Q. I am a Los Angeles Dodgers fan and I am sick and tired of not being able to watch my favorite team at home. I have DIRECTV and they don’t carry SportsNet LA. Only Charter does and I don’t want Charter. So my question is if I use a VPN to watch the Dodgers on MLB.TV, and avoid the blackout, will I get arrested? Is it illegal to do that? I can deal with other stuff, but I don’t want to get arrested for pete’s sakes just to watch a baseball game. Right? — Maury, Santa Monica, California.
Maury, SportsNet LA, the TV home of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is only available in the Los Angeles area on the Charter Spectrum cable TV service. DIRECTV, and other area pay TV providers, refuse to carry the regional sports channel, saying Charter, which manages SportsNet LA, is asking for excessive carriage fees.
Consequently, as you note, only Charter subscribers can watch the Dodgers games at home in the LA market; everyone else is blacked out.
The dispute, which began six years ago, has prompted some baseball fans in LA to use VPNs to watch the Dodgers games on the league’s online service, MLB.TV. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, a software that you can download that will enable you to use an IP address different from your own.
For instance, if you live in Santa Monica, you could insert an IP address in your Internet modem’s software supplied by the VPN company that would make it look like you live in Denmark. The cost of a VPN varies, but many services sell them for under $10 a month.
By using a VPN, you could subscribe to the MLB.TV plan for $121.99 this season, and watch every Dodgers game from your home in Santa Monica. Normally, MLB.TV would be required to blackout the in-market game because the regional channel in your market (SportsNet LA in Maury’s case) has the exclusive rights. But with the VPN, MLB.TV wouldn’t know you live in that market.
This is true for other markets as well. For example, a Washington, D.C. resident could watch the Washington Nationals on MLB.TV as could a New York Yankee fan in Manhattan and so on. This can be advantageous because you wouldn’t have to subscribe to a cable or satellite TV service to get the regional channel that airs your home team’s games.
MLB.TV professes to oppose the use of VPNs, and even says in its fine print that those who do could be fined and/or face “legal action.” However, I can not find a single instance where the league took anyone to court, much less prosecuted someone for using a VPN.
I don’t even know what law you would allegedly violate if you did use a VPN. Afterall, it’s not like you are stealing anything from the league by using one because you are paying the full subscription amount whether you watch your home team or not. The only difference is that you get to watch the games you want to watch.
At this point, I must acknowledge that I am not an attorney so please don’t count this as professional legal advice. But I do follow this industry very closely, and have for years, and I think I would know if the league ever decided to make this a criminal situation.
I think it’s pretty clear that there isn’t a specific law that would govern the use of a VPN to stream the games. Otherwise, the league would cite it, and use it, when it catches someone in violation.
MLB will cut off your MLB.TV subscription if you get caught; there are plenty of cases of that. But, Maury, I don’t see you getting arrested.
Final note: While there would seem to little or no concern of being criminally charged, there is the issue of whether this is the correct moral choice. Skirting the terms of your MLB.TV agreement might bother some people (myself, for example. I was raised Catholic, you know.), but maybe it doesn’t bother you.
It’s your call.
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Your comment regarding “moral choice” is well taken but will mostly be ignored. As a retired broadcaster it has always amazed me how little business and ethical understanding the public possesses. The prevailing thinking is television regardless if source should be free. This of course stems from the original “the air waves belong to the people” and the early acceptance that do to a limited number of signals in the spectrum broadcast sources existed for the “interest, convenience and necessity of the public”. This of course is no longer relevant and the FCC does not strike fear in the broadcasters hearts anymore.
I am amazed at the indignation and lack of business acumen that the public display when it comes to paying for entertainment. Outright thievery is not only tolerated but applauded by many.
In the 60’s you had “free tv” but you had to endure commercials. Then, cable came around in the 70’s, offering HBO for a price, but it was commercial free. Maybe the public is fed up with paying for a channel, and also having to endure commercials. Where’s the morality in that?
That’s the myth, perpetrated by the public not the industry. Television and radio have never been free. Who do you think is going to pay for broadcast stations, equipment, talent, content, office space, promotion, non-talent employees and professional services?
I understand you want it for free. I also want Lexus or BMW to give me a car.
I’m amazed at the success the entertainment industry has made in equating contract violation with thievery. Here’s an analogy:
OrangeCo wants to sell you Oranges. They have the only oranges in town. Nobody “needs” oranges, they just like oranges. But if you buy any, they require you to agree to only eat your oranges at home. This is because they’ve contracted with Mobile Oranges Inc to sell Oranges to people in cars.Now you might find this pretty arbitrary and silly, and go ahead and eat your legally purchased oranges in the car. You will not get arrested for this, but if OrnageCo finds out and wants to make an example out of you, they can sue you in civil court. Now Orangeco is suing its own orange-loving customers, which is not a good look for them in public. And they are likely only to win the original price of the oranges, so it’s a dumb idea to hire a lawyer to do that.
But our orange-loving hero stole nothing from Orangeco. He simply broke a silly contract designed to protect Mobile Oranges Inc. and maximize profits. As a Christian, I think the concept of setting up these artificial barriers to prevent people from enjoying their legally purchased products is the immoral bit.
Blacked out games on MLB.TV are watchable as an archieve games 90 minutes after the conclusion. There are also live radio feeds, home & away, available for all games on MLB.TV even when games are blacked out live.
Kind of hard to know where you live if you’re using a VPN. LOL
The “marketing area” MLB includes us in is 4 hours away from our favorite team, and includes a team 6 hours away, and another that is 8 hours from us. Even though I pay – I am not stealing – for an MLB subscription that blacks out my favorite team, when my favorite team plays one of the other teams in this marketing area, those games are blacked out, also. There is NO regional coverage available for any of the 3 teams except through a “cable” service or satellite. Not only is that ridiculously high and getting worse, games through those services are blacked out at times, also. So, judge me if you will, but I see nothing wrong with skirting the blackouts. I pay MLB and I pay for the VPN.
Baseball is a child’s game, and MLB is grown men playing a child’s game for money. Agents, whose only reason to exist is to constantly push for MORE, and misguided players who think they can force owners to share what the golden goose provides, ignore the fact that ALL costs are passed down to that guy who spends a week’s pay just to see a ballgame. The players ignore that their benevolent works are made possible by the father of a child who wants to see his favorite player in action. While the players and owners and agents go about their extravagant lifestyles, the ones who pay their salaries are hard at work to spend their hard-earned money so the rich can get richer. All of them should have to live the life the average fan and their next speech about it being all about the fans might actually mean something.
Moral issue? You are absolutely right, but you are throwing rocks at the wrong dog!