The DCMA and perhaps some earlier electronic circumvention laws make this act a very real breach of US law. Publicly stating it is a bit dangerous and could cost the author if the NFL decided to pursue a case. How crazy is that?
Of course, while illegal, I personally think it is very RIGHT.
It is not RIGHT. The NFL has the _right_ to sell their content however they like, and they coordinate their blackout rules with the cable channels who pay for them. If you don't like it, the RIGHT action is to pay for cable, buy tickets, or do what I do and go without.
Just so people who are just showing up understand:
The title of this post was originally along the lines of "Avoid NFL blackouts online for just $2/month using domain-specific DNS resolution". That's what this comment is addressing.
While I can see a colorable argument that under DMCA this is illegal (circumventing a copyright protection), I think that the argument that there are a variety of reasons a user could change to a different DNS server, and relying on DNS to identify the location of users is an inherently incomplete copyright protection, would prevail.
This is completely misleading. You still need to pay for NFL Game Pass which is several hundred dollars for the season.
I do something similar with a proxy server for NBA. I connect to a Swedish VPN and purchase a season pass. I can then connect to the VPN, start a game, and watch my home team without blackout issue.
You can also disconnect after the initial connection and not have to worry about issues with slowdown going through the VPN.
How exactly does this work? Is the NFL's only protection against Americans viewing for free the fact that American DNS servers give access to a different server, instead of actually checking the IP?
If this were the case, why pay for a DNS service when you can just find the relevant entries and put them in your /etc/hosts file?
I believe they redirect certain hostnames through their servers and proxy those connections. It's also possible that the NFL, etc, use dynamically generated CNAMEs.
You are exactly right. The DNS part of this is only that by pointing your DNS entries at them, they can override specific domains to go through proxies. In this case using proxies in the NL, which is apparently the single and only European country that gets this free viewing right (and likely will find that right quickly disappear as a bunch of Americans start proxying through it).
For articles like this the author really needs to save the justification because it is a) ridiculous to the people who see through it, b) unnecessary to the people who already buy in.
I'm not sure what he meant, but I read it to mean that HD is free in Europe for those who've purchased SD, where as it costs extra in the US. Does that make sense?
tl;dr - this solution does not work, but Aereo, as of 2013, does.
I was successfully able to watch the Summer Olympics last year using a VPN in this manner. Actually ended up watching the whole thing via the BBC -- it was oddly enjoyable to listen to the British commentators remark about the Yanks as if we are a race of athletically superior, somewhat lovable, giant children that are obviously in every other way doofuses :) .
The solution as proposed does not work from the USA for NFL Season Pass. I've tried, very hard, to find a way to make it work. (I cleared cookies, caches, changed the clock on my computer, deleted an installed a browser for the sole purpose of watching these games, etc. etc., to no avail.)
But every time, the NFL can somehow, someway, sniff out that I am a US user, and directs me to the page saying to sign up through your local cable provider. I've never owned a TV or subscribed to cable, so... grrrr.
Happily, Aereo, which last season was blurry, blotchy, and somewhat inferior to going to the local bar / friends', is this year very, very good. I set up the NFL games on CBS and NBC yesterday to record. They recorded, and I watched them from a giant Dell screen I have set up for the purpose. We also watch our Netflix and Hulu stuff on the same screen.
They do have a tough time with games that go over the scheduled time, like last night's Seahawks-49ers game. If you see that that is going to happen you have to go to the next show, and the next, next show, and click "record". So that even though you have no intention of watching local news at 11, Aereo is recording the correct station at the correct time.
For a non-TV, occasional sports fan who does not need a whole bunch of bells and whistles, Aereo is a fine solution.
(And, no, I have no professional, personal or other affiliation with Aereo other than the $10 a month they nick me for the service.)
> tl;dr - this solution does not work, but Aereo, as of 2013, does.
I use one of these services for Pandora, and it also supports the NFL thing. I just went to the site, and it works (I can watch a game, although I have no interest in NFL), so that preamble is wrong.
The title is misleading. You still have to buy NFL Game Pass. I think it is $25/week or $250 for the season.
Not sure, but Game Pass might have been free the first weekend. Sunday ticket in the US has a free preview the first week of the season. The original poster might have thought the free preview meant it was free every week, but just speculating.
Assuming that it's true that you can watch the NFL for free from Europe (as asserted in the article), why not just use a VPN service or fire up your own AWS instance in Europe?
I get where this poster is going with the idea of using different resolvers for different services, but there's some serious flaws in the logic. 1) Many sites utilize a redirect in order to force the user back into the optimal datacenter. Using anycast name resolution the user will always end up in the closest datacenter. This is a pretty standard CDN offering by the first tier providers. This is utilized mostly because using a DNS provider like Google would otherwise result in traffic flowing to datacenters thousands of miles from your home. It's also used to to ensure geo restrictions, which would kill this method for many sites. 2) The poster mentions setting domains like Netflix back to the original DNS server. Content delivery is a bit trickier than this. Fire up Wireshark when you're watching Netflix and you'll see there's a large number of domains involved, and the actual content comes off a third party CDNs. Setting DNS servers per site is a lot more complex than choosing a single domain name and setting it to a server.
I do not find the "scholarly legal document"[1] very convincing. The DMCA says, "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
The resolver's IP is what they see. If you're behind a big, geographically diverse resolver (like public DNS), they'll have a bad time trying to map you to the closest server.
edns fixes this by propagating the original client IP, and while some of the public resolvers support it, support is lacking on the other side (CDNs, netflix, etc.)
It's still not worth the money. I watch a small amount of NFL during the season. Occasional I might sit down to watch a portion of a good game. However, I'm not willing to spend much more than a few dollars a month (that's how it sounds from the comments) to watch a few out-of-market games on Sunday. NFL charges too much. I guess it's OK though because obviously some people are willing to pay for it.
Different strokes. I got a pass to watch all the Sunday games for free this year by preordering the Madden video game, but barring that I'd gladly pay $2/month (or even a little more) to watch games. Still way cheaper than paying for cable.
I am really interested in this too, however I could not find any indication of it in "man 5 resolver" :(
You can do this with dnsmasq by using the --server option where you can pass individual upstream servers for different domains (in addition to the default ones read from /etc/resolv.conf):
--server=/google.com/1.2.3.4 --server=/www.google.com/2.3.4.5 will send queries for *.google.com to 1.2.3.4, except *www.google.com, which will go to 2.3.4.5
I use this for Pandora/Netflix, but I don't like giving that company the ability to MITM any site I visit. If you're running dnsmasq, you can tell it to only use that DNS server for a few domains like so:
In Germany, the NFL website doesn't allow you to watch all games for free. You have to purchase the NFL game pass, which is around $200 per season IIRC (there's multiple packages), which is the same you'd pay in the US.
[+] [-] snoonan|12 years ago|reply
The DCMA and perhaps some earlier electronic circumvention laws make this act a very real breach of US law. Publicly stating it is a bit dangerous and could cost the author if the NFL decided to pursue a case. How crazy is that?
Of course, while illegal, I personally think it is very RIGHT.
[+] [-] edlebert|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lelandbatey|12 years ago|reply
The title of this post was originally along the lines of "Avoid NFL blackouts online for just $2/month using domain-specific DNS resolution". That's what this comment is addressing.
[+] [-] tsaoutourpants|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baddox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonheller|12 years ago|reply
I do something similar with a proxy server for NBA. I connect to a Swedish VPN and purchase a season pass. I can then connect to the VPN, start a game, and watch my home team without blackout issue.
You can also disconnect after the initial connection and not have to worry about issues with slowdown going through the VPN.
[+] [-] gr3yh47|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bonyt|12 years ago|reply
If this were the case, why pay for a DNS service when you can just find the relevant entries and put them in your /etc/hosts file?
[+] [-] js2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corresation|12 years ago|reply
For articles like this the author really needs to save the justification because it is a) ridiculous to the people who see through it, b) unnecessary to the people who already buy in.
[+] [-] eschnou|12 years ago|reply
Where did you get that? I'm based in EU and I need a GamePass at 150€ to watch games, or pay 12€ per week.
[+] [-] CRidge|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb2k_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcenedella|12 years ago|reply
I was successfully able to watch the Summer Olympics last year using a VPN in this manner. Actually ended up watching the whole thing via the BBC -- it was oddly enjoyable to listen to the British commentators remark about the Yanks as if we are a race of athletically superior, somewhat lovable, giant children that are obviously in every other way doofuses :) .
The solution as proposed does not work from the USA for NFL Season Pass. I've tried, very hard, to find a way to make it work. (I cleared cookies, caches, changed the clock on my computer, deleted an installed a browser for the sole purpose of watching these games, etc. etc., to no avail.)
But every time, the NFL can somehow, someway, sniff out that I am a US user, and directs me to the page saying to sign up through your local cable provider. I've never owned a TV or subscribed to cable, so... grrrr.
Happily, Aereo, which last season was blurry, blotchy, and somewhat inferior to going to the local bar / friends', is this year very, very good. I set up the NFL games on CBS and NBC yesterday to record. They recorded, and I watched them from a giant Dell screen I have set up for the purpose. We also watch our Netflix and Hulu stuff on the same screen.
They do have a tough time with games that go over the scheduled time, like last night's Seahawks-49ers game. If you see that that is going to happen you have to go to the next show, and the next, next show, and click "record". So that even though you have no intention of watching local news at 11, Aereo is recording the correct station at the correct time.
For a non-TV, occasional sports fan who does not need a whole bunch of bells and whistles, Aereo is a fine solution.
(And, no, I have no professional, personal or other affiliation with Aereo other than the $10 a month they nick me for the service.)
[+] [-] StavrosK|12 years ago|reply
I use one of these services for Pandora, and it also supports the NFL thing. I just went to the site, and it works (I can watch a game, although I have no interest in NFL), so that preamble is wrong.
[+] [-] modarts|12 years ago|reply
Ugh, I was hoping to come here to escape any mention of that game last night :(
[+] [-] paul_f|12 years ago|reply
Not sure, but Game Pass might have been free the first weekend. Sunday ticket in the US has a free preview the first week of the season. The original poster might have thought the free preview meant it was free every week, but just speculating.
[+] [-] casca|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb2k_|12 years ago|reply
Here in Germany e.g. it doesn't work.
It does however work using a VPN to the Netherlands.
[+] [-] slig|12 years ago|reply
2. Maybe you want to watch netflix on your TV, and there you can only change DNS servers.
[+] [-] txttran|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slig|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsmith84|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eli|12 years ago|reply
[1] https://adfreetime.com/wp_super_faq/is-this-service-legal/
[+] [-] redblacktree|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] revertts|12 years ago|reply
edns fixes this by propagating the original client IP, and while some of the public resolvers support it, support is lacking on the other side (CDNs, netflix, etc.)
[+] [-] gr3yh47|12 years ago|reply
EDIT: the Netherlands has NFL gamepass for free btw
[+] [-] icebraining|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikomen|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevincrane|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ape4|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shock|12 years ago|reply
You can do this with dnsmasq by using the --server option where you can pass individual upstream servers for different domains (in addition to the default ones read from /etc/resolv.conf):
[+] [-] js2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StavrosK|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelGG|12 years ago|reply
https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq#cdn
[+] [-] jhuckestein|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jinx_xnij|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oxes|12 years ago|reply