HBO isn’t happy with Periscope, Twitter’s live-broadcasting app.
The company has sent takedown notices, following reports that users were live-streaming the season five premiere of Game of Thrones for their followers to see.
“We are aware of Periscope and have sent takedown notices,” an HBO spokeswoman said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “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.”
As in, Periscope should be watching for this, on an algorithmic level.
According to Periscope’s Terms of Service, it doesn’t allow the rebroadcasting of copyrighted materials and will “respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement that comply with applicable law and are properly provided to us.”
“Twitter, Inc. respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects users of Periscope Services to do the same,” says Periscope. “We reserve the right to remove Content alleged to be infringing without prior notice and at our sole discretion. In appropriate circumstances, Periscope will also terminate a user’s account if the user is determined to be a repeat infringer.”
So if you’re broadcasting Game of Thrones via Periscope, tread carefully.
The company does say, however, that it “may, but are not required to monitor or control the content posted via Periscope and cannot take responsibility for such content.”
HBO may be going after the wrong people, however, as Periscope videos vanish after 24 hours. And when you can just download decent copies of the show via torrent, why watch someone record their TV and play it back in potato quality on Twitter?
As you probably know, the first four episodes of the new season of Game of Thrones leaked online hours before the premiere. HBO has chalked it up to a screener it sent out to an early reviewer. According to TorrentFreak, the episodes were downloaded more than 100,000 times in just the first few hours of availability. Now, that number is well over a million.
The massive leak failed to keep the show from setting a viewing record, however. Nearly eight million viewers tuned in live.
Image via GameofThrones, YouTube