This video is of a Australian Guy that was streaming his Pay-Per-View Fight on facebook and FOXTEL one of the distributors called him to get him to stop the stream. He admits in the video he has 78,000 viewers watching the stream and claims he has the rights to stream the event because he paid for it.
We have had discussions about showing videos at DMS in the past and done some deep dive into the legality of it. This is one of those areas where ownership of content can get pretty grey. Especially when talking about enforcing it.
Enjoy the guy dragging his feat and trolling the poor guy sent to shut his stream down. This legal issue is an interesting one for me as I work in copyrights everyday with my design work. I don’t know where I line up in the end of the day. I feel this guy is wrong in streaming the event and should suffer some retribution for damages, though I’m not sure how to evaluate those damages. At the same time I’m counter to Disney’s use of copyright where they continue to lock away IP that would be open use now of days.
Look into the story of Aereo. Tried to claim they simply offered customers a “long antenna” to stream broadcast TV from various markets via IPTV. Got shut down for lack of retransmission agreements, which cable TV providers pay handsomely for.
Honestly, I kind of want to see the book thrown at the guy. The fighters, event venue, production trucks with cameras & switchers, satellite trucks for uplink, downlink station, distribution network and cable company all have some small portion of dollars on the line to bring the content to the viewer, but why bother to pay if it’s free online?
I remember thinking that these guys had beaten the system back in the day. Until the supreme court came after them. I would love to see a documentary on them as they were skirting the edge of something big. They were broadcasting “free” publicly available over the air TV.
@Adam_Oas, I agree as well, as @Photomancer states this is illegal. I would point out David, this is in Australia, so legality may not be as cut and dry. But, there often needs to be money to go after for most companies to chase this. Just look back to the days of pirating, they went after napster and and a grandma to my memory, yet most everyone I knew was freely sharing content.
Legality and Enforcement are often implied equally. But, when you look deeper, many get away with illegal acts because enforcement isn’t practical. Not being able to enforce a law kind of makes calling the act illegal pointless.
That is like saying I bought a copy of say SOLIDWORKS then insisting that I have a right to make it downloadable for free on my web site because I paid for it.
