This disclosure relates generally to implementing content blackouts. The content blackouts may be implemented in packet switched (e.g., internet protocol based) delivery network. A user device (e.g., client), rather than a server or shared network device, may perform blackout identification and management based on blackout information associated with content. The blackout information may be transmitted with the content or may be received from one or more of a plurality of blackout nodes configured to store blackout information. The blackout information may be compared to the user device's provisioned information.

A content blackout may occur if a subset of user devices is prevented from accessing content (e.g., a content stream, the primary content of a content channel) because of rights restrictions. An example blackout occurs if a baseball game is carried on a national cable network, but a local sports network has exclusive rights to the baseball game (e.g., has rights to all games of a particular team in a local market). Due to these exclusive rights, the game on the national cable network must be blacked out for user devices in the local market. In a typical non-packet switched content network (e.g., a cable distribution network, a quadrature amplitude modulation based network) blackouts may be implemented via integrated receiver/decoder (e.g., IRD) switching. For implementing blackout restrictions in a packet switched content network, there have been a number of proposals for managing blackout restrictions, though all of the proposals have shortcomings. The present disclosure includes a new and non-conventional approach to managing blackout restrictions that improves upon these prior proposals.