News Corp. has long treated the government in China with a velvet touch, and NBC's parent General Electric, with its huge infrastructure arm, has billions of reasons not to risk their investment in the games with any actual balanced reporting from China. In fact, American corporations like Nike are figuring out that having a state willing to bully and muzzle the press can have its upside. But before you go spinning media conglomerate conspiracy theories — there's a secret memo from Rupert Murdoch himself telling editors to take it easy on China! — remember that it ultimately boils down to individuals making reporting decisions based simply on trying to keep their jobs.

Conley is no stranger to courting the ire of local officials — he and colleague Jeff Rae, who has also been detained, once regaled me over dinner in New York with a story about almost ending up behind bars while covering unrest in Guatemala and southern Mexico a few years ago. And the Iraqi citizens reporting for his site Alive in Baghdad don't just court jail, but death. So Conley and Rae couldn't have possibly been too surprised when, while following fellow foreigners specifically to record their protests, they got caught up in the dragnet.

His company, Small World News, runs on a shoestring budget, and frankly the interest generated by his detention provides the kind of publicity neither he nor Students for a Free Tibet could otherwise afford — but only outside of China. As an entrepreneur trying to build a business, the jail time may ultimately help Conley out. But will it actually change China's policies? As anyone at Google or Yahoo can tell you, complicity with China has proven much more profitable than principles.

1. The dystopic Communist regime will continue.

While some China experts think that democratization is an inevitable first step to total economic domination, Andy Nathan, author of How East Asians View Democracy, believes otherwise. "China has authoritarian resilience," he says. "If (the current regime) was not supposed to survive modernization, it's proving very adaptable." In other words, as long as Hu Jintao's government can prove itself efficient albeit its shortcomings, the people will continue to sustain their loyalty to it.

Nathan does pinpoint one costly solution to bringing democracy and human rights to China. The current regime could be toppled, he says, if China were to be hit with a series of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and bad political decisions (like if they invaded Iraq and accrued a huge budget deficit... hint hint). If the current regime relies on a certain complacency cushioned by the fact that, while it's oppressive and fucked up, it somehow seems to be working, a mechanical failure of the government machine could unleash the unrest and cause a revolution.

Simply put: The dystopic Communist regime that punishes free will and uses forced labor to build the economy may continue to rule China until a superhuman disaster wipes it out of existence.

2. A giant amount of wind power will up the nation's hip-and-cool factor.

Green tech is the new black—it's the symbol of belonging in the hip and cool country clique. China plans to be the hippest and the coolest by 2020 by becoming the world leader in wind energy. According to EcoWorldly.com, the country currently produces about 6GW of wind energy, which makes it fifth in the world. Some experts believe that China will reach at least 100GW in the next 12 years. That's an increase of 1667%! China still relies a lot on old school energy resources like coal for its imitation Prada handbag factories, but a 2005 legislation mandates all utilities to be supplied by renewable energy. Clean tech funds are being bought up like lychees at street stands.

3. Joe Chen will be the next Steve Jobs.

While engineering is a dwindling profession in the US, it's booming in places like China and India. Only a decade or two ago, students from China entered Harvard and MIT and then stayed in the states to pursue their careers. Now, they're all going back home because they believe that's where they can have the most impact. Joe Chen, for one, is a Stanford grad who founded popular entertainment site Mop.com and Xiaonei, the local equivalent of Facebook. He's going to be the next Steve Jobs, minus the black turtleneck sweater.

Rebecca Fannin, author of Silicon Dragon: How China is Winning the Tech Race, believes that Beijing will be the hub of the next Silicon Valley. China also has the fastest growing number of patents—it's currently seventh in the world—and owns the world's largest Internet market. "Venture capitalists are all looking for the next new thing in China," she says. "Chinese entrepreneurs are hard working and passionate, and they're bringing knowledge from the US back home."

China isn't just the hub of cheap imitation handbags anymore. It is, finally, rapidly and most certainly, inching up the manufacturing food chain and will lead the next major innovation cycle in web-based tech.

4. Beijing will go head-to-head with Dubai in an architectural prestige contest.

Dubai is the world capital of futuristic buildings, but China's not doing so bad either. Beijing already has a crazy new airport, not to mention the Water Cube and the Birds' Nest. Plans to construct a tube-fed eco-city, islands made from scratch, and a Starfleet Academy-like museum are well underway and we should be seeing results within the next ten years. "The government agencies and building companies are going for prestige projects that break the mold," Nathan says. "They're going to continue to go for constant shock value."

We'll see what happens when the cheap IKEA-grade foundations start giving out. Until then, enjoy the cool futuristic citiscapes as they pop up left and right.

5. As China's global market share grows, so will our likelihood of becoming robotic drummers.

Right now, companies like GM, Johnson and Johnson, and Coca Cola produce first and foremost for the US market. But this will change. As the Chinese customer base catches up in size and influence, the way products are marketed and business is done will inevitably shift to meet demand. "American political values are very distinctive," Nathan says. "We believe in guns, we believe in the law, and we believe in religion. If the Chinese were dominant, the global market would be more collectivistic, harmony-oriented, less rights-concious, and more about getting through things without causing a ruckus than about suing people."

Think of Japan and the way the market there still has many of the formalities and customs native to the Japanese. "Values never completely disappear," Nathan says.

There's no doubt that China will be the biggest world market in fifty years. The question is, how is this going to affect what we do and how we do it? Maybe one day we will all become drumming androids and synchronization will supersede individuality. Images: Madiko83 via Flickr, George Lu via Flickr, and AP)

However, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the law which sets up a process for notifying sites like YouTube of copyright infringements, issuing a counternotice is not so simple. YouTube requires the notice must be submitted by mail. The IOC is officially liable to both the creator of the video and to YouTube for legal fees and other costs related to improper copyright claims, but I doubt Google would risk their rights to broadcast Olympic highlights to Rwandans by holding the IOC accountable.

The pair alleged that Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea in creating Facebook, ended up settling, and then appealed over the terms of the settlement; a judge denied their request. But if their long-fought legal battle with Facebook proved anything, it's that the JFK Jr.-lite Winklevoss brothers never quit, even when everyone — including judges — thinks they should. Take that, Serbia! (Photo by Getty Images)

Pirates are providing the highest-quality viewing experience for video-on-demand, with events being posted in HD even before they air on tape-delayed TV broadcasts in the United States. Torrents of the opening ceremonies, including a giant 5-gigabyte download of all four hours in HD, proved the most popular television programming available on file-sharing networks this week. And while event organizers and network operatives continue to play whack-a-mole with illegitimate live streams, where there's a will, there's a way on the Web. Want to know where to look? Check out our handy guide.

The news is hardly bad news for the Winklevoss brothers and ConnectU's third cofounder, Divya Narendra. Court papers say the three will get "millions" of dollars in cash as well as stock in a startup too popular with mainstream America's millennial generation to fail. (The Winklevosses were fighting the settlement after they discovered that the Facebook common stock they would receive was worth less than they supposed.) Plus, there's still that shot at gold.

1. Open YouTube.com in your browser.

2. After the site loads, find the option in your browser for editing cookies. Here's the instructions for Firefox 3.0:

• Click the Tools->Options (Windows) or Firefox->Preferences (Mac) menu option
• On the Preferences pane that appears, click the Privacy Tab.
• In the Privacy panel, Click on Show Cookies...
• In the Cookies panel that appears, search for "youtube" in the search box.
• Look for a cookie named "youtube.com GEO"
• Select the GEO cookie and click Remove Cookie

3. In the same browser window that has YouTube loaded, set your own GEO cookie by trying to open this URL in your browser. Be sure to remove any line breaks that might creep in from cutting and pasting.

javascript:alert(document.cookie="GEO=bb84fb3cd7df0311bb5026df4d6b524fcxkAAABLUixubyByZWdpb24sc2VvdWwsLCwsLC0x;
path=/;domain=.youtube.com")

You should get a dropdown dialog box that says "The page at http://youtube.com says GEO=bb84fb3cd7df0 ..." This is not an error message, it's a notification that you've set the cookie successfully.

4. You should have a rigged GEO cookie for YouTube now. Try opening youtube.com/beijing2008. If you don't get the splashy red Beijing 2008 page shown above, you may not have set the cookie correctly.

Online schedules: NBC's Olympics listings takes a bit of work (you have to enter your ZIP code and select a television provider, even if you just want online listings). However, once you've done the work, it'll send you notifications when events you've selected will be broadcast. Jason Kottke has found Google and iCal calendars, which will allow you a bit more flexibility in setting up alerts, and the New York Times has a schedule as well. And of course, there's an official schedule from the organizers in China, with times listed for Beijing's time zone (16 hours ahead of San Francisco, 13 hours ahead of New York) — probably the best place to go for daily updates, as smog and weather may upset the schedule.

Sling Media's Slingbox: For those with more money than time, the best solution might be a Slingbox. Then you can beam your home satellite or cable signal over the Internet to your laptop, desktop, or iPhone, and remotely switch between NBC and MSNBC.
Pros: You can get great quality, even HD, if your home Internet connection is fast. There is SlingPlayer software available for a range of not just operating systems but handheld devices as well.
Cons: Prices start at $129.99 and your selection of Olympics coverage is limited to what's available from your satellite or cable provider, which means missing early heats and niche events and having to put up with tape delays by the networks.

International proxies: It is possible to watch live streams from other countries, such as BBC Sports from the UK or CBC Sports from Canada, by configuring your browser to run through an anonymous proxy. I recommend using Mozilla's Firefox browser with the FoxyProxy add-on installed. Xroxy has a handy list of proxies which you can sort by country to find proxies in the UK or Canada — which must be anonymous, and preferrably running the SOCKS protocol. Your best bet is to get a geeky British or Canadian friend to install a proxy on their machine for you and your Yankee friends. The latency can be frustrating, but once you get a stream started it will work fine.
Pros: Quality streams from legitimate providers, and if you're accustomed to jingoistic U.S. coverage, the charming accents from the Beeb's announcers and the humble mien of the Canadians can be quite refreshing.
Cons: Takes some technical know-how to set up, and proxies come and go. You might miss an event because you're too busy fiddling with your settings or a proxy fails when too many people sign on.

Video on demand: If you're running Windows Vista, you can download events using TVTonic for "Olympics on the Go." Torrent client Azureus works on any system to help download events after the fact, especially the most popular ones like tennis, football, boxing and basketball — Torrentz cross-site search of multiple BitTorrent indexes should make it easy to find the Spain versus China women's basketball game you might miss tomorrow. YouTube's official channel is blocked — even using international proxies — though a reader came up with a crack that works for now. Other less thoroughly policed online video sites like Veoh, Metacafe, Dailymotion and Megavideo will also have videos.
Pros: Torrents will be high quality and work for anyone, while video-sharing sites will be easiest to use.
Cons: Nothing will be live, obviously, and no one knows how long video clips will remain on sharing sites.

P2P Streams: The way I'll be watching online will is through MyP2P, a site that catalogs live sports and television streams from around the Web, listed by event. It helps to run Windows, though not necessarily Vista, because many streams require software downloads — check out MyP2P's beginners guide for tips, including where to find software downloads and optimization settings. I ended up finding live BBC coverage of the opening ceremonies via Justin.tv, which ran just fine in my browser. If you can't find the channel you want in the media format you prefer, check wwiTV, TV For Us, TV Channels Free, Channel Chooser or BeelineTV among others.
Pros: Free and fairly easy once you've installed most of the media players listed by MyP2P. And it's fun to watch coverage from other countries — I'll be watching all my football with spanish-speaking announcers whenever possible.
Cons: Quality is hit-or-miss, stream links come and go, and you have to think ahead in terms of scheduling to make sure you've got all the necessary programs installed. Also, Mac users will want to install Windows XP through Parallels or Fusion for the widest selection of channels.

Specifically, NewTeeVee's Janko Roettgers recommended Indian proxy servers that all proved to be either dead or "transparent," meaning they pass your IP address along to YouTube's servers, making you easy to block. He lists a bunch of sites where he guessed video "should pop up." He guessed wrong.

SAI's Eric Krangel didn't even bother listing proxies. He just tells you to "use a proxy server through a country on YouTube's whitelist like South Korea." He also lists a few non-English streaming sites that have zero Olympics footage. Eric, next time try it yourself before you send your readers on a goose chase.

In addition, each of these writers also list a bunch of streaming sites like Veetle and pirate networks that, having been there, we can tell you are packed with nothing but NBC bootlegs. [Clarification: These clips are pre-game coverage from broadcast TV, not from nbcolympics.com, which hasn't started posting yet.]

Wired's wiki page is a shotgun blast of every possible link anyone could think of, including stale tips on watching the BBC from 2005. Like others, it sends the readers hustling to try out links that the authors clearly didn't test first. I tried every single one of the downloadable players listed there. China's Olympics channel, CCTV-5, has been removed from all.

If you want to watch soccer instead of reliving a MetaFilter thread from three years ago, the only actual end-run we've found is this live CCTV-5 stream that lets you watch in silence at 291 Kbps.

We're still looking for an end-run around for YouTube. Send us a working hack and you'll be our hero of the week. But if all you've got is a few guesses you haven't tried, send them to the reporters listed above — they clearly love that stuff.