Damn snow
Every once in a while, it affects the little dish on the side of my house. This was one of those nights. After getting perfect reception through all the lousy holiday weather, tonight I can’t get a thing. But it’s comforting to know (comforting to me, not the NBA — which seems very upset about these things) that these games are being screened all over the Internet on a given night. I had no idea about this until quite recently.
On the surface, that seems crazy. The league sticks so damn tight to its blackout policy that even people like me who are out of the cable service area and pay for NBA League Pass still aren’t allowed to see Blazer games. But then the league is sitting there unable — apparently — to stop these games from popping up all over the Internet. David Stern must be BOILING over this. Seems to me at some point that the people providing these feeds are going to get sued or jailed or at least be tied up and made to sit in a room and watch hour after hour of replays of old Clipper games at some point.
I’m not going to tell you how to find the games, because I’m not sure of the legalities of this stuff. But if I can find them, anyone can. They’re out there.
NBA, Trail Blazers | Dwight Jaynes | January 4, 2009
Dwight Jaynes, NBA, Portland Trail Blazers, satellite television, snow
Sir,
Please stop by our Portland office for questioning tomorrow at your convenience.
Thanks,
The FBI
Really interesting story about what NFL, MLB and NBA officials are (and aren’t) doing about this in last week’s NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/business/29piracy.html
I’ll just say that i have friend named “Justin” and he has a “TV” and leave it at that. You can Google the rest
Really though, this is a phenomenon that they will never be able to stop. Though it may take longer, television networks are ultimately going see all the same problems plaguing the music industry today. And the answer isn’t going to be better regulation or magically patching all the “leaks” – they’re just going to have to hire cleverer people and adjust their business model. It’s simple as that. Every major technological innovation ever, from the printing press to radio to television to the Internet has brought with it new opportunities and business models while simultaneously destroying older ones, no matter how desperately they try to cling to their ways.
The internerds welcome you.
Isn’t wonderful that they have a product so compelling that people will go to such lengths to watch it? Too bad Stern and owners other than Cuban are is too stupid to realize this.
They’re limiting potential markets by implementing blackout bans on their streaming service and by setting their price point too high. The RIAA model is not the way to make money in the post NSFNet era.