Yesterday evening, BTB member Foyesboys alerted us in his FanShot that a number of popular online video streaming domains have been seized by the U.S. Government in what he described as "the worst news possible (from a sports perspective) for out of state Cowboys fans today".
The U.S. government has seized popular streaming domains such as channelsurfing.net, adthe.net, firstrow.net or ilemi.com. Visit any of these sites and you'll find the logos of the Department Of Justice as well as Homeland Security prominently emblazoned across the now defunct domains.
All of the sites linked to these domains used to broadcast NFL games and other sports programs as well a regular TV programming. Unarguably these sites were operating in what even under the most optimistic of legal interpretations can at best be described as a "gray area". Yet for many NFL fans both in the U.S.and abroad, they were the only affordable way to watch their favorite teams.
Not that we would ever endorse such behavior, of course, but the sites were quite popular among sports fans. Adthe alone attracted one million visitors a day. Now, if you know your way around the interwebs you'll also know that while the .net, .org or .com domains are maintained by companies in the U.S., many other domain names are not, so these or similar services are likely to spring up somewhere else again soon.
VanRam from the SB Nation's Turf Show Times had a similar story up yesterday evening, and I'm piggybacking off that post with the following question in the poll below: