defined geOgraphical radius

one of best things about baseball are baseball fans.

for example, earlier today baseball issued semi-official news story / press release touting new patented system for enforcing home market blackouts for internet game watchers .... this is excerpt:

"Major League Baseball was the first professional sports league to broadcast its full schedule live over the Internet, and U.S. Pat. No. 7,486,943 allowed it to happen within the well-established guidelines for a sport that is delivered over multiple platforms. All clubs have local TV broadcast rightsholders, and their contracts specify that fans inside a defined geographical radius who can view their broadcasts shall be blacked out from live online viewing. Everyone outside of that radius can see that club's games live with MLB.TV."

anyway .... readers on mlb.com quickly hammered baseball. here are some verbatim comments grabbed by wayward o before everything was pulled ....

"Congratulations, MLB. It figures that their one achievement would be a feature that PREVENTS people from being able to watch games. On the other hand, NexDef and the many other buggy aspects of mlb.tv also do a good job of preventing people from watching games (or watching them in high quality, at least). Now maybe they will focus their efforts on producing a product that actually works as advertised."

"Only Major League Baseball would have a press release commending themselves on what a fine job they do of screwing over people that actually want to give them money to see as much of their product as possible in favor of 1950's-esque broadcast restrictions."

"i'm in Seattle and the thing places me in San Jose, which blacks me out of Giants and A's games, which are the ones i care about. so hopefully if someone makes a geo locator that actually works, they won't be infringing on the patent. this story is the most repulsive case of unwarranted back-patting i've seen in a long time. P.S. information wants to be free. these sorts of algorithm patents are only meant to stifle competition, and they benefit only those that can afford large legal departments. makes me sick."

"It's ridiculous that this article is a feel-good story about how MLB patented a technology that they basically use to prevent people who subscribe to MLB.TV from watching their home team. All of this because the dinosaur executives at MLB and the Cable companies are too stupid to work out a distribution deal, and too foolish to take full advantage of the internet as a distrobution medium."

next time, wayward o guesses, baseball won't be so quick to brag about antitrust exemption and derivative ability to openly screw home-market customers by forcing them to pay for cable or satellite instead of giving them cheaper option of watching on Internet.

(now incidentally this article appears to have been pulled from mlb.com web site -- or if it's still there it's buried; can't be found readily in search, either)