While NBC said it has implemented tools and forged relationships with Web sites to reduce its exposure to piracy during the Beijing Olympics, a leading piracy expert predicts that millions of Internet users around the world will view illegal clips of the global sporting event over the next two weeks anyway.
“There will probably be a steady stream of pirate copies of these various events, and for each event you will have a handful of rogue versions,” said Eric Garland, CEO of media measurement firm Big Champagne and a well-known digital piracy expert.
“But for some moments from the Games, instant-replay types, they will be viewed millions of times, including unauthorized clips on DailyMotion, YouTube, streaming sites and others … in ways that weren’t paid for by broadcasters who have secured exclusive rights.”
NBC said the key to curbing piracy is making the coverage broadly available through legal outlets across broadcast, cable, video-on-demand, mobile phones and online with 2,200 hours of live event coverage at NBColympics.com.
But legal distribution doesn’t deter Internet scofflaws. The anticipated flood of illegal Games clips underscores the challenges networks and media companies face when repurposing their programming for the Web. That’s because online viewers often expect video to be available everywhere online. When content isn’t, some Web users taken it upon themselves to do the copying and distribution.
The piracy measures NBC is taking include digital watermarking to “tag” the coverage. An NBC spokesman said the network and its broadcast partners are tagging all the video that NBC originates from the Olympics.
That can help track offenders, said Russell Zack, VP of product management at Anystream, one of the vendors handling online and television technology for NBC’s Olympics effort.
“That acts as a forensic stamp you can track back to the last place it came from and it’ll give you hints as to what system it came from,” he said.
But a digital fingerprint is not a preventive measure, he cautioned. “It’s an investigative measure, so when NBC finds it on a user-generated site it can be taken down and traced back to where the original pirate took it from.”
NBC also has charged a handful of employees with scouring the Web every day to look for pirated videos from the Olympics. When those videos are found, the network will send a take-down notice to the site, NBC said.
The network also expects its employees across the broadcast, cable, stations and other divisions to keep an eye out for Olympics video in places where those clips shouldn’t be.
That applies to YouTube, the world’s biggest video-sharing site, which delivered 4 billion streams to 72 million unique visitors in June, according to Nielsen Online. NBC has been participating in YouTube’s copyright filtering system and will continue to do so for the Olympics. Under that process, NBC flags videos in advance; if those videos are uploaded, the system is designed to kick them back.
YouTube inked a deal last week with the International Olympic Committee to deliver Olympics video to 77 territories where digital rights have not been sold, such as Afghanistan.
On Friday, YouTube also announced its Summer Games YouTube Channel, which offers Games-related content from providers other than NBC, such as Reuters and the Associated Press.
In addition, the IOC has a channel on YouTube at youtube.com/beijing2008, but those videos are not accessible in the United States. Also, the IOC is using YouTube’s copyright filtering technology to manage its content during the event.
Despite these measures, Internet users are likely to find videos on pirate sites and peer-to-peer TV forums, including peer-to-peer streaming sites originating from China, live video sites such as Stickam and Justin.tv, Torrent sites such as the Pirate Bay and foreign TV, according to the Web site NewTeeVee.com.
“The Internet is fundamentally the enemy of scarcity,” Mr. Garland said. “The Internet leaks like a sieve.”
(Daisy Whitney contributes on-air reports to NBC TV stations in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.)
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Comments (12)
NBC sucks! they only broadcast sports USA is in.
They should be puting EVERY SINGLE EVENT online on hulu or alike that puts advertisements on (yes... they can't argue that they are loosing money due to users not seeing ads)
Posted by nev | August 11, 2008 1:34 AM
NBC likes to think that it brings the Olympic into American homes. Let's look at this closely. NBC monopolizes the Olympic. The American public gets to see only what NBC thinks are money makers for NBC. In other words, NBC shows sports in which American athletes get medals and their endorsed advertisements. What's wrong with watching other countries compete? Where's the love for the games themselves? From watching what's on TV, you would think the Olympic consists of swimming, gymnastics, basketball, tennis, and a few other sports. What the American public gets is getting shafted by NBC.
Posted by Jain | August 11, 2008 1:51 AM
I went to the NBC website and tried to watch their videos of Olympic events, but got a message that since I'm outside the U.S. I can't watch. Why not? I'm more than happy to look at any advertising they want to show me.
So where do I go next? Bittorrent, of course. And they wonder why there's so much piracy. What morons.
Posted by Marko | August 11, 2008 4:09 AM
I WILL NOT GIVE NBC ANY OF MY TIME SO GLAAD I GET AND LIVE RIGHT OUT SIDE OF CANDIAN BOARDER!! I SAY THE HELL WITH NBC THEY MESS EVERYTHING UP AND COMMIG BACK WITH ALL THE FLOPS OF LAST YEAR THEY MAY TRY AND GET THE JUMP ON EVERONE ELSE THE WILL STLL FALL FLAT!! SO LONG NBC!!!! NEVER WILL CHIME IN YOUR FOR THE BIRDS!!
Posted by dglefforge | August 11, 2008 6:18 AM
So, NBC's unhappy with viewers for NOT wanting to settle for NBC's 'packaged version' of the Olympics? It just HAS to be those darned pirates that are the problem, right?
Yet, on top of the problems other commentors have listed, NBC has also deliberately shut out millions of viewers by making their online offering available only to those who run Microsoft Windows, and then they must use some kind of Windows-only player (called Silverlight, I think) to access NBC's DRM-encumbered Olympic content.
NBC can make all the deals they want, in an effort to own Olympic content, but they don't own the Olympics, and those that wish to watch them, in full, without NBC's creative editing, will find a way to do so.
NBC just needs to get a clue, and stop throwing the word "piracy" at the world for not wanting their Olympics (or anything else, for that matter) to be delivered in homogenized pasteurized advertised censorized little packages that are shinkwrapped with DRM.
Posted by Rain Day | August 11, 2008 8:39 AM
I agree with the others -- NBC sucks. Their soft-focus athlete human interest stories are repellant! Way too much time has spent with the athletes talking about those love lives. I don't give a frak about that. I'm only interested in what makes them do what they do and how they excel to this extent.
You have to wonder why NBC is fighting so hard to keep videos off YouTube and similar sites. Where are they going to obtain additional revenues for these clips? People will still turn to NBC's own website to watch clips and/or streams of non-broadcast events, but there are some moments that NBC won't see fit to rebroadcast that could still be of interest to others.
This policy seems extremely petty to me, as well as decidedly unsavvy and unwise. Buzz is generated by the YouTubes of the world these days. Sure, throw clips up on hula, if you want to be greedy, but letting clips flourish online would be the best free advertising NBC could get, imo.
Plus, the Olympics is singular in the world of sport for its historical and cultural significance. Especially with the import of these Chinese games, it is frustrating not to be able to share key moments with friends -- moments like George Bush saying to Bob Costas that he told Putin that the violence in Georgia was "unacceptable" and that China would change in part due to the viral power of religion. Or that creepy moment in the opening ceremony when those soldiers received the Chinese flag from the beautiful, smiling children.
I also noticed with some frustration while watching gymnastics that NBC doesn't see fit to broadcast the individual scores for non-US athletes, at least not during the qualification round. That seems churlish in the extreme to me as well as just being annoying. The Olympics is about individual achievement as well as all the other BS that people speak of all the time. I'm genuinely curious about how these athletes scored, especially since the scoring system is brand new this year and confusing even to analysts.
Posted by undrgrndwmn | August 11, 2008 8:40 AM
Of course the online coverage is terrible. NBC is a BROADCAST company, it is not going to have the best coverage online. Hey NBC, at least have the sports you are not covering on your confusing schedule. Oh, and your UI sucks up the wazhoo!
Posted by P. Lee | August 11, 2008 3:05 PM
I HOPE DUE TO NBC BEING SH=UCH ASSHLOES THEY FALL FLAT ON THIER FACES!! DOWN AND DONE WITH ANYTHING NBC!! THEY WILL JUST NEVER WAKE UP!! AFTER SO MANY YEARS IN THE BASEMENT YOU WOULD THINK THEY WOULD LEARN!!
Posted by dglefforge | August 11, 2008 3:46 PM
"Their soft-focus athlete human interest stories are repellant! Way too much time has spent with the athletes talking about those love lives. I don't give a frak about that."
Amen. I quit watching years ago because of that garbage. FYI, just moved overseas from US, and they cable company added six channels, covering all the sports, with none of the "my mom drove me at 6am every day, I love her so much" crap, FREE OF CHARGE.
I'm remembering why I used to enjoy watching Olympics now!
Posted by fan | August 11, 2008 5:49 PM
Why so much coverage of the Chinese? All we see
is the USA vs.China. What of the other countries?
What of other sports besides Vollebally? Waterpolo?
When will we see American Female gold winners on
the podium? We seem to be covering all the Asian
countries..China, Japan. What of the European
nations where great athletes also exist?
And, too many commercials. After every small move
the athletes make there are at least 4 commercials
we endure.
Posted by Helen Cantell | August 12, 2008 10:13 PM
The coverage really sucks. I totally understand if they want to highlight the competitions where US is performing well but I just can't stand the re-runs of those clips [like Michael Phelp's "fingernail win" in the 100m butterfly. I swear I've seen that clip on NBC's coverage like a dozen times already when there are some other live sports going on!].
And then, they were like "who's going to be the fastest man in the world? Coming up next...". Errr, I think they already ran the race like 12 hours ago!
Posted by Asdy | August 18, 2008 9:39 PM
Wow, I haven't seen this many uninformed opinions in one place in a long time. Do any of you check your "facts" or actually read the article you're commenting on?
Here are a few facts:
1. NBC is only offering Internet coverage for the U.S. because IOC only sold it the rights for U.S. coverage. It's not NBC's fault those are the rules that IOC made. If they didn't want to enforce those rules, the IOC would just sell broadcast rights to somebody else - CBS, ABC, Fox, etc.
2. If you had actually read the article, you would've noticed it says that NBC is only policing pirated content that's been yanked from THEIR site. They're not trying to police the Olympics. They don't give a damn if somebody posts BBC's Olympics videos on YouTube.
3. Silverlight is a cross-platform plugin. It works on Mac OS too. And WMP plugin is still an alternative option for Windows users.
4. NBC Olympics videos aren't DRM protected. Linux users have already figured out how to grab the streaming server URL and watch the streams.
Posted by WhatsWrongWithYouAll | August 21, 2008 11:51 PM