Fox Accuses Cablevision Of Telling People To Go To 'Illegal' Sites To Watch Games Fox Is Blocking

from the uh,-well,-since-you're-blocking-them... dept

I’m not quite sure I understand Fox’s supposed (and very manufactured) “outrage” at the news that Cablevision employees are telling upset callers to go online to find streams of sporting events that they can’t watch on Fox due to the fee dispute between Cablevision and Fox. After all, Fox is the one blocking Cablevision subscribers from seeing the content, so it really shouldn’t be surprised to find out that Cablevision is helping people find the content. Also, while the particular streams may be unauthorized, it’s a bit silly to call the sites themselves “illegal” as Fox’s announcement states. Similarly, it’s kind of silly that the Daily News, who is reporting on this, isn’t naming the sites in question.

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Companies: cablevision, news corp

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Comments on “Fox Accuses Cablevision Of Telling People To Go To 'Illegal' Sites To Watch Games Fox Is Blocking”

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53 Comments
Marcel de Jong (profile) says:

Is Fox fucking kidding me?

So, you block a whole bunch of people from your feeds and then you get angry when people try to find alternative ways of watching the games? What did they expect, that people would just roll over?
Oh wait no, they had expected that the outrage would be focused on Cablevision, who’d then be pestered into paying the higher fee. Bunch of greedy asshats.

Kudos to Cablevision for thinking pro-customer.

Any Mouse says:

Re: Re: Is Fox fucking kidding me?

We’ve had Cablevision for years. Digital phone, internet, and television. They are definitely pro-customer at the local market level, here, but with most Cablevision providers you are not dealing with a corporate office somewhere in Texas, Canada or even, gods forbid, India. They’re right there in your town, so if you’re getting bad service it’s your own neighbors to blame.

Martial Law says:

Re: Is Fox fucking kidding me?

Marcel, please go lease 1200 acres of prime hunting land for $20K/year and then let me hunt on it for free. You can demand that others pay, but not me since I have a Natural-born, God-given right to hunt on your lease.

You are intellectually challenged, just like everyone else who thinks that they are ENTITLED to copyrighted content. If nobody paid for it, nobody would generate it.

Marcel de Jong (profile) says:

Re: Re: Is Fox fucking kidding me?

If you want that analogy to work, I would have to forbid you access to my land, and then complain to you when you hunt game that came from my land but that you hunted on the property next door.

But I don’t think I could claim ownership over the animals on my land.
So analogy fail. Better luck next time.

If anything Fox has an issue with the illegal providers and not with Cablevision in this case.

anon says:

Re: Re: Re: Is Fox fucking kidding me?

Fox’s issue is Cablevision allowing their people to promote illegal viewing/downloading/streaming and allowing them to make claims that they have a whole team working on getting you the latest in illegal video on the internet. Please. Fox knows we’re all looking for alternative means and they know how easy it is to find them, but come *on*. I applaud them for outing CV even if it comes out that they intentionally set them up to look stupid. Fox sucks. Cablevision and Dish Network suck more. At least Fox isn’t pretending like they give a shit about me. Dish and CV would have hiked their rates regardless of this, now they just have a convenient excuse. Meanwhile Dish Network is playing the victim so hard that it’s almost sad.

Watch your shows illegally while these guys fight it out, just don’t accept that CV is looking out for you when they tell you where to find them because they aren’t.

Anonymous Coward says:

Unintended consequences

What is funniest is that, by blocking people from seeing the content in the “official” way, Fox is driving people to a “unofficial” way. After these people get over the activation energy of finding wherever these streams are located, installing whichever plugins and codecs are needed to play the content, and creating whichever website accounts to access these sites, there is much less effort in coming back to see a new stream. Perhaps one from a Fox competitor this time.

In the end, some people will find out they no longer need Fox. Or Cablevision, for that matter.

JEDIDIAH says:

Re: Fixate on the net, forget the antenna.

This is an event that will be broadcast over the public airwaves. It’s silly to fixate on people that might be downloading this off the internet when most of these people can probably just plug an antenna into their TV.

I will be recording the Series in this manner myself since I get the local Fox affiliate clear enough to record from.

The Mighty Buzzard (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Afraid you’ll have to wait on that for a while. Copyright law generally only covers the person or entity making a copy and US courts have ruled that copies in memory or even the filesystem that are used and then discarded for the express purpose of being able to view/listen to the content at all are not copies for the purposes of copyright.

Anonymous Coward says:

Fox is funny or Move backwards

So Fox ends up pushing more cable TV users to the Internet and suddenly they realize they don’t need cable at all to watch this stuff. Why pay extra for cable TV when you can watch it online?? OOppps!

Fox HQ must be a lot like a Benny Hill sketch right now. The music is playing while the CEO runs around and slaps everyone responsible for not re-negotiating in a timely manner even though it was his idea to make more money to begin with.

When will companies learn that when you bite the hand that feeds you (the real hand, the consumers) then you lose whatever credibility and trust you have built up.

C.R.Hatfield (profile) says:

good – I plan on stealing all my fox related shows and events (sports, etc..) even if I can watch them freely, I hate fox and anything fox (News Corporation Inc) operated. I hope and pray the government shuts that company down, freedom of the press should not extend to Tabloids, Tele-Tabloids or any company that incites fear and/or hate for one American against another and while I’m on my soapbox, WikiLeaks is another unamerican piece of shit that needs shut down and their people thrown into federal prison for crimes against the state – shit like this weakens our country and our standings in the world and more importantly, they put our serving brothers and sisters in harms way.

RD says:

Re: Re:

“…and while I’m on my soapbox, WikiLeaks is another unamerican piece of shit that needs shut down and their people thrown into federal prison for crimes against the state..” (more drivel removed)

Um, yeah, lets see….Wikileaks is not in the US. Wikileaks is not under the jurisdiction of the US. Wikileaks is a foreign company, based in a foreign country.

Maybe you better check how high your soapbox is before you speak. Might come across better if you, you know, actually KNOW what you are talking about, and less like a raving lunatic.

btr1701 (profile) says:

Re: Speech

> I hope and pray the government shuts that company
> down, freedom of the press should not extend to
> Tabloids, Tele-Tabloids or any company that incites
> fear and/or hate for one American against another

Well, considering the Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that hateful speech is specifically protected by the 1st Amendment (American Nazi Party vs. City of Skokie), and 200+ years of 1st Amendment jurisprudence also protects tabloid-type journalism, you’re going to be hoping and praying fruitlessly for quite a long time.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Are you seriou?

“freedom of the press should not extend to … any company that incites fear and/or hate for one American against another”

Sounds good to me, so when are NBC, CBS, CNN, ESPN (those sports fans are easily incited) and all the other MSM networks being shut down? While we are at it we probably need to add Investment Banks, all of Wall Street, most automakers, all political associations and campaigns, lobbying organizations, the FBI, CIA, and DOD to the list as well…

Oh wait, you mean that all the companies YOU DON’T LIKE shouldn’t have freedom of the press, okay makes more sense to me now… go back under your bridge TROLL

Free Capitalist (profile) says:

Re: Re: They already lost me...

(Warning weak archaic ref ahead)

(Waves hand)
These aren’t the forums you’re looking for….

Honestly, though its not really the place. Also a good number of us are “old paradigm people” who still pay for TV (in many ways) and buy media in many forms (often the same thing twice in different formats…. ….. ..). It will not broadcast live during the playoffs, but the MLB.tv service will let you replay the WS games. Capacity still needs work though… 😛 I got the service for the regular season because I’m not in my team’s market.

The Digital Hobo (profile) says:

MLB.TV

While I’m in the uproar camp, I’m not sure why more people aren’t getting the MLB.TV streams.

$10 for the entire playoffs isn’t the worst deal in the world, and beats the hell out of the quality you’d get from Justin.TV or any other illegal streams.

You don’t get all the graphics or replays, but you do get the whole game, legally, from the comfort of your livingroom.

DerekCurrie (profile) says:

Frack Fux

Lord-Of-All Rupert Murdoch dictates bloated pricing for his company’s precious news and entertainment programming. So what else will abused customers do but find a work around for his greed and stooopidity. It’s the age of the Marketing Moron where money rules and screw the irritating customers! The RIAA do it! The MPAA do it! News Corp do it! To hell with all of you and your psychopathy.

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