Hulu and the NHL

Michael Geist pointed out that the NHL webcast on Hulu.com is blocked to Canadians. It was pointed out in the comments that it seems blocked to other non-Americans as well. I added my $0.02 (i.e. this is my comment on his blog, reproduced here):

Why should the NHL be more special than anything else with respect to licensing? We have seen regional blocking here with cable, for example, although I receive all Sportsnet channels, I cannot watch hockey on any but the one in my region.

We have seen extensive licensing schemas set up in professional sports for a long time. We have also seen Gary Bettman transform our national sport into an American short-term profit ability business venture. This shouldn’t be surprising from the standpoint of a Canadian hockey fan.

What I wonder about is how this IP-authentication for the purpose of regionalization squares with other technological protection measures and the various caselaw around the world. In other words, we are seeing something here akin to the old cable rebroadcasting over the Internet that was heard in court some time ago. New media rebroadcastability doesn’t trump valid licensing. But when is that licensing valid and when does it overstep? Is there possibly an argument here that this TPM (Regional IP authentication) is possibly analogous to Sony’s Playstation 2 scheme? (Sony v Stephens, HCA, Australia)

What would happen, legally, to someone who does like the Stephens chip and bypasses the regional authentication?

Is there a non-infringing purpose, as there was in Stephens?

What exactly is the restriction in the license, and how does one go about becoming part of the privileged class of viewers who can use Hulu? Do they have to be American, non-Canadian, or some other class, and are those legitimate licensed user classes?

Once that’s determined, if someone can find a way to include themselves in the class and still not have access, can they legally use a proxy or other workaround, and fall into Stephens reasoning? Although an Australian case, its logic certainly would fit within the interoperability exception for TPM circumvention in the DMCA.