[Infowarrior] - NBC Plots (Futile) Crackdown On Olympic Pirates

[Richard Forno]

Yeah...good luck with that, guys.  -rick

NBC Plots Crackdown On Olympic Pirates
Written by Ernesto on February 08, 2010
http://torrentfreak.com/nbc-plots-crackdown-on-olympic-pirates-100208/

In 2008 Olympic torrents were hugely popular. The opening ceremony was  
downloaded more than 2 million times in the first week, outraging the  
International Olympic Committee. With Vancouver 2010 starting later  
this week, several broadcasters have declared war on Olympic pirates.

The 2008 Summer Olympics were a huge hit online, both through legal  
and illegal channels. NBC streamed a record breaking 2,200 hours of  
live video to the delight of millions of people, but strangely enough  
this year the network will limit its live coverage to hockey and  
curling.

An NBC representative explained that the network will only cover the  
highlights because people “are not dying to watch lots of long-form  
content on a 13-inch screen.” However, at the same time NBC  
contradicts itself by announcing that it will do all it can to prevent  
people from accessing unauthorized live feeds or downloads of Olympic  
broadcasts.

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.

Once again one of the major entertainment industry outfits has got it  
entirely wrong. If NBC really wants to prevent piracy they have to  
offer at least some sort of alternative. Cutting 2,200 hours of live  
web coverage back to just a few hundred is certainly not going to help  
in stopping piracy.

NBC reportedly has teamed up with Ustream and Justin.tv, two popular  
live streaming sites, to use filtering schemes in order to prevent  
illegal broadcasts. However, it is inevitable that they won’t be able  
to stop them all since there are dozens of live streaming sites.  
Preventing torrents from being uploaded will turn out to be even more  
problematic for the network.

During the Beijing Olympics two years ago, The International Olympic  
Committee (IOC) asked for “assistance” from the Swedish government  
with preventing video clips from the Olympics in Beijing being shared  
via The Pirate Bay. This didn’t help much and during the weeks that  
followed millions of people continued to download broadcasts of  
Olympic events.

We assume that in the coming weeks most events will again appear  
online, despite NBC’s efforts to prevent the Olympics from being  
pirated.