Kayvon Beykpour, the co-founder of Periscope, has defended Twitter’s new live video streaming application against criticism that it was used to infringe copyright of coverage of Saturday night’s world welterweight boxing clash between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.
Todd DuBoef, the president of the event’s co-promoter Top Rank, has said that the company plans to pursue legal action against companies that allowed illegal streams to be shown of the pay-per-view clash following apparent widespread piracy of the fight on video-sharing applications and websites.
However, Beykpour said that Periscope had received 66 complaints from rights-holders during the fight and took down 30 illegal streams, with the remaining streams having finished before Periscope had a chance to act.
“From an operational standpoint we were completely prepared for our partners to reach out to us and request we respect their IP rights,” Beykpour said. “We basically have a team that looks at an email channel and if someone says, 'Hey this stream is violating our copyright,' we take it down.”
Beykpour added that “piracy is not a Periscope thing, it's an Internet thing.”