Olympics YouTube Broadcasts to be Blocked
The International Olympic Committee said today that a special YouTube channel would broadcast Olympic "highlights, news and daily clips of the competitions" to 77 territories around the world, mostly to Africa, Asia and the Middle East where local networks haven't paid big bucks for exclusive rights to cover the games. The channel will be BLOCKED, however, in countries where such deals have been made, which includes the English-speaking world, Europe, Japan and elsewhere.
10:20 AM * PERMALINK * 3 comments
Comments:
Allowing olympics broadcat on Youtube will INCREASE vieweship on commercial tv stations! Disallowing broadcast on YouTube will NOT increase viewership on commercial tv stations.
Sounds like censorship. What is geo-blocking, and how does it work? Is this compatible with the principle of 'net neutrality'? Shouldn't all content be treated equally?
Whazzup?
It's not censorship when you're restricting your own content (the olympic committee owns the content and is restricting access to demographics that have paid for it) and I doubt it will attract any viewers to locations that don't have access to the broadcasts. This is why I don't bother with the olympics, they're like Disney and far too restrictive in their means of maximizing profits.
However, I don't see why YouTube/Google would agree to this - it's not exactly what the service was designed to do. Luckily I'm guessing anonymous proxies based in the US will bypass the security, usually this would be done by tracking the IP address or hostname. On the plus side, perhaps this could pave the way to watching live TV (or at least recent TV shows) on YouTube legally - anything to bypass the local cable company infrastructure is a boon in my book.
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