SuperBowl XLV Champions: Homeland Security

It was a hard fought battle, but in the end I would say that Homeland Security put in the extra effort it needed and pulled it off. I know there are those who would dispute, but I think when all is said and done, Homeland Security won the Superbowl. 

Some of you with normal TV might have missed the action. What happened was a couple of days before the Superbowl The U.S. Attorney's Office of New York and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (a.k.a. "the man") closed down a bunch of websites that stream sports for free. Undoubtedly, some of you are saying "I get sports streamed for free all the time; it's called TV."  But I live in Taiwan, and for some reason the only games on ESPN Asia seem to be billiards and cricket, two sports I will never live long enough to understand - or care about. Anyway, thanks to the Internet, my friends and I can actually watch the Superbowl, although due to the time difference, we are forced to drink beer on Monday morning. 

So yesterday, at 7 a.m., on the last day of Chinese New Year vacation, I drug my wife out of bed and we drove to our friends Kevin and Rayne for a traditional Superbowl party. Everything started fine. We had bacon and eggs, dried fish snack, Japanese Pringles, and spiked coffee. It looked as though we were going to run away with a clean victory, watching the Superbowl online problem-free, but then at the beginning of the second quarter, Homeland Security struck. Like a juggernaut, it struck swift and hard as the screen went blue and the fatal words "disabled due to copyright infringement" popped up. We scrambled, trying other reliable streaming sites and even regular TV (I think a rerun of the Northern Thailand Billiard Titleship was playing) but all to no avail. It appeared that the tide had turned, Homeland Security was going to steal away a victory, and spiked coffee stomachaches were all for not. 

However, England pulled through. Accented commentators taking a day off from the other football (a.k.a. soccer) were streaming steady, and the picture was better also. Again we felt in control of the game, and we thought victory was ours. That's when Homeland unleashed its counterstrike. Flash! Blue screen! ...  disabled. The battled continued to Sweden, then Spain, then a language no one could identify. Sometimes there was sound, sometimes none. Sometimes players were in high definition, and sometimes the looked like old 70's cop shows. But time and time again, we were slammed by the blue screen as Homeland Security relentlessly shut down our offense.

In the final two minutes we were back to British commentators who were wondering why everyone had some much padding on. We thought we had finally pulled off a victory, but BAM! The connection sucked and just as Roethlisberger was hailing Mary, all froze. Then the game was over. 

Some may argue that we watched, and thus we won, but I would argue frantically and constantly trying to find a new link in between Spanish commentary pretty much means we lost. Homeland Security was successfully able to make it inconvenient to illegally stream the biggest sporting event in American history. It just goes to show that when the government wants to, they can actually do stuff on computers. What's next? making it slower to steal songs? Blotting out naughty parts in porn? Who knows what tricks Homeland Security and the American entertainment industry has in store. But there is one thing we can all count on: Making affordable legal online options to expand business models and actually bring some new services that don't just try to duplicate old media will be fought tooth and nail until victory is Achieved! Go Homeland Go! ...or, maybe just until Google finds a way around them. 

By the way, who won the game?