Streamed From Mexico, Thailand, Etc., The Mayweather-Pacquiao Fight On #Periscope Wasn't The HBO/Showtime PPV Broadcast

Tuesday, May 05, 2015

A lot of articles on Periscope and the fight @ the WSJ, NYT, and CNN.

Here's my take (and I watched the fight on Periscope): HBO and Showtime have the right to have streams of their shows taken down. But when the event is shown free, like it was in Mexico, China, Colombia, Thailand, etc. (see SB Nation) now it becomes a little more gray.

The 10K stream that everyone is talking about was a feed from Mexico. It had commercials. The angles didn't always seem to be the best. It wasn't in HD. You didn't get the commentary or personalities from HBO or Showtime, their cameras, or their production. And since it was the free televised version airing in Mexico, anyone who had tuned in like myself, wasn't involved in the piracy of the PPV broadcast.

Was the live re-broadcast of the free broadcast in Mexico legit? That question didn't occur to me until later and I haven't delved into the specifics (broadcasting and event rights locally, internationally, etc.).

Again - it's a gray area and opens up a lot of questions because of its truly disruptive nature - but it also provides a platform where anyone can broadcast live from wherever they are - giving power to people in such a different way and to me that's the crux of it. It's not whether someone is trying to circumvent copyright - because there will always be that - but what can the platform do for new and existing content.

P.S.

Yes, I have been Periscoping as well and you can find me sometimes, every now and then on @chautacular. And no, you will not see my naked body no matter how hard you beg because no one wants to see all of that...