NCAA March Madness

March madness is upon us, and a few outlets worldwide are providing live video feeds over the internet, both free and paid. There are already articles in the newswires about how the feeds are going to slow down corporate networks all over the place, and they are right. It is the paid services, though, that are going to be the BANE of network admins. The paid services uses digital rights managment (DRM) to secure the broadcast so that it cannot be pirated. DRM also means an encrypted feed which network admins cannot monitor with packet sniffing. Also, DRM preents another problem for employers, in the United States, as they would likely be violating the DMCA, if they tried to figure out what a user was up to. This means they cannot fire someone for watching a DRM-protected stream without risking prosecution for violating the DMCA. The data that was left on the hard disk would also be encrypted, and it would be unlawful, in the USA, to try and break it. This is going to be the MONTH FROM HELL for admins in the USA, where DRM is protected by the DMCA, as users tune into the NCAA basketball tournament, and there is NO WAY that employers can monitor or stop it, without breaking the law. That is why when WE have our subscription streams for figure skating, Olympics, and other sports we want to cover, we encrypt and protect with DRM. Employers in the the USA and the UK, our biggest subscriber markets, cannot monitor what is going on, without breaking anti-cracking laws in those countries. The World Figure Skating Championships are coming up, and being that most of the competition will be in the working hours in the USA, it will be the WEEK FROM HELL, as network admins figure out how to stop us withouut violating the DMCA,