NBC Plots Crackdown On Olympic Pirates

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NBC plans to crack down on people that access unauthorized live feeds or downloads of Olympic broadcasts. How do they plan on doing this? Here is the plan:

While NBC doesn’t believe there is much demand for live coverage, it will do all it can to prevent the ‘few’ people who do from downloading or streaming the events online. “Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find,” said Rick Cotton, NBC’s Executive Vice President commenting on their Olympic mission.
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NBC overpaid the rights for the olympics while the other competitors for it sat there all :p , so it's no wonder they're trying their best to guard their investment. They're also spending a fortune erasing every memory they can of Conan O'Brien working with them.
 
“Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find,”
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Why don't they just stream it themselves and make access convenient, high quality and easy to find?
 
There is demand to watch live, though the demand isn't large enough to generate ad revenue equivalent to their normal programming. So instead of supplying a live stream/feed where they can get ad revenue, they will actively seek out streams and try to kill them. It will not be as easy for them as they think it will.
 
pigwalk said:
Why don't they just stream it themselves and make access convenient, high quality and easy to find?
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Because, they said they don't think people want to sit there on their computer watching video...that's what the whole article is about - NBC saying out of one side nobody wants to watch things like the Olympics on their computer, and simultaneously saying at the same time they're putting significant effort into preventing others from uploading parts of the coverage for others to watch on their computers.
 
Didn't NBC stream every event of the 2008 Olympics in HD online? Did that not work out too well? I thought it was pretty cool.
 
I laugh, like they have any idea how to stop or even how to be competitive so this wouldn't be a problem in the first place. Why do they insist on fighting? Who is at the head of these decisions? Obviously not someone with an insight into the culture of downloading online content and illegal streaming. Nope, it's a bunch of Fat Heads with even Fatter Wallets clinging to an old business model that is long dead.
 
one thing i dont get is why they care about people pirating, but the whole DVR scene is acceptable. I mean, its the same thing. you get to watch content at your own convenience, and fast forward through commercials.
 
perhaps the live feeds don't have the incessant *personal stories*, background expose, and general dRaMa! that American coverage of the Olympics can't get enough of!

Gimme the SPORTS dammit, thats why I watch the Canadian coverage and see other heats and countries other than mine compeating
 
I can't get the CBC OTA ( at least, not well), so yeah, of course I'll be pirating it. I mean some of my tax dollars went to work on this whole razzmatazz, I figure I should be able to watch it. (even if our Pavilion is opening a day late and looks like a big prefab POS....).
 
This is the reason I bought an HDTV will be watching it live.

The experience will be far better in my living room with my surround sound setup than my i7 rig can provide. I won't have to wait for a torrent to finish, not only that I have friends that don't have an HDTV that will want to come to my place to watch it.
 
if NBC did a better job with the olympics people would have to pirate it. Cant wait for ABC/ESPN to make a bid for the contract when its up
 
Blyss+ said:
I can't get the CBC OTA ( at least, not well), so yeah, of course I'll be pirating it. I mean some of my tax dollars went to work on this whole razzmatazz, I figure I should be able to watch it. (even if our Pavilion is opening a day late and looks like a big prefab POS....).
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I wish it was on CBC. Their OTA HD feed is awesome where I am.

But CTV has the Canadian license(first time in over 20 years) not CBC, so I will only see it in SD.
 
nbc, continuing their long streak of wrong and bad. my guess is it would have been easy to torrent these games before they came out with this statement. now that they have said this, i expect it to be 10 times easier to find online.
 
Pretty dumb of them. I'd watch more Olympics if it were streamed (with Commercials - $$) onto my computer.
 
"Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find."
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...so it will just like their "real" coverage? ;)
 
The USA HD feeds of the previous olympics Opening Ceremonies in China were horrific. For instance, they cut to commercial DURING THE FIREWORKS. And much of the commentary was stupid. Plus they chose crappy angles.

Had to go to internet to get quality HD feeds from austrailia and germany. In the case of germany, even if one couldn't understand the audio, the visuals were FANTASTIC.
 
Its an amateur event, there shouldnt be exclusive broadcast rights in the first place.
 
cbags101 said:
one thing i dont get is why they care about people pirating, but the whole DVR scene is acceptable. I mean, its the same thing. you get to watch content at your own convenience, and fast forward through commercials.
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I think you are wrong on this issue IMHO. While we are recording shows and watching them later, you are stealing them. Stealing them would imply that you have hacked your DVR (Which people do sometimes) to import the shows into your computer via firewire, esata or network. THere are a few people out there who have managed to do this. But you avg joe everyday home computer user would not know how to accomplish this....
 
Devistater said:
The USA HD feeds of the previous olympics Opening Ceremonies in China were horrific. For instance, they cut to commercial DURING THE FIREWORKS. And much of the commentary was stupid. Plus they chose crappy angles.

Had to go to internet to get quality HD feeds from austrailia and germany. In the case of germany, even if one couldn't understand the audio, the visuals were FANTASTIC.
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The US is way behind with the online viewing thing compared to the rest of the world. I was in AUstralia for part of the summer 2008 games, I could watch every event online in FULL HD. It was so nice!!! The place I watched it from was streaming in full 720p and I was watching it on a big 52 inch sony HDTV streamed over the web at my friends house. I am curious to see what NBC will do online with the streaming online.
 
Snowdog said:
I wish it was on CBC. Their OTA HD feed is awesome where I am.

But CTV has the Canadian license(first time in over 20 years) not CBC, so I will only see it in SD.
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Oh. Well that stinks...CTV broadcast I don't get at all.

Guess my only option is piratin'. So be it. YARRRRRRR!
 
kledar586 said:
seriously people plan on pirating the olympics? why?
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I am still trying to get past the fact that people actually want to watch it? If I am watching anything Olympics related its Stephen Colbert's coverage lol.
 
I was listening to CBC3's comments on the "talk" they got from the olympics commission lawyers. They aren't even allowed to SAY certain phrases during the games, and printed/televised phrases such as "the games" "the olympics" "the winter games" "the games in canada" etc etc aren't allowed.

they have a total lock down that is WAAAY beyond what the US's benchmark of the NFL's enforcement of their games.
 
We needed a fundraiser to for the U.S. winter team to the make the games, and holding back coverage is going to help the games how?
 
The Cobra said:
I think you are wrong on this issue IMHO. While we are recording shows and watching them later, you are stealing them. Stealing them would imply that you have hacked your DVR (Which people do sometimes) to import the shows into your computer via firewire, esata or network. THere are a few people out there who have managed to do this. But you avg joe everyday home computer user would not know how to accomplish this....
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You really think it's perfectly acceptable if they play the content on their DVR, but for some reason copying it to their PC and playing it there is unacceptable?
 
Anyone know of any legitimate sources for an online stream of the opening ceremony tonight? It looks like NBC wont have it and im stuck at work :/
 
Rombus said:
Anyone know of any legitimate sources for an online stream of the opening ceremony tonight? It looks like NBC wont have it and im stuck at work :/
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CTV will have it, but I'm almost 100% certain that any legit source will be geographically filtered, so if the broadcaster with the rights in your country isn't offering it, you're probably SOL.
 
While NBC doesn’t believe there is much demand for live coverage
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This horseshit statement is their out for justifying time delaying the coverage in every time zone so they can sell premium advertising space at prime time hours. So if some final event is shown at 1pm, they'll make sure it doesn't actually show until 8pm... and if it's any sort of long event that has some preliminaries before it, most likely the event itself won't reach a conclusion until 11pm or Midnight. Just like they did with the Summer Olympics, although for that they had some justification for time delaying due to the location. This however is on the West Coast FFS.

People want to watch events live, there's something about it that makes it that much better, doesn't matter if it's hockey or curling. If they move it to a later time slot for higher ad revenue they're alienating a huge portion of the population who actually has to go to work the next day, or hell just doesn't really want to stay up to midnight to find the results. They'll use a DVR to record it, the next morning simply fast forward through all the commercials and get their results, it'll not be as satisfying and NBC will be smug and say "See most people don't want to see them live because they don't watch them when we show them"

Here's a question for NBC, why is the Superbowl played at the time it is? Why isn't that time delayed and shown at a later time to increase revenue? Answer, because people want to watch it when it happens ya jackasses!
 
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