Olympics Coverage: Fans Turn Pirates with Clever Use of VPN Services
By Karla Robinson
August 2, 2012
August 2, 2012
- In response to NBC’s inability to provide live Olympics coverage online for non-cable subscribers, some U.S. viewers have taken up VPN services to access BBC footage with a UK IP address.
- StrongVPN.com is one such VPN service provider that has had a jump in UK VPN sales recently, according to its president, Phil Blancett. He, however, holds no responsibility for what users do with their edited IP addresses.
- “It’s not the responsibility of the VPN provider how people use our connections,” says Blancett. “We provide a VPN account and a secure connection, not what happens on those connections.”
- “He compares the role of a VPN provider to that of an ISP, which should not be monitoring how you are using your Internet connection,” TechCrunch reports. “Another issue [is] that these companies are making money elsewhere and have other concerns with getting their Olympics coverage right.”
- “I really don’t think the BBC or NBC really care,” Blancett says. “They’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
- These VPN services are frequently used in countries like China that “geo-block a number of sites like Facebook and Twitter for political reasons,” the article explains.
- “But as the amount of content — and specifically video content — has continued to grow online, so has the desire among consumers to get it where they want it, and when they want it,” concludes TechCrunch. “And just as torrent sites arose out of a time when getting content elsewhere simply wasn’t there, so has the market for VPNs and what they are getting used for, too.”
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