Periscope Officially a Part of #PiracyProblems

Periscope Officially a Concern for #PiracyProblems
Photo from Yahoo!

Earlier this month, social media giant Twitter waged a war against Meerkat— a live-streaming app that caught both the attention and favor of many social media users— by launching its very own live video app, Periscope.

Many predicted that Periscope can and will take over the world of live streaming on mobile phones— mainly due to the fact that its owner made life harder for its competitor by limiting its ties to the social media platform Twitter.

On its official page, Periscope said:

“‘What if you could see through the eyes of a protester in Ukraine? Or watch the sunrise from a hot air balloon in Cappadocia?”

“It may sound crazy, but we wanted to build the closest thing to teleportation.

“While there are many ways to discover events and places, we realized there is no better way to experience a place right now than through live video.”

All seemed well and everything looked like it was going according to the company’s master plan— and that is to take over the world of live streaming— until HBO premiered the much-awaited latest episode from its Game of Thrones TV series.

And just like that, Periscope was reduced to a pirate’s tool.

HBO’s Game of Thrones is one of the most popular TV series ever released by the entertainment giant, and because of that, it has always been a victim of piracy.

In fact, it is the most pirated TV show of all time in TorrentFreak’s list.

As the entertainment world scrambles to fight down its long-time archenemy— which is piracy— modern day cyber-pirates have become increasingly innovative in their own way.

And now they’ve found an unwilling friend in Periscope— an app just weeks into positioning itself as a live streaming market leader.

The highly-anticipated Game of Thrones Season Five premiere attracted countless GoT fans to pirate sites on the internet as they scrambled to catch a glimpse of the much-awaited episode from their favorite TV series.

Many of them ended up using Periscope to watch live stream feeds from users who were broadcasting the first GoT Season Five episode from their very own TV sets.

Obviously, HBO wasn’t pleased with the situation at hand. In an official statement released by the company, a spokeswoman for HBO told:

“We are aware of Periscope and have sent takedown notices.

“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.”

In response, Periscope threatened to ban users who use the app for illegal purposes. But that may not even be enough.

1 Comment

  • xSentaru says:

    Periscope would probably be the last on my #PiracyProblems list. I had no idea pirates could take it this far, they’re ingenious, I got to give them that… but too far. Using Periscope to do something that is considered illegal would be like taking a candy from a baby’s mouth to rob a bank. It’s ridiculous!

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