Periscope Copyright Infringement on the Rise
- Tuesday, August 11th, 2015
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Twitter-owned livestreaming app Periscope received 833 copyright takedown notices in June.
Each notice represents a piece of content that allegedly breaches DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) policy. Free streaming of paid content has been a concern since the launch of live-streaming apps. In May, for example, Periscope was used to stream coverage of the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight, which was shown on a pay-per-view by HBO and Showtime, leading the two broadcasters to sue illegal streaming sites.
The number of takedown notices is rising sharply, up from 541 in May, and just 17 in April, the apps first full month after launch.
Copyright infringement is already a bigger problem on Periscope than Vine, Twitters short-form video app, which received 228 notices in June. Its still far behind Twitter, which received 2,428 in the same month – but this is hugely out of proportion with the userbase and amount of content on each service.
Its also worth noting that a higher percentage of Periscope notices are upheld than on either of the other services. In 697 cases during June, the offending media was removed from the app – equivalent to 79 per cent of the notices received, compared to 69 per cent on Twitter and 39 per cent on Vine.