The fight over people using Periscope to watch Mayweather/Pacquiao was more interesting than the actual fight. Just for fun, I duked it out with Richard Quest on CNN. But this particular storyline misses the point. We’re about 10 minutes away from a paradigm shift in over-the-top (OTT) video that is so all-encompassing, it will change the way we consume video going forward.
A quick review of the premiere of HBO’s fifth season of Game of Thrones and the Mayweather/Pacquiao PPV fight finds a bunch of unlicensed viewers pirating the content. HBO sent takedown notices to Periscope and said in a statement, “In general, we feel developers should have tools which proactively prevent mass copyright infringement from occurring on their apps and not be solely reliant upon notifications.” This is the digital equivalent of playing Whac-A-Mole – it’s a tough game, especially at scale.
Some people had the very misguided idea that since the quality of the average Periscope video was suboptimal the experience would not catch on. At some point in the very near future, the quality of a Periscope or Meerkat video is guaranteed to be high resolution and emotionally satisfying. Let’s not be naïve; quality is not going to be the issue.
Notwithstanding the above, content owners and rights holders will vigorously fight for their rights (dollars). Piracy is a crime, and copyright holders take it seriously. The solution, of course, is that dollars are not the only currency you can trade for value in 2015. The data generated by engaged users are actionable and, in the right hands, can be transferred into cash. Unfortunately, even though the fight is on the wrong side of history, this won’t stop it. There is too much money at risk for any content owner to “go gentle into that good night.”
Too Many Network-Connected Cameras to Control
In 1999, the year Napster was founded, the best-selling cellphone in the world was the Nokia 3210. The company sold over 160 million of them. It was a feature phone that could send a few pre-loaded video messages.
