EPT"What happened to your access?"
Two questions I've heard a lot. I'll start with the first, as it's a bit more interesting and a necessary preface to the second question.
How do [I] get these streams?
So, how then did I get the streams with such good quality and stability? In truth, I had little to do with it; I was merely around at the right time and with the will and desire to use it for BW. About a year and a half ago (my dates may not be 100%), three people from TL -- TOP, Kentor, & Solin -- decided they wanted to make a kpop site with streams to watch the various music shows that South Korea offers (there's four "main" ones that air Th-Sun and a few smaller ones lately). They formed a site that frequenters of the TL kpop thread are probably familiar with -- kpopflash. I'm not 100% on the timeline, but I believe at first they relied on places like Afreeca, which is a Korean site that functions similarly to livestream or ustream, but is only available to Koreans. While this works , the quality varies from BJ to BJ (the term used for the person streaming) and is prone to buffering. In other words, not something very ideal. The three decided they wanted something more reliable than to restream a restream, which is where the BW part starts to catch up.
Before I get to that, however, let me interject where I fit in. Like many of you, I used to watch BW streams from these three, plus Roffles. Roffles was around when the three were putting together KPF and sort of fell into an admin role himself. His role involved mostly updating the archive with various kpop performances, which is something that has since been abandoned. Anyway, Roffles' stream, in particular, played a lot of kpop, and I ended up taking a liking to it. Subsequently, I started perusing the TL kpop thread, where I came across KPF, which was still in its infant stages. Being an early member and someone from TL, it didn't take long to become a mod at KPF (which had its own small forum). I was actually one of the original two moderators, for whatever that's worth.
But, back to the how. You see, GomTV offers a TVing service (cleverly called My TVing), where a number of Korean channels are available online for a small monthly fee, but this, too, is also only for Koreans and requires a KSSN to even sign up. Nonetheless, the three were pretty resourceful. They got past that hurdle, got the account, and set off figuring out a way to use it. The ultimate result was fairly ingenious; I honestly haven't figured out how they accomplished it, despite my attempts -- best guess is they registered for a corporate account, which made the next part easier. Anyway, they managed to take these channels and turn them into a series of network streams which ran off the kpopflash server that's based out of Seattle. All you'd do is stick the URL into VLC, PotPlayer, or what have you, and out would come whichever channel. Each channel corresponded to a different number at the end of the URL, e.g. 9101 was OGN, which in turn corresponded to the port used by the service itself.
Presumably, the server's location on west coast USA is what gives it as smooth a connection as it has, since I have all kinds of buffering issues on the east coast. Oh yeah, for a third question I get asked a lot: yes, I am white. Anywho, you may have caught a peak of the network urls for these streams here and there and even tried them (I know some of you have), but only to have them not work. That answer is a simple one: access requires white-listing; if your IP isn't manually added, you don't get access. Being one of the original mods and one of the earliest members of the site, I guess I pretty much fell into getting access. There were probably a dozen people who were given access (and probably still have it) besides me. So that catches things up for part two.
What happened to [my] access?
Cue the drama. No, seriously. If you don't want to feel like you just returned to those awkward middle- and high-school years, you probably don't want to read the rest of this, since that's all it is.
December 14th: the TL kpop thread was having boatloads of people coming by and reposting songs/images that had already been posted in the thread (often several times prior), prompting complaints by me and a handful of others for people to use the search feature before aimlessly posting (in most cases you could find the exact same video posted as the first result from just a 2 word search). My particular post: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=98009¤tpage=979#19571
Anyway, so KPF had an IRC channel (same place as TL has theirs), which I used pretty regularly. I was literally about to crawl into bed, when I saw I'd been kicked from the KPF IRC channel as a result of the aforementioned TL post. This is the IRC log of that period, with the handful of extraneous messages from other people removed.
+ Show Spoiler +
Session Time: Tue Dec 14 00:00:00 2010
_03[00:03] * You were kicked by Raffles (Fuck you_)
_11[00:03] * Attempting to rejoin channel #kpopflash
_03[00:03] * Rejoined channel #kpopflash
_03[00:03] * Topic is 'http://kpopflash.net/ _'
_03[00:03] * Set by Ixas on Mon Dec 13 07:59:07
_03[00:05] * MM_YounHa sets mode: +o Craton
[00:05] <@Raffles> who the fuck
[00:05] <@Raffles> are these people
_03[00:05] * Raffles sets mode: -o Craton
_00[00:41] <Craton> http://www.gucomics.com/comic/?cdate=20101213
_00[00:41] <Craton> wrote this with sung_moon in mind
_00[00:42] <Craton> and also roffleds
_00[00:42] <Craton> go fuck yourself
[00:42] <@Raffles> lol
_00[00:42] <Craton> you go from bitching about the thread to "wahh stop complaining so much" every other month
_00[00:42] <Craton> meanwhile saying how you don't even read it anymore
[00:43] <@Raffles> i bitch about the post quality
[00:43] <@Raffles> which is still terribad
[00:43] <@Raffles> you just deter people from posting
[00:43] <@Raffles> because all you do is act like a nazi
[00:43] <@Raffles> while you're spewing out shit like "AMG ITS A REPEAT FROM 500 PAGES BACK"
_00[00:43] <Craton> people post the same fucking shit
_00[00:43] <Craton> every other page
[00:43] <@Raffles> the goal here
_00[00:43] <Craton> it takes FIVE GODDAMN SECONDS to check
[00:43] <@Raffles> is to make them post BETTER
[00:44] <@Raffles> not MAKE THEM NOT POST
_00[00:44] <Craton> how is it better
_00[00:44] <Craton> for them to post useless hit
_00[00:44] <Craton> to recycle the same 5 posts about the same damn thing
_00[00:44] <Craton> over
_00[00:44] <Craton> and
_00[00:44] <Craton> over
_00[00:44] <Craton> and
_00[00:44] <Craton> over
[00:44] <@Raffles> its better than a dead thread
_00[00:44] <Craton> better is posting new shit
_00[00:44] <Craton> the thread isnt dead
_00[00:44] <Craton> it wont die
[00:44] <@Raffles> it's on the verge of dying
_00[00:44] <Craton> bullshit
[00:44] <@Raffles> because you're all nazing in
_00[00:45] <Craton> the thread grows pages a day
_00[00:45] <Craton> 15 pages in less than 3 days
_00[00:45] <Craton> how is that dead?
[00:45] <@Raffles> the guy wants to post something
[00:45] <@Raffles> that was last posted
[00:45] <@Raffles> 500 pages ago
[00:46] <@Raffles> and you're gonna call it a repeat
[00:46] <@Raffles> let him fucking post
[00:46] <@Raffles> the damn thing
_00[00:46] <Craton> because its the totality of shit
[00:46] <@Raffles> and stop acting like you're a fucking elitist
_00[00:46] <Craton> its not one person reposting
[00:46] <@Raffles> shut the fuck up
_00[00:46] <Craton> its everyone
_00[00:46] <Craton> constantly
_00[00:46] <Craton> why should i not complain about people being lazy fucks?
_00[00:46] <Craton> about bringing nothing new to the thread
_00[00:46] <Craton> hm?
[00:47] <@Raffles> you know
[00:47] <@Raffles> instead of complaining
[00:47] <@Raffles> and bitching
[00:47] <@Raffles> you can set an example
[00:47] <@Raffles> cause literally all your posts in that thread
[00:47] <@Raffles> have been complaining
[00:47] <@Raffles> "USE SPOILER TAGS"
_00[00:47] <Craton> thats bullshit
[00:47] <@Raffles> "DONT REPEAT"
[00:47] <@Raffles> and you act
[00:47] <@Raffles> as if you're like
[00:47] <@Raffles> untouchable in that thread
[00:47] <@Raffles> get off your high horse
[00:47] <@Raffles> and stop acting as if you're a fucking mod
_00[00:48] <Craton> bullshit
[00:48] <@Raffles> let the actual mods take care of the thread
_00[00:48] <Craton> mods take care of trolling and memes
_00[00:48] <Craton> they dont care about quality
_00[00:48] <Craton> if nobody ever says anything this shit turns into akp
_03[00:49] * Raffles sets mode: -b+b *!*@210.12.112.87.dyn.plus.net *!*@c-69-137-227-36.hsd1.md.comcast.net
_03[00:49] * You were kicked by Raffles (Craton_)
_11[00:49] * Attempting to rejoin channel #kpopflash
Session Close: Tue Dec 14 00:49:09 2010
So where to go from there? Well, I was obviously pretty pissed (take your reason: hypocrisy, being banned, abuse of operator status, etc.). I ended up PMing LID8 about the thread, since he was a TL mod I knew frequented it. The jist of the PM was asking if I had been out of line and if we could get some ground-rules set for the thread. His reply was that he was largely in agreeance with me and that he'd bring it up with other mods and see what they thought. The TL staff actually just this week enacted some rules about reposting things + excessive hate (you'd be surprised the arguing that goes on about kpop groups, lol), for what it's worth.
I'm told that I was unbanned from IRC relatively shortly after this, but I didn't log back on for maybe two weeks. From pretty much mid-December to last week (mid-January), I really didn't use IRC much, since I was still salty over the whole affair. I came by once or twice during a music show to update the topic with "Now Performing: XYZ," but that was mostly it. I had MSN/AIM to talk people if I wanted to, plus I was still active on TL (streaming and posting), so I had little need or desire to use IRC.
Anyway, so fast-forward to maybe the second week of January. I don't remember who was playing, but I was streaming some game. In my chat I had three mods, one of which was Roffles. One of the other two had modded him and I had left it be. Well, at some point one of the other 2 mods got kicked from chat and came back blaming me. My response was "Don't blame me," which prompted the mod to ask "Should I blame Roffles?" I said "Probably." I also de-opped Roffles, since the day prior he had kicked a couple people for arbitrary reasons and I figured it was the same story. Being on UStream chat (not IRC), I couldn't see who actually had kicked the mod in question, but I dismissed it, since it was largely trivial (joke kicks happen a lot in stream chats, who cares, right?) Wrong.
The next morning I'm once again banned from IRC, which I haven't used in maybe 2 weeks beyond idling (IRC was set up to log in and join the channels automatically). However, I'm not just banned from the public KPF channel, I'm also banned from the private one. It was clearly intentional. So over the next day or so I played events back in my head and posted on the forum to figure out why I was banned this time (the thread stands unanswered to this day). The only thing that stuck out was the aforementioned scenario. I don't know for certain if it was Roffles or not, but it wasn't a far leap when you consider the timeline I've laid out. So, I banned him from my stream chat. Next day, midway through an SWL game, I lose all access to the KPF network streams and my staff access on the site was also revoked. Again, not coincidental.
After quite a bit of run-around, I finally got a hold of TOP to get some answers. It boiled down to "you've done things to make people not like you, so when Roffles called for your head, it was given." What things you ask? I asked just that question -- the response: "I don't know, it doesn't make sense. Just wait a few days and be more tactful when you're unbanned." Don't get me wrong; I've said my share of things and had my share of arguments, but I had remained virtually a ghost to KPF for the month or so prior -- I hadn't been around to actually do things to "make people not like me." So I waited a few days and talked to TOP again, but the response to "Are you guys going to let me stream BW again?" was a simple "no." With that, it's safe to consider the era of my HQ PiP streams at an end.
I'll still attempt to scrape together BW streams, but I'm generally not going to bother streaming if I can't get a stable source. Sorry guys. But, at least now you know the full story and can stop asking me about it all the time!
[Addendum]
I wanted to add something, after hearing some replies. Most of the people at KPF are pretty cool guys -- the kind that you'd hang out with on any given day and just shoot the breeze. They're kind of just caught up in the middle. So, please don't condemn all of KPF just because of this.
