The Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight made Saturday a great day for live-streaming apps like Periscope, but they might have more troublesome days ahead.
Todd duBoef, president of fight co-promoter Top Rank Inc., told The Los Angeles Times on Sunday that he plans to pursue legal action against those who pirated the fight and the platforms they used to pirate it, including Periscope and the lesser-used Meerkat.
“We’ll have to pursue any people who are allowing people to distribute something that is behind a proprietary wall,” duBoef said. “We’ll have to challenge those technology companies that are facilitating it, and we’re going to have to take a legal position against them.”
While Twitter CEO Dick Costolo chalked up the night as a win for Periscope — Twitter purchased the app in March — Periscope co-founder Kayvon Beykpour was far more serious about the issue.
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Regardless, duBoef and Top Rank likely won’t have much of a case against the live-streaming platforms, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s “safe harbor” clauses, which protect them basically as long as they don’t have to approve the content before it’s streamed and they take down the posts that infringe on copyrights. The users who posted live streams, however, won’t be as lucky (if Top Rank can track them down).
As it turns out, Top Rank isn’t coming out of this fight unscathed, either. ESPN’s Darren Rovell reported Tuesday that Pacquiao’s injury earned the company a lawsuit of its own.
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Thumbnail photo via Joe Camporeale/USA TODAY Sports Images
