James Cridland found this hilarious post by Rick Segal about an encounter he had with some network TV executives. Excerpt:

These guys were bragging about the ability to start showing TV shows online. If, for example, you go to ABC’s website, you can watch episodes of certain shows pretty much a day or so after they air on TV.

They were proud of these two key points.

They had ‘locked down’ the content. Their words, not mine.

They had ‘locked out’ the rest of the world outside the US. Their words, not mine.

Me: “Yer kidding, right?”

Them: “Not at all. We got this baby right. We’d show you but since we are in Canada, you can’t see the stuff.”

Me: Sigh

I crank up the laptop and fire up the abc.com website and we verify that I get the evil, only those in the US can see this, message.

Me: Pay attention, boyz.

Step one: Google: ip spoofer software

Step two: grab one, install it.

Step three: watch Ugly Betty.

Them: Nobody is going to know how to do that. Besides, if you were to tell people, we’d sue for damages.

Me: So, if I told the world that in order to get around websites that restrict access by IP, you could change the IP address via a zillion pieces of software freely available on the Internet, you’d sue me? Really? Like as in, say a blog entry? Can I get that in writing? As a promise?

Them: Blank stares

Lovely! This is the ‘push’ mentality personified.