NBC reportedly spent $2 billion on securing the broadcast rights to transmit the 2010 and 2012 Olympic games in the US. They had previously spent $1.5 billion securing similar rights for the 2006 and 2008 games. And video access in every other country was sold off like wireless spectrum to regional broadcasters.
While this is not a new phenomenon (FIFA and many other sport leagues have similar operations), there is a bit of annoying statism involved.
For instance, even with oodles of bandwidth I am still prohibited to stream any Olympic event (including rhythmic gymnastics!) from my high perch in Seoul, legally. Wired put together a list of online sites that allow you to view the games, but alas, South Korea is not party to any of the legal streaming agreements.
And this is one of the problems of IP rights over artificially scarce resources. Because firms like NBC will sue enterprising webmasters that upload or post images or videos of the sporting events, few individuals are willing to risk the squeeze. So even though no one is being harmed, no property destruction is taking place, the threat of lawsuits prevents badminton fans from watching total South Asian domination.
And it’s not just NBC, as both the BBC and CBC will not transmit data to the hermit kingdom.
Last year the same problem cropped up with the Rugby World Cup. The event organizers ruled the broadcast rights with an iron thumb and sent DMCA take-down notices not just to fans, but also credentialed journalists. In fact, organizations like AP and AFP refused to go along with these ruggers and wouldn’t partake in covering the event.
Fortunately I was able to watch most of the matches due to torrent sites, but of course, none of them were live (don’t tell me the score to the Welsh-Scotland game dammit!).
This all ends up bumping into the $1 billion Viacom lawsuit against Google (which owns YouTube) for hosting copyright-infringing materials. To me, the ironic part is that the mega content firms are doing a disservice to themselves, because all of the uploading actually shows how popular a show is. So rather than shooting your fans, you’d think that Viacom could somehow monetize this new technology.
Oh wait, after nearly three years of sitting on their hands, Viacom now has dedicated streaming sites for South Park, the Daily Show, and the Colbert Report — full episodes, full seasons, for free.
Now if only NBC would allow the same thing to take place with SNL overseas (I can’t watch anything on Hulu because it only serves the US).
Again, I’m not expecting or wanting to force NBC to accommodate people like myself, but I do not think it is very savvy (or libertarian) to sue others for providing a service that you won’t. Plus, I’m a blackhole out here: no one is providing online service at all, so a bottom-up provider wouldn’t be eating up competition…
Boo to the DMCA and the new ACTA.