fake out MLB

["Larry Seltzer" <larry () larryseltzer com>]

I'm an MLB.TV customer, which allows me to watch Major League Baseball games
on streaming video. It's pretty good quality, but there's one problem. They
enforce local blackout rules. So when the local team is broadcast on local
TV they black out the game on MLB.TV for local customers.
 
How can they do such a thing? I believe that that they have a database of
broadband POP IP addresses and their locations, since the service is
practical only on broadband. I also know there are companies selling this
same capability (see http://www.ip2location.com/) 
 
So anyway, they look at the first IP address in your connection path that
they recognize and that's your location. They show me as being in New York
City where my DSL POP is, as opposed to north Jersey where I actually am. A
friend of mine had satellite broadband and they showed him in Herndon,
Virginia where the satellite network op center is as opposed to northern
Pennsylvania where he really is. I was also able to defeat it once by
connecting through a VPN based out of the area. 
 
I don't want to rely on the VPN which, in any event, imposes a performance
hit on streaming video. Is there a good general solution around this
problem?
 
Larry Seltzer
eWEEK.com Security Center Editor
 <blocked::http://security.eweek.com/> http://security.eweek.com/
http://blog.eweek.com/blogs/larry%5Fseltzer/
<http://blog.ziffdavis.com/seltzer> 
Contributing Editor, PC Magazine
larryseltzer () ziffdavis com 
 

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