LOCAST

[NetworkGuy]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Without digging into the LOCAST website too much, is it absolutely tied to geolocation such that you can ONLY get the locals in your area and you have to be in the "viewing area" of one of their sites? Or could you easily VPN your way around it?

The reason I ask - and this would seem to me to be a big sticking point - is rights to professional sports games. For instance, if you live in Chicago you can watch the Bears on your local CBS or Fox, but if you are a Bears fan living somewhere else, your only options to see the Bears would be paying for something like DirecTV's NFL package (premium $$$). MLB is well-known too for paying to keep cutting-edge algorithms in place to prevent people from watching out-of-market games. With LOCAST, if there was not strict geolocation, you could choose Chicago as your locals and watch the Bears or Cubs game. It would be way cheaper for sports fans to get LOCAST just for out-of-market sports than to pay for the officially-sanctioned league option.

So while they may not get shut down by the FCC, they may get sued by the NFL or MLB.

When I signed up for LOCAST, they used my IP address to assign me to a broadcast area. You can always use a VPN to spoof a different location. But the majority of people don't know what a VPN is and even fewer know how to select a different location. It is only the tech nerds like us that would even think of that.