
Use different DNS servers for specific domains - libovness
http://blog.lexfriedman.com/post/2856721099/dns-servers-specific-domains
======
snoonan
This is actually illegal.

The DCMA and perhaps some earlier electronic circumvention laws make this act
a very real breach of US law. Publicly stating it is a bit dangerous and could
cost the author if the NFL decided to pursue a case. How crazy is that?

Of course, while illegal, I personally think it is very RIGHT.

~~~
edlebert
It is not RIGHT. The NFL has the _right_ to sell their content however they
like, and they coordinate their blackout rules with the cable channels who pay
for them. If you don't like it, the RIGHT action is to pay for cable, buy
tickets, or do what I do and go without.

~~~
criley2
I'm on the fence here. The NFL is not HBO. They're not locking down content
and forcing you into old business models to get to their content. The NFL goes
to GREAT LENGTHS to make content available to you without cheating. GREAT
LENGTHS.

* Sunday Ticket is free for DirecTV users

* Sunday Ticket is $40/season with the purchase of $60 Madden 25 (meaning, $100/total for the whole season of Sunday Ticket), and does not require a cable/satellite package of any kind

* NFL Rewind offers all games and condensed games next-day (not live) for $40/season (or $10/mo)

* HDTV Bunny Ears or Aereo will provide local in-market games for free (or the cost of Aereo)

* Many games are broadcast online for free on NFL.com or through the website of the network showing the game, like Fox or CBS

And I'm sure there are other options, too.

My friends and I are discussing the NFL Rewind option, while it's not live, it
does include condensed games which is great for fantasy players with lots of
players across lots of teams.

~~~
drgath
> Sunday Ticket is free for DirecTV users

No, it is $60 per month or $300 / season.

> Sunday Ticket is $40/season with the purchase of $60 Madden 25 (meaning,
> $100/total for the whole season of Sunday Ticket), and does not require a
> cable/satellite package of any kind

That's a little misleading. A) It sold out before the season began. B) The
cost is $100, because for people like me who don't own an XBOX or PS3 and
bought the game for the coupon, I now have a game I'm never going to play. I
shouldn't have any issues selling it, but it will be at a used game price.

Also, you are supposed to only be allowed the streaming option only if you
can't get DirecTV service, which most people in the US can. IMO, skirting that
rule (as I've done) is no better/worse than using a European IP. You are
either being dishonest to the NFL, or to DirecTV.

> HDTV Bunny Ears or Aereo will provide local in-market games for free (or the
> cost of Aereo)

As they have for 40+ years. This discussion isn't about in-market games, it's
for out-of-market. Also, depending on who you talk to (certainly the networks
and the NFL), Aereo is considered cheating.

> Many games are broadcast online for free on NFL.com or through the website
> of the network showing the game, like Fox or CBS

No, many aren't. Some are. But the key is I want to watch my team every week,
and my team (as most) only play a few primetime games per season, which tend
to be streamed.

To conclude, I'm a avid sports fan who lives out of market, and I pay for the
MLB package, the MLS package, various college sports subscriptions, and have
paid the $300 for DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket in the past. I'm _happy_ to pay
for my sports, and I'd love to pay the NFL a reasonable price for an NFL
package, but since they don't offer one, I have to resort to cheating DirecTV.

~~~
criley2
If you pay $300 for Sunday ticket with DirectTV call them up RIGHT NOW and get
your refund. That's what someone pays at full price doing zero work to lower
their bill. That's the price people pay who don't even try to get a lower
price, the easy price.

I literally have never met someone who pays the $300 for Sunday Ticket, and
I've never heard of DirectTV enforcing the $300 price tag. Sounds like you've
had some terrible luck.

I notice you replied to everything except for Rewind.

The fact remains that there are many options depending on device, and the fact
that you don't realize the price of DirectTV Sunday Ticket tells me that you
seem to be more willing to cheat them than to find the right deal.

Seriously, if you want to cheat DirectTV call them up, go to retentions for
cancelling service, and get FREE (or heavily discounted) Sunday Ticket, just
like many others.

~~~
drgath
> Seriously, if you want to cheat DirectTV call them up, go to retentions for
> cancelling service, and get FREE (or heavily discounted) Sunday Ticket, just
> like many others.

Your entire first post was about getting NFL content __without __cheating
(see: "The NFL goes to GREAT LENGTHS to make content available to you without
cheating"). Whether you are dishonest to DirecTV's retention dept, or you are
dishonest about your IP location, or are dishonest about your ability to get
DirecTV service, or a slew of any other methods, it all involves being
dishonest to someone.

The root problem is there is no way to get out of market games without
resorting to cheating. Every other American sports league offers this type of
subscription package.

The NFL has stated they're shopping the exclusivity of Sunday Ticket to
carriers other than DirecTV starting next season. Hopefully that is the case
so they can address this glaring hole.

> I notice you replied to everything except for Rewind.

I ignored Rewind because that doesn't involve live NFL games.

~~~
criley2
No offense but you have a lot of 'privledge' to insist that you are owed live
broadcast of sports. So owed, in fact, that you can justify stealing it when
same-day or next-day options are available to you.

I mean, go ahead, I justify a large amount of piracy myself, but you sound
like someone dismissing a minimum of work (I have to _CALL_ them and _ASK_ to
pay less? UGH!) in favor of reverting to piracy.

~~~
icebraining
Please explain to me the difference in outcomes between piracy and using
Aereo. In both cases you are getting someone to retransmit you a feed over the
Internet, while paying nothing to the NFL in exchange, yet one of them is
_stealing_ and the other is perfectly alright.

I find the cognitive dissonance fascinating.

~~~
criley2
Because the NFL explicitly allows over-the-air broadcasts in-market and
explicitly denies illegal, unlicensed global internet streams.

When your internet stream places a PHYSICAL antenna IN-MARKET that only you
can access, then you have grounds to call your internet stream equivalent to
Aereo. But the fact is, I rent a physical antenna from Aereo to enjoy local
broadcast content, while you utilize a (likely foreign and obviously illegal)
internet rebroadcast of licensed content.

The amount of cognitive dissonance it takes for you to dismiss basic licensing
is fascinating.

------
jonheller
This is completely misleading. You still need to pay for NFL Game Pass which
is several hundred dollars for the season.

I do something similar with a proxy server for NBA. I connect to a Swedish VPN
and purchase a season pass. I can then connect to the VPN, start a game, and
watch my home team without blackout issue.

You can also disconnect after the initial connection and not have to worry
about issues with slowdown going through the VPN.

~~~
gr3yh47
it's free in the netherlands.

------
bonyt
How exactly does this work? Is the NFL's only protection against Americans
viewing for free the fact that American DNS servers give access to a different
server, instead of actually checking the IP?

If this were the case, why pay for a DNS service when you can just find the
relevant entries and put them in your /etc/hosts file?

~~~
js2
I believe they redirect certain hostnames through their servers and proxy
those connections. It's also possible that the NFL, etc, use dynamically
generated CNAMEs.

------
eschnou
_" You thus get to watch every NFL game streaming online in high definition,
since the league offers that option to folks in Europe at no charge."_

Where did you get that? I'm based in EU and I need a GamePass at 150€ to watch
games, or pay 12€ per week.

~~~
CRidge
I'm not sure what he meant, but I read it to mean that HD is free in Europe
for those who've purchased SD, where as it costs extra in the US. Does that
make sense?

------
mcenedella
tl;dr - this solution does not work, but Aereo, as of 2013, does.

I was successfully able to watch the Summer Olympics last year using a VPN in
this manner. Actually ended up watching the whole thing via the BBC -- it was
oddly enjoyable to listen to the British commentators remark about the Yanks
as if we are a race of athletically superior, somewhat lovable, giant children
that are obviously in every other way doofuses :) .

The solution as proposed does not work from the USA for NFL Season Pass. I've
tried, very hard, to find a way to make it work. (I cleared cookies, caches,
changed the clock on my computer, deleted an installed a browser for the sole
purpose of watching these games, etc. etc., to no avail.)

But every time, the NFL can somehow, someway, sniff out that I am a US user,
and directs me to the page saying to sign up through your local cable
provider. I've never owned a TV or subscribed to cable, so... grrrr.

Happily, Aereo, which last season was blurry, blotchy, and somewhat inferior
to going to the local bar / friends', is this year very, very good. I set up
the NFL games on CBS and NBC yesterday to record. They recorded, and I watched
them from a giant Dell screen I have set up for the purpose. We also watch our
Netflix and Hulu stuff on the same screen.

They do have a tough time with games that go over the scheduled time, like
last night's Seahawks-49ers game. If you see that that is going to happen you
have to go to the next show, and the next, next show, and click "record". So
that even though you have no intention of watching local news at 11, Aereo is
recording the correct station at the correct time.

For a non-TV, occasional sports fan who does not need a whole bunch of bells
and whistles, Aereo is a fine solution.

(And, no, I have no professional, personal or other affiliation with Aereo
other than the $10 a month they nick me for the service.)

~~~
StavrosK
> tl;dr - this solution does not work, but Aereo, as of 2013, does.

I use one of these services for Pandora, and it also supports the NFL thing. I
just went to the site, and it works (I can watch a game, although I have no
interest in NFL), so that preamble is wrong.

~~~
mcenedella
The solution does not work for US-based users.

~~~
StavrosK
Why not? How does it know if you're in the US, if you're going through a
proxy?

------
paul_f
The title is misleading. You still have to buy NFL Game Pass. I think it is
$25/week or $250 for the season.

Not sure, but Game Pass might have been free the first weekend. Sunday ticket
in the US has a free preview the first week of the season. The original poster
might have thought the free preview meant it was free every week, but just
speculating.

------
casca
Assuming that it's true that you can watch the NFL for free from Europe (as
asserted in the article), why not just use a VPN service or fire up your own
AWS instance in Europe?

~~~
slig
1\. $2 usd is cheaper and already works.

2\. Maybe you want to watch netflix on your TV, and there you can only change
DNS servers.

~~~
icebraining
1\. Depending on how many games you want to watch, there _are_ VPNs out there
with free plans. I used to watch Hulu using one.

2\. You can configure the gateway (router, whatever) to route the TV through
the VPN. That said, I'd rather pay the $2.

------
txttran
How does a DNS service like AdFree prevent non-subscribers from using their
servers?

~~~
slig
You have to log in and they associate your IP with your paying account. So
they only accept requests from known IPs.

~~~
adrr
Its a DNS server, it doesn't change your IP. Only changes the IP for the
hostname that you lookup.

~~~
slig
I wasn't clear. The service knows your IP and then can resolve DNS queries for
you.

If your IP isn't in their system, they can ignore it. That prevents non-paying
users from using the service.

------
tsmith84
I get where this poster is going with the idea of using different resolvers
for different services, but there's some serious flaws in the logic. 1) Many
sites utilize a redirect in order to force the user back into the optimal
datacenter. Using anycast name resolution the user will always end up in the
closest datacenter. This is a pretty standard CDN offering by the first tier
providers. This is utilized mostly because using a DNS provider like Google
would otherwise result in traffic flowing to datacenters thousands of miles
from your home. It's also used to to ensure geo restrictions, which would kill
this method for many sites. 2) The poster mentions setting domains like
Netflix back to the original DNS server. Content delivery is a bit trickier
than this. Fire up Wireshark when you're watching Netflix and you'll see
there's a large number of domains involved, and the actual content comes off a
third party CDNs. Setting DNS servers per site is a lot more complex than
choosing a single domain name and setting it to a server.

------
eli
I do not find the "scholarly legal document"[1] very convincing. The DMCA
says, "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively
controls access to a work protected under this title."

[1] [https://adfreetime.com/wp_super_faq/is-this-service-
legal/](https://adfreetime.com/wp_super_faq/is-this-service-legal/)

~~~
redblacktree
The _service_ is legal. Your use of it to watch NFL games from the US may not
be.

~~~
eli
The service is not legal according to US law. I don't know where they're based
or what the laws are there, but I wouldn't make any bets either way. They may
well have their .com domain seized by the US Gov't some day.

~~~
icebraining
"Ad-free time! is located in beautiful Victoria, British-Columbia, Canada."

~~~
SteveArmstrong
That means they're less likely to have their servers and data seized by the US
Gov't (assuming it's all hosted in Canada, and not an EC2-US instance), but
the .com address is a US asset that can still be seized.

------
gr3yh47
I use privateinternetaccess VPN to achieve the same, and get complete
encryption and anonymity for all my web activity to go along with it.
$40/year.

EDIT: the Netherlands has NFL gamepass for free btw

~~~
icebraining
How do you know privateinternetaccess isn't logging everything you do?

~~~
eikenberry
They say repeatedly on their site and in reviews that they log nothing. Of
course you have to trust that they actually do what they say.

------
nikomen
It's still not worth the money. I watch a small amount of NFL during the
season. Occasional I might sit down to watch a portion of a good game.
However, I'm not willing to spend much more than a few dollars a month (that's
how it sounds from the comments) to watch a few out-of-market games on Sunday.
NFL charges too much. I guess it's OK though because obviously some people are
willing to pay for it.

~~~
kevincrane
Different strokes. I got a pass to watch all the Sunday games for free this
year by preordering the Madden video game, but barring that I'd gladly pay
$2/month (or even a little more) to watch games. Still way cheaper than paying
for cable.

~~~
nikomen
I'd pay $2/month, if that's what the price really was. I thought about
purchasing Madden, but decided not to do so. I have to have cable at the
moment though to watch college football.

~~~
kevincrane
Fair enough, if I had cable then I probably wouldn't care about any of this. I
currently live out of market for the teams I like (USC and Seattle) so I have
to rely on streams of iffy quality and questionable legality, so the increase
in quality and reliability alone was worth it with the Madden deal.

------
ape4
Does /etc/resolver/* work on Linux?

~~~
shock
I am really interested in this too, however I could not find any indication of
it in "man 5 resolver" :(

You can do this with dnsmasq by using the --server option where you can pass
individual upstream servers for different domains (in addition to the default
ones read from /etc/resolv.conf):

    
    
      --server=/google.com/1.2.3.4 --server=/www.google.com/2.3.4.5 will send queries for *.google.com to 1.2.3.4, except *www.google.com, which will go to 2.3.4.5

------
js2
A similar provider is unblock.us. The /etc/resolver tip is OS X specific. On
Linux you can use dnsmasq.

------
StavrosK
I use this for Pandora/Netflix, but I don't like giving that company the
ability to MITM any site I visit. If you're running dnsmasq, you can tell it
to only use that DNS server for a few domains like so:

    
    
        server=/netflix.com/pandora.com/yourserverip

------
MichaelGG
Google passes your /24 in a DNS extension, so I'd hope that companies like
Netflix take advantage of this information.

[https://developers.google.com/speed/public-
dns/faq#cdn](https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq#cdn)

------
jhuckestein
In Germany, the NFL website doesn't allow you to watch all games for free. You
have to purchase the NFL game pass, which is around $200 per season IIRC
(there's multiple packages), which is the same you'd pay in the US.

------
jinx_xnij
Interesting, but it is more work than just finding an online stream of the
game.

------
oxes
It works for me!
[http://i.imgur.com/TamLSvf.png](http://i.imgur.com/TamLSvf.png)

------
danvoell
As an aside, does anyone have any good hacks for watching cable television
online? If I don't have cable? ESPN, E!...

------
davidu
Really interesting that Mac OS offers this. Neat.

~~~
nodata
It's DNS. Mac OS isn't offering anything, it's just using some DNS servers.

~~~
icebraining
No, the part where the system resolver calls different DNS servers based on
the domain is certainly part of Mac OSX.

