[Infowarrior] - Once again, NBC is clueless about the Net....

[Richard Forno]

(I can't wait to see how they spin this .... of course, it's not just  
NBC but the IOC and the rest of the 'content' industry, but especially  
the aforementioned abusive-enforcement ones.   -rf)

Olympics Opening Ceremony a Hit On BitTorrent
Written by Ernesto on February 13, 2010
http://torrentfreak.com/olympics-opening-ceremony-hit-on-bittorrent-100213/

Despite efforts to prevent coverage of the Winter Olympics Opening  
Ceremony from leaking online, the broadcast is widely available on  
BitTorrent, downloaded by thousands of people. Most of the downloaders  
are from the host country Canada, closely followed by the United States.

Just a few hours after the video of the Vancouver 2010 Opening  
Ceremony was posted on BitTorrent, it has already been downloaded by  
tens of thousands of people.

In 2008 Olympic torrents were hugely popular, especially the Opening  
Ceremony which was downloaded by nearly 5 million people. It is  
doubtful that this 2008 Olympic record will be broken this year, but  
nonetheless, there is plenty of interest on BitTorrent for the 2010  
Opening Ceremony.

As with most big sporting events there are huge commercial interests  
involved in the Olympics. This is one of the main reasons why the  
International Olympic Committee and broadcasters such as NBC have  
announced a piracy crackdown, trying to prevent their content from  
leaking 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. It is needless to say  
that this mission has already failed miserably.

The Opening Ceremony could be watched online through dozens of illegal  
streams last night, and a few hours later a high quality video of the  
entire broadcast appeared on file-sharing networks including  
BitTorrent. Thus far, nearly 100,000 people have downloaded the  
Opening Ceremony through BitTorrent.

A quick look at the locations of the downloaders reveals that roughly  
a quarter are Canadians. Another 15% of the downloaders come from the  
United States, followed by the UK with 5% and The Netherlands and  
Australia both with 4%.

In the coming days many of the sporting events will also surface  
online illegally, but the interest for the opening and closing  
ceremonies tend to be the highest, based on download numbers from the  
2008 Olympics in Beijing.

It is expected that the International Olympic Committee will be  
outraged over this massive rights violation. In 2008 they urged Sweden  
to take action against the Pirate Bay over the Olympic torrents that  
they hosted, without result.

Maybe they should start offering their own sponsored downloads in  
2012? There is plenty of demand for it.