NBC is to crackdown on the high amount of piracy expectd to follow the winter Olympics, starting later this week in Vancouver.

At least it's not the London 2012 logo

Curiously enough, it seems that NBC doesn’t believe there’s the same kind of demand for streaming content as there was two years ago, for what many have termed the “real” Olympic Games. Still, TorrentFreak is reporting that the broadcaster has said that it will be doing everything in its power to ensure that as few people as possible have access to illegal video content from the games.

That said, the whole statement from NBC seems a little skewed, feeling very much as though it’s trying to say two things at once. While it admits that it’s scaling back the amount of content it will make available online (when compared to the summer games from 2008) it gives the reason that,

“It is about the watercooler moment and staying connected to the games through instant storytelling. People are not dying to watch lots of long-form content on a 13-inch screen.”

It then goes on to say that,

“Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find … you are never going to go to zero, but there has been a sea change in terms of recognition of the problem.”

It’s certainly an interesting statement, attempting to justify providing less content by saying that there’s less demand for content, and then going to great lengths to deter the apparently wide-scale demand for pirated content. Strange stuff.