This article is from last week, but it's so ridiculous that it needs to be brought up again. NBC, in it's mind-numbing attempt to fight piracy, has purposely limited the amount of live streaming Olympic videos. The reason?

"One of the things we learned in Beijing is that people really go to the Web for highlights," said Perkins Miller, svp, digital media at NBC.

That's all well and good, except it's not true. NBC then goes on to admit that they are actively policing the web in order to stop anyone from streaming these events. So apparently people do want to do this. Instead of providing people a legal method to do so, they're not giving any live streaming (save for hockey and curling) and then telling everyone else that they can't do it either. Talk about providing value to your customers. Mike Masnick of Techdirt (one of my favorite blogs) sums it up:

Again, you solve the problem of people going elsewhere by giving them what they want, not purposely deciding not to give them what they want and then getting upset when they go find it elsewhere.

Why do the folks at NBC not understand this? Is it really a difficult concept? So instead of letting more people watch events online (which would likely get them interested in watching on television as well), they're trying to stop it. Unbelievable. At least, it is until you remember who NBC's general counsel is - Rick Cotton:

"Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find," said Rick Cotton, NBC's evp and general counsel. In terms of Web piracy, "you are never going to go to zero. But there has been a sea change in terms of recognition of the problem."

In other words, instead of providing value (high quality, easy-to-find content), they're making it more difficult and lower quality, forcing people to look elsewhere. And then sending the lawyers in to try to stop people from going elsewhere.

Sources:
MediaWeek - NBCU Fights Olympic Piracy
Techdirt - NBC Continues To Do The Exact Wrong Thing When It Comes To The Olympics Online