The U.S. Attorney’s Office shut down ten internet sites for allegedly live streaming copyrighted sporting events.
“The illegal streaming of professional sporting events over the Internet deals a financial body blow to the leagues and broadcasters who are forced to pass their losses off to fans by raising prices for tickets and pay-per-view events,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.
Visitors to the site, instead of being able to watch a sporting event (real or fake) will be greeted with “This domain has been seized by ICE – Homeland Security Investigations.”
It appears that the same folks that are patting you down at the airport are making sure you don’t “steal” any content from the major sports leagues and wrestling confederations.
No one at ICE is paying attention to Thomas Jefferson who said “He who received an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”
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This is so pathetic it’s funny. As if seizing these domains will prevent willing “lawbreakers” from simply getting other domains and providing the same service!
Did they subject the sites’ servers to a full chassis scan?
Of course the most warlike of sports are the first beneficiaries of the ICE man’s services.
BTW isn’t “Iceman” the nickname of a notorious psychopathic contract killer? Say what you want but the Geheime Staatspolizei have a flair for symbolism.
Homeland Security – Because when you download an NFL game you can get for free over the air for free from the Internet, the Terrorists win.
I’m not against copyright, I don’t agree with what these sites did, but I’m also not comfortable with the whole “ICE – Homeland Security Investigations” thing.
The real question is: why aren’t the NFL and WWE taking advantage of this great technology and streaming the events themselves (sponsored by advertising)? Probably because they don’t want to tick off the traditional TV & Pay Per View market. They’re just like the music industry, which had to be dragged kicking and screaming into selling DRM-less MP3 files.
“instruction himself without lessening mine”
Those who redistribute content this way are quite seriously “lessening” the producers of content. It’s embarrassing such a quality site wouldn’t admit the obvious: quality information (whether research, sports tv, or a beautiful aria) has real costs. I don’t want to pay for TV so others can get it for free– that’s immoral and austrians should be able to figure out there is a reason it seems deeply wrong.
Don’t defend the thugs. Figure out a way to make DRM– a **private** alternative to the police state actually work to prevent the abuse of thugs of the government and non-governmental kind.
DRM and “work” spotted in the same sentence.
DRM has been dead for some time now. And unless the governement-mandated share denial in every hardware sold comes, it never will. Because no-one will pay for having lousy shackles put on himself.
Let’s say I read a $10 book, memorize it, & retell it to a friend of mine. Have I “stolen” $10 from the author? I think it’s obvious that I haven’t. Ideas and information aren’t scarce. Once the information in the book was *cough* “downloaded” into my brain, you could say it was now my idea. Intellectual property doesn’t exist. If anything, it’s a claim on the property of every other human being on the planet, “lessening” their property rights.
>>>I don’t want to pay for TV so others can get it for free– that’s immoral and austrians should be able to figure out there is a reason it seems deeply wrong.
You’ve provided a fine example of rationalization — inventing a rational basis for a conclusion derived by means other than reason.
Rather than even entertain the possibility that your preferred conclusion might be wrong, you’d rather search for a false explanation that has at least a plausible ring of rationality.
“I don’t want to pay for TV so others can get it for free”
You don’t pay for NFL games. They’re broadcast, free of charge, out on unencrypted airwaves.
I’ve never understood the argument that a company has to raise rates because someone’s watching tv on the internet. It’s preposterous to assume that all these internet savvy folks would have paid for cable – most would either choose an alternative form of entertainment or go down to the local sports bar.
It’s a cliche’ that is probably worth repeating… if IP were taken to its logical conclusion most things people now take for granted wouldn’t exist.
http://atdhe.net is now http://atdhe.me
Enjoy!
That’s a great point, Fringe. Should the government shut down sports bars because the bar is paying for cable and a bunch of people who didn’t pay to watch the game get access to it?
Nope, cause bars sell lots of alcohol, which makes the government a pretty penny.
It’s weird, it’s almost like this is more about tax revenue than they’re letting on…
“A successful enterprise must always be ready to defend itself against its biggest fans.” Isn’t that how the saying goes?
Actually, I think I’ve visited at least one of those stolen domain names before. Everything will just go back up on a new domain, so the copyright nazis are just wasting their time.
They’re not wasting their time, they’re wasting your money. It beats working.
twh:
If you’re for copyright, it means you’re for the enforcement of intellectual property laws by a coercive entity. Enforcement requires the use of force to threaten, assault, imprison, kill and terrorize the violators of these so-called copy rights. Otherwise it’s not a law, it’s just a guideline.
You can still be against what those sites are doing. They may have violated a contract with the NFL or with another service provider, or misrepresented to their viewers who they are and where the feed originated. They may be providing their viewers with a poor-quality feed compared to the official NFL approved providers. These possible problems are reasons why viewers might boycott them, or the NFL might denounce them and request their ISPs to discontinue hosting them. It doesn’t sound anything like the kind of existential threat which could be used to justify the use of a secret police force of thugs and spies.
I believe that this little enforcement exercise is mostly a make-work project for the Amerika Geheimen Staatspolizei. But it has the extra benefit (for them) of providing some practical experience with, and a legal precedent for, the much-anticipated Internet Kill Switch.
My brother has been running one of the more successful sites for awhile now. The WWE stopped going after people doing this because it was not profitable for them to do so. MMA did a huge fanfair threat, that lead to a public backlash. Though they also sent the suit after a fictional person…
I’m guessing that the WWE doesn’t get into the online streaming business because of political (business-political, not state) reasons because it is quite lucrative. And they can’t stop the small army of people using maybe a total of 3 or 4 computers maximum per 3 thousand viewers. So they are stuck in a position in which they embrace as much as they can without going to streaming. I actually feel bad for them because of this.
I am a frequent patron of streaming television websites. I view the exact same video people with conventional televisions watch (albeit in poorer quality). This means I’m still watching the same ads as everyone else. Advertisers should love this, and if advertisers love this, television stations should love this. Shut down my streaming website and that’s one less viewer of any given ad.
You know, NFL, if you bothered to air the games of the team I want to watch, I wouldn’t have to use these sites to watch it. And they don’t cut out the commercials, so they still get attention.
But no, the NFL has this old-fashioned delusion, in the age of information, that I should only want to watch certain games based on area demographics and stadium sell-outs and other irrelevant drivel, and by God I’ll do as they say! (Except that I won’t.)
It’s Homeland Security by a new name: Home-Field Security. A nice, fresh coat of grease on the slippery slope. Watch out for those unmanned drones, all you illegal-content-downloaders! I think I’ll go steal a copy of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil.”
Its the same argument being made about online music and movie piracy. Big Corporate/Big gov’t assumes that everyone downloading content would be a willing buyer at the store if it wasn’t available for ‘free’ online. Who turns down free stuff?
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