Comcast Apologizes For Super Bowl Porn Glitch 526
DrinkDr.Pepper writes "Just after the last touchdown by the Cardinals, with 3 minutes to go in the game, approximately 30 seconds of pornographic material was shown, seen by an unknown number of Comcast customers in Tucson, Arizona who were watching the game in standard definition. Comcast has apologized (they used the word 'mortified') and is issuing a $10 credit to any customer who claims to have been impacted. Various news accounts suggest that the incident was a malicious act, but no one knows how it was done or by whom."
First penis (Score:4, Funny)
comcastsuperbowlporn.com traffic (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.intotemptation.net/2009/02/03/super-bowl-porn-postmortem/ [intotemptation.net]
Unfortunately for him ... he had no plan to monetize the traffic at all.
How fast do you think traffic will drop off? My guess is ... down 80 percent in 30 days ...
Re:First penis (Score:4, Funny)
While Ron Jeremy incidentally does have a penis, I believe Tyler Durden is the one inserting it everywhere.
Re:First penis (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First penis (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First penis (Score:5, Funny)
Don't lie. You're still interested.
*NOT* interested (Score:5, Funny)
Trust him.
Once he has seen the time-consuming, noisy, loud and dirty results that started appearing 9 months after the "insertion", he'll never ever be even interested in inserting his penis anywhere.
Re:*NOT* interested (Score:5, Funny)
Alcohol.
Re:*NOT* interested (Score:5, Funny)
Re:*NOT* interested (Score:5, Funny)
>How does your statement explain the 2nd child? And the 3rd? I'm a 4th child of a married couple
Alcohol.
Catholicism.
Re:*NOT* interested (Score:5, Funny)
Catholic Alcoholic Mailman.
When I was 17. . . (Score:5, Funny)
Re:When I was 17. . . (Score:5, Funny)
You were pretty lucky. My parents said they were made cute so that they wouldn't be tempted to kill them.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you aren't contributing to the proliferation of the species, you are contributing to it's demise.
Save your money. Try Suicide instead. No kids, and much cheaper.
Re:First penis (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First penis (Score:4, Funny)
You must be new here. Nobody here gets laid. Leave while you can!
Last penis (Score:5, Funny)
"Who here that has a penis ISN'T interested in inserting it everywhere?"
But does it blend? Oh wait!
Re:First penis (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I think the girl in the clip has some pretty compelling evidence she was "impacted".
Worthless Content-Thieving Parasites... (Score:3, Insightful)
it was clearly Ebaumsworld.com
No, Ebaumsworld just got hold of a copy of the report where the original hacker claimed credit and replaced his name with theirs.
Thanks comcast (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thanks comcast (Score:5, Funny)
In Tucson, AZ, porn pays YOU!
Re:Thanks comcast (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Thanks comcast (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks Madden (Score:5, Funny)
Most amusing was, after they cut back to the SuperBowl, you hear Madden saying "He went to the perfect guy, in the perfect situation."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It appeared to be a DVR recording, so that's plausible -- maybe he saw something, rewinded, and started recording.
Re:Thanks comcast (Score:5, Informative)
Direct link [comcastsuperbowlporn.com]. Otherwise I just get told I don't have the proper plug-in. Not very interesting porn, though.
Janet Jackson Started a trend (Score:3, Insightful)
What's so big about this football anyway?
Re:Janet Jackson Started a trend (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Springsteen? Are you on crack? Prince laid it down in 2007. That was talent.
Put those chicken fingers down! *crotch plant to the camera* LOL!
A view from Europe (Score:5, Interesting)
PS - if you need Cheerleaders, you don't have an atmosphere.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
edge of their seats... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't worry about it...just go back to playing your sorcerer of light.
I was attacking the darkness!
I think (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it'd also be the day that such an incident would merit only a footnote in an "odd stuff" newspaper section.
Re:I think (Score:4, Interesting)
Our brains are hard-wired for taboos because they helped primitive societies avoid disasters.
There is a lot of "noise" in the taboo "signal", for example: taboo words. But some taboos (against incest, or eating certain things) were socially useful. Even the common taboo against homosexual sex could have been beneficial to primitive societies because such practices were significantly more likely to spread disease through the population. Obviously, modern medicine makes this a non-issue, today.
I would say it is unrealistic to expect a society to have no useless taboos, because they are physically part of our brains. But if we stop using government to enforce useless taboos, we will have advanced.
Re:I think (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Homosexual taboos are documented as going way, way back. Documentation of the taboo appears in ancient Hebrew religious texts, for example. It is *not* a recent development in human history. This is not the same as saying it was shared by every ancient society (which is the mistake you are making).
Is there a difference? (Score:5, Interesting)
With the Superbowl commercials being what they were this year, I'm surprised anyone noticed the difference. GoDaddy in particular is getting out of hand, though I was not impressed by the Doritos or NBC commercials either. (At least the Conan commercial was just amusing innuendo.) All around, it was a rather embarrassing year to be watching the Superbowl with the family.
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Funny)
All around, it was a rather embarrassing year to be watching the Superbowl with the family.
You mean, more embarrassing than all the other years you watched a bunch of big sweaty guys in tights slapping each other on the ass for hours?
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:4, Funny)
You mean, more embarrassing than all the other years you watched a bunch of big sweaty guys in tights slapping each other on the ass for hours?
They aren't slapping ass for hours. There's incidental ass-slapping between bouts of football playing. Here's how it works:
If you're watching a show where it's in the majority football, with occasional ass-slapping, then you're watching the Super Bowl.
If you're watching a show where it's mostly ass-slapping with some football thrown in, then you're watching the DVD classing The Super Bowel.
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe you should tell your family this isn't the Victorian era anymore.
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you should tell your family this isn't the Victorian era anymore.
But they'd already spent so much on their wigs!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A family watching the Super Bowl has a reasonable expectation that they won't be subjected to someone else's idea of what acceptable sexual mores are these days. It was a football game, not a Victoria Secret premier.
Personally, I don't care about porn being available but I can sympathize with folks who were offended by Go Daddy's poor taste. I watched the game at a friend's house and ofter the Go Daddy Ad aired, they decided to switch registrars for their family domain away from Go Daddy.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wait- we /aren't/ supposed to be running around... oh shit.
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Funny)
Christ, grow up, and pull the stick out of your ass already.
He can't. He's nailed to it.
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't mind virtually any amount of explicit content in ads if I was on my own, but I'd be unhappy if there were kids watching it with me.
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
I submit that this is a cultural artifact.
You either see nothing offensive in ads with explicit content or feel that you can safely ignore it because you understand the difference between real life and the image of life that such advertisements would present. However, you'd be uncomfortable showing a child the same thing. Why is this?
I suspect there are a few reasons ranging the spectrum from cultural guilt, to superstition, and taboo abeyance.
Perhaps you'd feel responsible for educating the child on the differences between real life and the image of life that are presented by advertisers. In any other context, this is something we don't even think about. We know that simply eating breakfast cereal doesn't suddenly make you super-athletic and attractive. We don't have any difficulty repeating that to children, or explaining what's necessary to achieve those goals in the real world. But since our culture has placed such a strict taboo about imparting sex education to children, we feel incapable of telling the same kids that drinking beer and wine coolers doesn't make you attractive to half-naked dancers. We don't tell them that getting drunk in order to seek sexual gratification is a really risky, self-destructive behavior.
Arguably the latter is a much more important life lesson, but that same taboo forbids us from admitting that children have sexuality, let alone that they're even more vulnerable to being pandered to than adults.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:4, Funny)
Why? Is explicit content something dirty or shameful to be hidden away from the eyes of our poor defenseless children?
Yes, and I think we should KILL anyone who exposes children to graphic sexual imagery. After all, all children are products of violence, but not all children are products of sex. Er, wait...
(If you (the global you) were thinking of bringing up test tube babies as a counterexample, just kill yourself. kthxbye.)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Never lived on a farm, did you. Yet through most of history most families did. And also lived in single room huts.
Exposure to sex isn't harmful to children. I have no idea why some people think it is.
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
To an extent I agree with you. The problem is the tremendous range of things that get called porn...all the way down to a woman nursing her child.
Porn, apparently, is anything that bothers someone somewhere that has any connection however remote to sex.
I'd be much more in favor of saying that children shouldn't be exposed to violence. That wouldn't work either, but it would make as much sense.
FWIW, banning the road-runner cartoons for excessive violence is just stupid. STUPID!! Some people seem to think that censorship is the answer to everything. They ban cartoons, but don't stop wars. Which is more violent?
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Informative)
In Nevada you can have sex with a 14 year old if you're 35
huh? [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Reading the wiki article, and I noticed that about half the states, the legal age is 16, the other half it is 18.
Don't forget the states where it's 17.
So, if you were having sex with a 16 year old in a moving car, that started in a state where it was legal and the car drove across the border into a state where it wasn't... It would magically turn into a felony.
Magic ages are kind of dumb anyway, if you ask me. At 18 you're magically old enough to smoke and vote, at 21 you're magically old enough to drink, at other magic numbers you're magically able to drive or have sex.
Incidentally you'd get whacked with at least two offenses: the sex itself, and transporting a minor across state lines to engage in illegal sexual activity. (Whereas if I took a 16-year-old to the next state over where 16-year-olds are legal, we could rent a h
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Teacher: Your student shouldn't say certain words during class.
Parent: ... why the fuck not?
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? I sat in a bar and watched Superbowl. I didn't see anything that I'd consider particularly raunchy or inappropriate, and I didn't hear any complaints from the people around me either. Are Americans really this prudish when it comes to TV advertising?
Simple answers to simple questions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? I sat in a bar and watched Superbowl. I didn't see anything that I'd consider particularly raunchy or inappropriate, and I didn't hear any complaints from the people around me either. Are Americans really this prudish when it comes to TV advertising?
Yes.
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm amazed that among all these replies, no one has considered that my problem might not be so much the sex itself as much as the attitude toward sex? We're talking about commercials that objectify the people and devalue the act itself. Perhaps as a parent, I don't really want my kids to think of sex that way?
And besides. If we start allowing sex everywhere on television, that will soon be the ONLY thing on television. (It's getting pretty close these days.) There's always the desire to pander to the lowest common denominator. As an intelligent species capable of reasoning and critical thinking, we should be making efforts to stimulate our intelligence rather than pandering to our baser instincts.
For those of you who need the cliff notes version (probably the ones who think these commercials are "ok"): I don't want my kids to grow up to be drooling apes.
Re:Is there a difference? (Score:5, Informative)
Funny enough, the commercial must have worked, because guess where the guy bought the domain:
% whois ComcastSuperBowlPorn.com
Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain Name: COMCASTSUPERBOWLPORN.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com/ [godaddy.com]
Name Server: DNS66-1.NEXCESS.NET
Name Server: DNS66-2.NEXCESS.NET
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 01-feb-2009
Creation Date: 01-feb-2009
Expiration Date: 01-feb-2010
>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:46:33 EST
Comcast missed the point. (Score:5, Funny)
Comcast needn't have apologised for broadcasting porn. What did warrant an apology was showing porn containing nothing more than an ugly guy flapping his cock all over the place. You, sirs, have crossed the line!
What, no link ? (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, watch the clip in question here [youtube.com]...
Re:What, no link ? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm just waiting for someone to post a link to a 30 second long clip of the Super Bowl that ends with no porn.
BOWLROLLED!
Re:What, no link ? (Score:5, Funny)
Taken down for TOS violation. Was it because it was porn or because it was rebroadcasting the superbowl?
PPV (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And Somewhere... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And Somewhere... (Score:5, Funny)
And somewhere in that mess, someone was enjoying some porno only to have their fantasy broken by the defensive line of the Cardinals.
Some people are in to that.
Re:And Somewhere... (Score:4, Funny)
And somewhere in that mess, someone was enjoying some porno only to have their fantasy broken by the defensive line of the Cardinals.
Yeah, where's my $10, you bastards? That KY doesn't pay for itself you know.... ;)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
OK, so I'm confused now. When Al Michaels talked about "going long," was he referring to action on the field or in the porn clip?
* * * * *
NOTE: my normal sig line has been replaced by 30 seconds of Richard Feynman discussing quantum electrodynamics. We apologize for this interruption.
Link? (Score:5, Funny)
I googled "Porn" and nothing came up.
Re:Link? (Score:5, Funny)
But did it suggest pr0n as an alternate search term?
Irony... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's a broadcast. It may invoke revenue clauses. (Score:5, Interesting)
Laugh about the porn clip (I did, here in Tucson, I yelled "FTW!")
But depending on the origin of the video, Comcast may be on a very real hook for broadcasting copyrighted material without license, and could conceivably be exposed to distribution royalties for a much larger audience than the one that is supposed to be limited to a specific, accountable pay-per-view arrangement.
I would be very surprised if lawyers were not working this out in a damage control mode.
Malicious or ignorant? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Malicious or ignorant? (Score:5, Informative)
Reasonable providers (read those that aren't Comcast) will separate adult and non-adult programming onto different QAMs.
Here is where the problem could have occured:
1) Video input problem: MSO Satellite Radio tuned to wrong channel. Doubtful because of authentication / encryption. This is more likely if the east coast/west coast feed of the same provider got swapped. Also if the MSO was using an over-the-air TV receiver, that of course can't happen. If the MSO gets a video fiber from the TV station, that might be a fiber carrier routing screw up.
2) Video router misconfiguration: Ff the satellite radio outputs baseband video, it may go through a video crosspoint swtich (they call them "routers"). The wrong crosspoints between the satellite radios and the modulators (analog tier) or encoders (digital tier)
3) Multiplexer/CherryPicker misconfiguration: On the digital tier, MPEG-2 programs are multiplexed together into a QAM. It is possible there was a brief misconfiguration.
Big question - did this happen on the Comcast SD digital tier, HD digital tier, the analog tier, or some combination? If it was both analog and digital SD, I would suspect a video router crosspoint misconfiguration. If it was just digital SD or digital HD, I would suspect a multiplexer misconfiguration.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey, since yours is the only comment modded 4 or higher with any technical knowledge, I have a question for you. We got my mom an HDTV a couple years ago, and she was only paying for basic cable, no digital boxes in the house at all. When we set it up, I did a "channel scan" and the TV picked up some HD channels with numbers like 121.1 (as an example). Many of these were just the big networks HD feeds, like ABC, CBS, etc. But there was a block of channels even higher up that were HD movies. And we'd be
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Meanwhile, back at the Butt-Bowl . . . (Score:5, Funny)
". . . huh, huh . . huh, huh . . . Beavis, we're like watching Cum-Cast now . . ."
". . . heh, heh . . . hehehe . . . Wait they're showing football again . . . change it! Change it!"
And where's MY ten dollars? (Score:5, Funny)
comcast (Score:4, Funny)
They're showing the real game... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They're showing the real game... (Score:4, Funny)
Judging by your idea of the female anatomy, I would expect your slashdot UID to be lower...
Just like the movie 'Hackers' (Score:4, Funny)
Other TV hacks (Score:5, Informative)
I love when stuff like this happens. In the past, there have been incidents such as when someone switched over a feed of Jeopardy to the Playboy Channel. Other notable incidents:
Max Headroom Incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdgAMYjYSs [youtube.com]
HBO "Captain Midnight" incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFlMHCdYXLM [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What about Spaghetti Cat? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMyHuCVaRaE [youtube.com]
This has happened before with Comcast (Score:3, Interesting)
30 Seconds from Tucson (Score:5, Funny)
People noticed? (Score:4, Funny)
$10? (Score:4, Funny)
Bird porn. (Score:5, Funny)
Injecting signals into cable TV (Score:4, Interesting)
Although the tap to each home attenuates the signal quite a bit, it is possible for people to inject signals into the cable system. It won't go beyond the first amplifier unless its frequency is in the uplink band and that signal won't be redistributed. But it does mean people can distribute weak signals around their neighborhood. On frequencies the cable company isn't using, it won't take a lot of signal to communicate with your neighbors. For example you could run your own neighborhood LAN over the cable wires.
It would take a LOT of signal power to take over an existing signal. You'd have to boost it as much as the attenuator tap reduces it, plus the additional amount to take over the signal on that channel. But it would be possible. So what I'm curious about is just how widespread this porn was seen in Tuscon.
Re:FTA (Score:5, Funny)
I'll show you 30 seconds of full male nudity for $10.
Why pay 10 bucks for that when free? (Score:4, Funny)
While you can have it for free at Comcast?
Re:four hours of violent smashing is not porn? (Score:5, Funny)
You're doing it wrong.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are they apologizing?
So the masses of idiots who write letters to the FCC urging the immediate nationalization of all TV will be pacified. The FCC was flooded with complaints at the Janet Jackson bit, and I bet they weren't happy with the delay they were forced to put in for all live broadcasts. You can guess at least a few people are so miffed at seeing human body parts that they want more government control.
It would be nice if they didn't apologize so deeply, grew a spine, and issued a statement that reflected the ridiculou