Blackout! Popular streaming sites seized by government
by Ryan Van Bibber on Feb 1, 2011 5:22 PM CST
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PrintRough day for NFL fans. First, a ruling gives the league and owners much better positioning at the bargaining table by ruling that the lockout insurance is legit, and now two popular online video streaming sites have been seized by the U.S. Government.
Channelsurfing.net and Atdhe.net were sites that linked to broadcasts of NFL games and plenty of other television shows. I'm not sure if this applies to Atdhe.net or not, but Channelsurfing.net did not actually host copyrighted material, it embedded from other sites that did so.
Yes, both of these sites operate in a gray area of broadcasting copyright law, "gray area" probably being a little generous. Nevertheless, lots of people used those sites, not that we would ever endorse such behavior, but it is notable and worth comment given just how popular they were.
It's nothing more than coincidence, but what a coincidence it is that these two services get shutdown the same day the NFL won a big decision regarding its own broadcast revenues...and just a few days after the Egyptian government cut off internet access to unsuccessfully quell a peaceful revolution in their country, not popular uprising against tyranny is the same as popular ways around the tyranny of blackouts.
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I honestly never heard of them
but man would they have been useful at times
There is no substitute for victory
by Brandon Birkhead on Feb 1, 2011 5:25 PM CST reply actions
i am mad
i never used those sites, never even new i could watch the games, man did i waste money on nfl network. i would have used it every sunday
by RAISEtheDEAD on Feb 2, 2011 10:10 AM CST up reply actions
atdhe.net is back
as atdhe.me
EH #2
SIGN ALBERT!!!
by zoomzoomj88 on Feb 1, 2011 5:29 PM CST reply actions 2 recs
Shoot me an email and I can help you.
"When they should be throwing to the cutoff man, they are reading Men's Health for ab workout tips. When they should be sacrifice bunting, they are buying effeminate designer jeans. When they should be fouling off pitches, they are masturbating. Always, they are masturbating."
"God I'm excited for those two to fail miserably." - SBNation writer Andrew Sharp on Josh McDaniels and Tim Tebow.
by Tempestuous Binary on Feb 2, 2011 9:38 AM CST up reply actions
uhm, yeah. I use them all the time...I'm RAMS' fan for Pete's sake.
Needed: Ping Pong table. Anyone wanna donate $78 million?
i've used them before
but i’d happily pay the nfl for internet broadcast games if they offered anything nearly as consumer friendly as what the mlb does.
Yes
MLB has been ahead if the game with their online services. You’d think with revenue sharing the NFL would use that approac (MLB splits all the dough to teams)
by Ryan Van Bibber on Feb 1, 2011 6:06 PM CST via mobile up reply actions
MLB's service has some major drawbacks, though.
Specifically, local market blackouts. I am a life-long Cardinals fan. One of the main things that prevents me from canceling my cable TV service is the loss of ability to watch baseball. With football, I can count on games being on local stations (games in general; more on that in a bit). With baseball, that’s not the case (though it used to be). Cardinals games tend to be on Fox Sports Midwest — for reference, I live in the Champaign, IL area — which I can only watch on cable. I wanted to sign up for the MLB web casts in order to drop my cable. It’s $50 a year, which may sound expensive for one team only, but really my cable bill is more than that a month. Unfortunately, they do in-market blackouts for the MLB broadcasts, so even if I paid for the service, I would be unable to watch the Cardinals games from the MLB stream since do a geographical reference on your IP address. Interestingly enough — only about half of the zip codes in town trigger their blackout warning on their lookup page. :)
I did watch some of the Rams games via streams this year, but of course only when they were not airing on TV here. I would gladly pay $60 each for Rams / Cardinals season passes for streams, but they’d have to settle the blackouts issue first.
It will probably be a while until the NFL starts offering streaming services
They’d be in direct competition with directv and the networks who are paying the NFL handsomely to let them broadcast the games. Until the NFL can make more money streaming than they do from directv/broadcast networks or make additional money from streaming w/o impacting directv/network advertising revenue streams, we’ll all be pirates if we’re looking for games online. :-(
by hex706f726368 on Feb 2, 2011 11:51 AM CST up reply actions
I used them for every game
How the hell else am I supposed to watch them? The medieval ways of Sunday Ticket makes me not want it. I don’t care if I get access to Buffalo vs. Jacksonville, all I want are the Rams game.
Number 8 is great
The problem is that the NFL dictates the terms of fandom
There are plenty of households in St. Louis that don’t watch the Rams because they don’t watch the NFL. Similarly, there are plenty of people in St. Louis who are fans of other NFL teams that don’t watch the Rams. And yet they deserve broadcasts of the game that I can’t get unless I fork over a ton of money for many other games that I can’t watch?
This is the biggest problem the NFL will have to face in the next decade. Having incorporated gambling better than any sport, the problem for the NFL now is that with a global product (and global franchises), you have an unidentifiable number of fans outside of the immediate market that follow the team within that market.
How much would your average TSTer pay to get every Rams’ game in HD for the entire season? Why isn’t this the driving force behind the segmentation of their broadcasting efforts? The idea that for every team, there is a huge revenue stream to be had of fans of teams they cannot watch on television without DirecTV and that the NFL is not willing to bridge that gap outside of DTV is mindblowing. They’ll get it together, but if they don’t do it soon, people (like myself) are going to get too comfortable finding and watching games for free on the internet. It doesn’t bother me at all, but you would think a league that’s fighting for every dollar against the NFLPA would show an ounce of interest in developing a service to capture the money they’re losing to the internets.
You don't seem to want to accept the fact you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best, with guns, with knives, with his bare hands. A man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land, to eat things that would make a billy goat puke. In *St. Louis* his job was to dispose of enemy personnel. To kill! Period! Win by attrition. Well, *Steven Jackson* was the best.
by 3k on Feb 1, 2011 6:26 PM CST reply actions 8 recs
Great comment...rec'd!!
Non Sibi Sed Patriae ;I bleed Scarlet and Grey...A Buckeye for Life
Cameron Heyward-Future 3-4 RDE for the New England Patriots
Jets org and fans-bunch of trash talking & snitching inbreds trollops!!!!
Holy shit
I just looked it up. 335 dollars.
Now assuming there are 15 games a week (2 teams are on ze bye), and you only want ONE of those games, would you be willing to pay 25 dollars (rounded up to most reasonable ammount, it’s actually 22.33) to watch all the Rams games this year? That’s the fraction of the cost for 1/15 of the games.
I would.
Number 8 is great
you wouldn't have to
any plan that was team specific would run out most of the ancillary costs. A sensible plan for a single-team plan could run you $20 and the identifiable audience would make ad sales that much easier.
You don't seem to want to accept the fact you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best, with guns, with knives, with his bare hands. A man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land, to eat things that would make a billy goat puke. In *St. Louis* his job was to dispose of enemy personnel. To kill! Period! Win by attrition. Well, *Steven Jackson* was the best.
by 3k on Feb 2, 2011 2:30 AM CST up reply actions
my hunch
is that the nfl likes the way things are and will rely on directv or the networks to solve that problem for them
by hex706f726368 on Feb 2, 2011 11:58 AM CST up reply actions
Man, I used ATDHE all the time.
In fact I became known as the ‘provider of links’ on the official Rams FB page.
Hopefully more start to pop up until the games are shown on TV without selling your kidney to pay for it.
I bet Sarah Palin can learn a playbook faster than Mardy Gilyard.
I liked the Sohan link or whatever
watched that more than ATDHE
Needed: Ping Pong table. Anyone wanna donate $78 million?
Dude SonGohan's stream was BEAUTIFUL
But not always there =/
I bet Sarah Palin can learn a playbook faster than Mardy Gilyard.
I used ATDHE all the time the year before last during all those blackouts.
Glad they are back up and running again.
Football players, like prostitutes, are in the business of ruining their bodies for the pleasure of strangers. ~Merle Kessler
songohan
hahaha all season gave an hd stream of rams games on veetle
I use justin.tv occassionally
When I’m on the road during a Rams game, traveling either to NY from Pittsburgh or back from NY to Pittsburgh since I go up to New York at least once a year, and we always seem to leave or return on a Sunday during the season.
WTF
Thats messed up im from CT so i did use channelsurfing.net plus sometimes when i went to a bar to watch St.Louis they didnt even have them on, so yea i am pissed about them this seize!!!
Ct
by Ct St.louis Rams on Feb 1, 2011 8:32 PM CST via mobile reply actions
I used
atdhe a lot last year, as it responded the best for me for seeing all the games that were blacked out. This year I may have used it once or twice, but there were less blackouts. Quite frankly, if I haven’t already made plans to go to the game by Thursday, a blackout isn’t going to change my mind. I feel like TV makes me want to be at the game more, rather than less. Perhaps I’m the odd one out?
Hopefully I won’t have to worry about another blacked-out game ever, but I also have radio to listen to, as I’m in Mid-Missouri.
THIS year's the year. I hope....
The NFL really needs to set up a subscription service
that would show all the games every week. I guess their problem is that doing so would reduce the value of the telecasts the networks show every week, thus reducing the amount the networks pay them for their rights. Would the subscription service produce enough revenue to offset what they would lose from the networks? Anyone have a way to solve that problem?
sure
tie the networks to the subscription service. You pay $40 for all Rams regular season games and the broadcast comes out of the CBS/FOX deals. Any Sunday night games on NBC or MNF games on ESPN aren’t included, but your standard Sunday games are part of the package. If SonGohan can do it for free, there’s no reason the NFL can’t figure it out….
You don't seem to want to accept the fact you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best, with guns, with knives, with his bare hands. A man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land, to eat things that would make a billy goat puke. In *St. Louis* his job was to dispose of enemy personnel. To kill! Period! Win by attrition. Well, *Steven Jackson* was the best.
by 3k on Feb 1, 2011 11:51 PM CST up reply actions
Problem is
all of the network games are broadcast. Sure they come through cable lines, too, but the idea is based off of the fact that they just shoot their channel out there for anyone to pick up. While I don’t know all the details, I’m sure the FCC would have something to say about CBS/FOX accepting money from viewers as opposed to advertisers.
Seems like they could offer you the ones that aren’t available in your normal viewing area for that price, though.
THIS year's the year. I hope....
I majored in Radio/TV back in the day
and with all the advancements since, I’m way behind the curve on media law. But with services like Hulu and what DirecTV has done, I don’t see what hurdle would make this that hard.
You don't seem to want to accept the fact you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best, with guns, with knives, with his bare hands. A man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land, to eat things that would make a billy goat puke. In *St. Louis* his job was to dispose of enemy personnel. To kill! Period! Win by attrition. Well, *Steven Jackson* was the best.
by 3k on Feb 2, 2011 2:32 AM CST up reply actions
Haha, cool.
I majored in it back in ’02 and work as a freelance camera guy now.
The biggest problem is the networks. Since the big ones got a hold of the NFL, they don’t want to let go, and their payment structure is strictly different for being broadcast as opposed to cable. Hulu makes it possible to watch programming after it’s first run. Not sure what DirecTV is doing, but I’m pretty sure they have channels devoted to football that derive from the local sports channels, or from the sports channels in the home market.
The real value in TV programming is being the first/only ones to air something, or being a channel known for syndication. I have to believe that FOX’s and CBS’ and NBC’s contracts with the NFL reflect that, and make it ludicrously beneficial for the league (owners).
THIS year's the year. I hope....
NFL is just a pawn here
Seizing a few small websites to start, then a few more small media sites to watch the reaction, then move to more and bigger sites, then move to seize ANY site that doesn’t agree with this administration. Seems Obama read the book that Hugo gave him. Sure—start out with just a nibble to make it legal. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
by Knoxfan on Feb 1, 2011 11:10 PM CST reply actions 1 recs
Glad to see my tax dollars at work
With all of the problems our government faces with the economy, unemployment and 2 wars costing billions a month, you would think they would have better things to do. So, instead of blocking football maybe Homeland Security’s time would be better served by, oh say finding Bin Laden(If he tapped into his neighbors cable or recorded a game without the expressed written consent of the NFL we would find him for sure).
Eaaaasy turbo
Different parts of the Government. I don’t think anyone wants the tech guys to be hunting in the mountains of Afghanistan for bin-Ladan.
This is a shame.
When I live in England, I get to watch 2 Broncos games a year if I’m lucky; in Germany (where I was for this entire season), I don’t even get to watch a single NFL game on TV.
Taking away online streaming makes it very difficult for non-American fans to enjoy the game – in fact, it’s how I got a number of people into the game in the first place.
"When they should be throwing to the cutoff man, they are reading Men's Health for ab workout tips. When they should be sacrifice bunting, they are buying effeminate designer jeans. When they should be fouling off pitches, they are masturbating. Always, they are masturbating."
"God I'm excited for those two to fail miserably." - SBNation writer Andrew Sharp on Josh McDaniels and Tim Tebow.
by Tempestuous Binary on Feb 2, 2011 9:37 AM CST reply actions
Overseas, you have access to the NFL's online streaming service
You can still pay for it. Us non-St. Louis residents dont have any option.
ATDHE and ChannelSurfing are back!!!!!
atdhenet.tv and channelsurf.eu
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