Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.