Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think? • Hacker News Board

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#31

Post by ryanhuff » Tue, Jan 03, 2012, 5:28 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #23

The NBA is a great example of how individual consumers are not their customer. You want to pay money to watch NBA games, but you can't. The owners want money through ticket sales, so if you live in the "home market", you don't get to watch the game on TV. But, the owners also want money from TV deals. But they don't want your $20 to watch the game on TV, they want ABC's $3 billion (or whatever) for the right to charg…

Why should the NBA bother with messy details like dealing with fans directly when somebody (networks) gladly pays (up front) for the privilege?

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#32

Post by slowpoke » Tue, Jan 03, 2012, 5:29 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #23

The NBA is a great example of how individual consumers are not their customer. You want to pay money to watch NBA games, but you can't. The owners want money through ticket sales, so if you live in the "home market", you don't get to watch the game on TV. But, the owners also want money from TV deals. But they don't want your $20 to watch the game on TV, they want ABC's $3 billion (or whatever) for the right to charg…

>Anti-piracy legislation is all about protecting the middlemen who realize that they do nothing and they need the government to bail them out.

Beautifully said. That, my fellow hackers, is copyright and anti-piracy legislation in a nutshell - to serve and protect that which provides no value at the cost of depriving everyone else of their rights.

To slightly derive from a well known quote[1] from Henry Ford: If people understood this simple fact about copyright, it would be dead and forgotten before tomorrow morning.

[1] "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#33

Post by marknutter » Tue, Jan 03, 2012, 5:30 PM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #14

marknutter wrote: post #6

As a non-cable subscriber and a big NBA fan, I find blackouts unbelievably frustrating. There is simply no legal way to watch some live NBA games unless you pay for cable. I'm constantly having to route my NBA broadband league pass through a proxy to watch my home team, and the only workaround for nationally televised games is to pirate them from sites like sportlemon.tv. It's a classic case of frustrating customer e…

My guess is that they're trying to maximize "butts in seats" at the event itself. If people were given the option, they might choose to stay home and avoid the inevitable annoyances of crowded events (like, you know, other people), and that would cut down on revenue for the venue itself. There is also the psychological effect of a large crowd in a venue showing enthusiasm for the sport. How much fun would a basketbal…

> My guess is that they're trying to maximize "butts in seats" at the event itself.

I bet you're right, but two things: 1) they blackout home-team games that are played away from home, and 2) most people can't make it to every home game. If you're on the verge of making the transition from casual fan to rabid fan, staying in sync with the team by watching as many games as possible. I greatly prefer attending the event to watching it on TV, so in my case access to more content doesn't reduce my desire to go to games. In fact, because I've had access to all their games (through both breaking the NBA League Pass rules by going over a proxy and pirating nationally televised games) I've become a huge fan and attend live games all the time now.

The #1 goal of the NBA is to increase the number of NBA fans. In my humble opinion, this is best done by getting their product, which speaks for itself, in front of as many people as they can. It's also they best way for them to break free from the hold that the major media outlets have on them and control their own destiny by broadcasting games on their own terms.

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#34

Post by nsxwolf » Tue, Jan 03, 2012, 5:33 PM UTC

I don't understand these blackouts. I would think that televising an event will get people excited and make them want to buy tickets so they can see the action in person.

It seemed to work that way for the Blackhawks.

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#35

Post by jordan0day » Tue, Jan 03, 2012, 5:33 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #23

The NBA is a great example of how individual consumers are not their customer. You want to pay money to watch NBA games, but you can't. The owners want money through ticket sales, so if you live in the "home market", you don't get to watch the game on TV. But, the owners also want money from TV deals. But they don't want your $20 to watch the game on TV, they want ABC's $3 billion (or whatever) for the right to charg…

I think you're pretty much spot-on here. The one thing I would add is that while everyone is talking about the cable/media companies' business models being obsolete, we could also make the same argument for the team owners. That is, when I have a 50" big screen and digital theater sound at home, and can buy a 6-pack of beer for $8 rather than a single beer, I'm much more likely to watch the game at home for (ostensibly) free, rather than pay $30 or more for a single ticket.

The atmosphere and ambiance of a live sporting event still trumps the home theater experience, but as technology improves, and ticket and concession prices rise, that gap narrows. The reflexive response to protecting ticket revenue since broadcasts of sporting events began has been the blackout. As technology improves, and technical know-how is more widely disseminated, blackouts are becoming less and less effective, as more and more people understand how to get around them.

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#36

Post by marknutter » Tue, Jan 03, 2012, 5:34 PM UTC

mikeryan wrote: post #13

marknutter wrote: post #6

As a non-cable subscriber and a big NBA fan, I find blackouts unbelievably frustrating. There is simply no legal way to watch some live NBA games unless you pay for cable. I'm constantly having to route my NBA broadband league pass through a proxy to watch my home team, and the only workaround for nationally televised games is to pirate them from sites like sportlemon.tv. It's a classic case of frustrating customer e…

I understand that a fair amount of revenue for the NBA is probably coming from the deals it made with TNT, EPSN, and Fox, but a viewer is a viewer, whether they're watching from the net or through traditional venues - why do they care, so long as their advertisers are getting enough eyeballs? Not "some" all of NBA's TV Revenues come from selling the rights to networks. The networks sell the ads, and they're the ones…

The NBA is basically promising these networks they will bring them eyeballs. By offering league pass to all customers without restrictions, and passing on all ad revenue to the network which holds the right to that specific game, they increasing their ability to deliver on the promise. For instance, if a game is televised on TNT, but X number of potential viewers don't have cable TV but do have internet access, by allowing them to watch the game online they are bringing even more users to TNT (passing all or most of the ad revenue less hosting expenses to TNT).

Seems like a fairly straightforward solution to me. My assumption is that the powers that be aren't technologically sophisticated enough to understand the benefits of it.

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#37

Post by hxa7241 » Tue, Jan 03, 2012, 5:35 PM UTC

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #22

Deezul wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's this line of thinking that will eventually send old media to the grave. They’ll hang on for a while, grasping at the golden years of yore, but if they don’t adapt to demands they will die. It’s not about “excuses”, it’s about reality, facts. If technology and the convenience it affords isn’t used as a medium to enhance customer experience it will be its demise.

> but if they don’t adapt to demands they will die. No business can meet all demands. I think this is what annoys me the most about the "I pirate because I'm underserved" crowd. They act like not getting what you want is unique to our times. Unique to the internet. It's not. People in all walks of life, in all times, have had to deal with not getting everything they want. Had to deal with making compromises . In this…

This whole 'entitlement' spiel is bogus.

People expect to be able to get stuff because they know it is available.

If each piece of TV/music/whatever had to be dug out of the ground, or hand-made, at great expense, they would not be available easily. People would want them, but hardly anyone would be providing them.

But that is just not the case here. These things are trivially available. It is that they are being witheld by certain providers -- because the whole market rests on a made-up artificial scarcity. That is the basic underlying physical fact, and people feel it.

If people expect to be able to easily get stuff that is actually easily available, they are absolutely right!

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#38

Post by slowpoke » Tue, Jan 03, 2012, 5:36 PM UTC

RexRollman wrote: post #7

It is an interesting question. For example: is it wrong to download MP3s of songs you already own on CD? I don't believe so, but I bet you the RIAA would consider it so, even though they got paid.

>I don't believe so, but I bet you the RIAA would consider it so, even though they got paid.

If the RIAA had it their way, you'd probably be forced to pay every single time you play a track on your computer or hit the Copy command to put it on your PMP or phone.

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#39

Post by marknutter » Tue, Jan 03, 2012, 5:38 PM UTC

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #12

marknutter wrote: post #6

As a non-cable subscriber and a big NBA fan, I find blackouts unbelievably frustrating. There is simply no legal way to watch some live NBA games unless you pay for cable. I'm constantly having to route my NBA broadband league pass through a proxy to watch my home team, and the only workaround for nationally televised games is to pirate them from sites like sportlemon.tv. It's a classic case of frustrating customer e…

I actually have more respect for people who pirate to get things for free than people who pirate and claim that they're only doing it because X condition isn't met. X could be that it's not in the format you want, that it's not at the price point you want, or any number of other things. The publishers business model is their business model, good or bad. Own up to your decision to pirate.

Your respect would be nice, but being able to watch my favorite sport without subscribing to cable television is nicer. I'm at peace with my decision to pirate. Feelings and morals aside, at the end of the day the NBA and their customers are losing ad-revenue because it's more convenient for people like me to pirate live events than it is to legitimately pay for access to them. Self-righteousness doesn't put money in the bank (unless SOPA passes, of course).

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#40

Post by Bobby_Tables » Tue, Jan 03, 2012, 5:40 PM UTC

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #22

Deezul wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's this line of thinking that will eventually send old media to the grave. They’ll hang on for a while, grasping at the golden years of yore, but if they don’t adapt to demands they will die. It’s not about “excuses”, it’s about reality, facts. If technology and the convenience it affords isn’t used as a medium to enhance customer experience it will be its demise.

> but if they don’t adapt to demands they will die. No business can meet all demands. I think this is what annoys me the most about the "I pirate because I'm underserved" crowd. They act like not getting what you want is unique to our times. Unique to the internet. It's not. People in all walks of life, in all times, have had to deal with not getting everything they want. Had to deal with making compromises . In this…

Actually, he probably didn't have any other option to watch the game on TV. NYC (and especially Manhattan) residents very rarely have a choice of cable providers. If you're in a Time Warner building, no other cable company can provide service there, and it's very rare to live in a cable building where DirecTV or Dish service is also available.

So really, his choice is to move into a building with a different cable provider and hope that provider doesn't get into a similar spat.