I don't know why people bother asking them if their service is illegal or if it's illegal to use their service,,,,, of course they are not going they say their service is illegal and that there's no problem to use their streams.
So you're saying the government has never wasted time and resources on frivolous matters before? Unfortunately, this website seems exactly like the type of thing they'd want to occupy themselves with.
The government will not go after their customers, but the government can shut down the site. The NBA on the other hand is a different story.
Normal people like us? Hardly, its a company making very very high profit margins by stealing someone else's contents.
Yes. If it were a site streaming newest Hollywood movies to th US, no one would even question it is illegal. This is no different. But on the end, no rockets on tv does suck, so and well.
Why do you think NBA kept telling you rebroadcasting, retransmitting ...without nba's consent is prohibited in every game broadcast? I wouldn't argued in a straight face I as an nba fan was looking for live streams and didn't knowthey were illegal. You need to prove that.
There is one thing to keep in mind here, and that's this: Ask yourself the question - if your provider had CSNH on it, would you have ever considered using a service like Ballstream? Would you even KNOW about it? I can only speak for myself, but I can tell you, not only would I have ever given a thought to a 'gray' service like Ballstream, I wouldn't even know about it. And out of all the markets in the country, how many of them have fan bases where 60% are literally prohibited from watching their home team? Two? Houston and Portland? Those two markets only, I'm sure there may be some other areas around, but I don't know of them. The point is, Ballstream is not sweeping the nation, they are not intruding into the country at a large enough percentage to even cause a blip on the radar. My guess is, the amount of money the NBA 'loses' from Ballstream is probably less than the legal fees costs alone of trying to pursue them. In fact, how many people in Houston do you think have actually signed up for that service so far? I have no idea, and I doubt the company would tell you either, but seriously, how many? Even on this board, THE most Rockets-centric website in the world, the fan base is overwhelmingly either still ignorant of the service, or deeply distrustful of it. So, really, what, MAYBE a couple hundred? At around 5 bucks a month (for the full year), you're talking what, maybe a thousand dollars a month of 'lost' revenue? Is that worth pursuing? Plus, I'm sure the NBA knows as much as everyone else does, as soon as carriage agreements happen, the Ballstreams presence in this market will dry up to almost nothing. So, yeah, it's illicit, there's no doubt about it. I just doubt the NBA will ever think of it as being worth chasing down.
I think the bigger thing to think of is that this service is gaining traction in the US. It's already a common topic of discussion on the NBA subreddit, which has 130k subscribers. Maybe not this year I suppose, but if it continues to gain in popularity and really does offer a better service than the NBA League Pass... then it is direct, illegal competition to the NBA's service, and they WILL do something about it. I'm not trying to be a busy body or whatever, just trying to give some perspective to some of these people who blindly jump into giving an illegal service their IP, credit card, and email info.
maybe league pass will finally learn how to give us the fanatic fans quality streaming service with 60 fps and features like vlc player support
I think the comparison to Napster is a little silly. This is probably cutting into a fraction of a percentage of revenue for the NBA, at most. Napster was much bigger than that. Overall, most NBA fans are still paying for cable and as long as that keeps happening, I think the NBA will be happy.
me too! potplayer keeps buffering no matter which time I stream. Video is choppy whenever on the day that they have tons of game streaming. I have 60 MBPS connection.
The NBA will absolutely go after Ballstream.com if they find out about it, which there is a good chance they have. Whether they will be successful depends partially on where the servers are located, and that countries cooperation, and even if they are successful who knows how long the legal process will be. But to say they won't go after them because it's only Houston and Portland who would use them is wrong. It's a league pass so every city in the nation who wants to watch out of market games has a reason to be interested. In fact every country in the world. It's directly competing with NBA league pass for customers. And it's not just a fan posting recorded games for other fans, this site is charging people for the streams, so there is money to recoup from them. The NBA has already shut down other sites like this. There will always be new ones popping up, but if the NBA knows about this site, then there is a good chance they are taking action to bring it down. It's something that may be delayed however since the government shutdown included US Immigration and Customs, who run the investigations on those types of crime.
Can we all just be happy for once? Spoiler We are able to watch our beautiful Rockets right now. And that's what we wanted, right? I don't know about ya'll, but I'm spoiling myself with this service for as long as I can this year. If CSN bothers to come alive and be accessible to us this season, I ain't getting it. I will get it for next year. Cheers to my fellow happy people! Spoiler Mr. D
You know what's funny, if the NBA offered a service like this and didn't black out a Rockets games, I would gladly pay up to $30/ month for it.... CSN needs to figure this out and let a company like Apple market their station...
How do you use a proxy to open up league pass? I tried HotSpot shield, but it still blocks the Dallas/Houston game tonight.
This is a BallStreams only thread. Please ask your NBA LP questions here: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=244063 Cheers mate!
