Muslim countries have sent no women athletes at all; others, such as Iran, are taking part with only one, in full hijab. And state-owned TV networks in many Muslim countries, including Iran and Egypt, have received instructions to limit coverage of events featuring women athletes at Athens to a minimum.
A circular from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture in Tehran asks TV editors to make sure that women's games are not televised live: "Images of women engaged in contests [sic] must be carefully vetted," says the letter, leaked in Tehran. "Editors must take care to prevent viewers from being confronted [sic] with uncovered parts of the female anatomy in contests."
Women athletes in Athens are unlikely to wear the Islamic hijab or full-length manteaux that cover their legs to the ankle and their arms to the wrist. The ministry's order thus could mean a blanket ban on images of female athletics.
Fear of Muslim viewers seeing bare female legs and arms on television is also shared by theologians in several Arab states. Sheik Yussuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian theologian based in Qatar, claims that female sport is exploited as a means of undermining "divine morality."
Ayatollah Emami Kashani, one of Iran's ruling mullahs, goes further. In a recent sermon, he claimed that allowing women to compete in the Olympics was a "sign of voyeurism" on the part of the male organizers.
"The question how much of a woman's body could be seen in public is one of the two or three most important issues that have dominated theological debate in Islam for decades," says Mohsen Sahabi, a Muslim historian. "More time and energy is devoted to this issue than to economic development or scientific research. "
Click to learn more...
Islamist theologians are divided on how much of a woman's body can be exposed in public. The most radical, the Sitris, insist that women should be entirely covered from head to toe, including their faces and fingers. The less radical Hanbalis say a woman should be covered all over, but recommend a mask with apertures for the eyes and the mouth. (A version of this, known as the burqa, was imposed on Afghan women by the Taliban).
The Khomeinist version of the hijab, invented in the 1970s and now popular in many countries, including the United States, covers a woman's entire body but allows her face and hands to be exposed. Hijab theoreticians agree on one claim: a woman's hair emanates dangerous rays that could drive men wild with sexual lust and thus undermine social peace.
But the problem of women athletes goes deeper. Some theologians claim that any form of sporting activity by women produces "sinful consequences." In 2000, for example, the Khomeinist authorities in Tehran announced a ban on women riding bicycles or motorcycles. The rationale? Riding bicycles or motorcycles would activate a woman's thighs and legs, thus arousing "uncontrollable lustful drives" in her. And men watching women on their bikes in the streets could be "led towards dangerous urges."
The problems don't end there. According to some theologians, a woman should not be allowed to venture out of her home without a "raqib" or male guardian. But that guardian must be either her husband or her father, brother, grandfather, uncle or son.
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.
"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 believe the parent post was primarily about the coverage by the American TV corporations. The bit about the torch was an aside. (And I agree with your opinion on that.)
The problem with showing only events where The Glorious US wins is that it panders to a rather degoutant idea: that America Rules All.
Nor is Olympic coverage the only example of this refusal to let Americans see that any other nation might be an equal. American movies are notorious for changing history so that The Heroic Americans Rescue the World (All By Themselves.)
From a review of the movie "U-571" by Dr. Timothy P. Mulligan, archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, specializing in captured German and related World War II records:
I don't slag this meme becuase it doesn't give others proper credit. That's a moral question, and I'm always rather queasy about imposing my morality on ohters. However, is it an ethical position? Does it give proper credits to people you call friends and allies? Do you expect them to love and admire you when you slight them thus?This attitude, I would also argue, is septic in that it deludes the American population into thinking that they are omnipotent, and that no one could ever be better or stronger or more clever than an American.
The ancient Greeks called this hubris, and they said that the gods punish it.
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