Periscope Piracy Is Good For Twitter & Content Producers, But They'll Still Find A Way To Block It

There have been a lot of stories about last weekend's boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, but many of them have had very little to do with the actual event.

Most reports have focused on the fact that so many people used Periscope to live stream the fight. Some fear it will be a problem for Periscope's owner, but Twitter Inc TWTR expert Sean Udall isn't overly concerned.

"Don't we have bigger things to worry about?" Udall, CIO of Quantum Trading Strategies and author of The TechStrat Report, questioned. "Are you seriously going to try to police a few occasional people from live streaming a few seconds of some event? Is that really worth the effort?"

He thinks this event was good for Twitter in that it "shows the virility" of Periscope. He said that live Periscope streams are good for content producers as well.

"The more stuff people are showing of my content, the more it's gonna garner interest and get them to buy my product," said Udall, using himself as an example. "[But] what are you gonna do -- [ban phones from] every concert, every boxing match, every public event? People are gonna say, 'I can't bring my iPhone in here? I'm leaving.' That's what's gonna happen. If people really try to fight something like that, they're gonna prevent people from going to events."

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Another Solution

Bob Bowman, president and CEO of MLB Advanced Media, has stated that Major League Baseball will not attempt to stop people from using Periscope and other live streaming apps at its games. The National Hockey League disagrees with this decision and has decided to ban Periscope and Meerkat.

"They're gonna come up with a way to block the activity," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, told Benzinga. "There's almost no way they're going to stop people from doing it and suing the fans has never been a good plan for success."

Enderle said that the live stream restrictions will have to occur at the source. Until then, "You might actually get a better feed off a free Periscope attendee than you will off the networks."

"Clearly that's going to cut into the amount of money the networks are willing to pay for an event like this," he said. TV streams might be the bigger problem, but it could be easier to stop consumers from streaming events in person.

"They know where the phone is, they know what the phone's doing," Enderle added. "They would just have to implement a piece of code that says, 'For anyone who is within this vicinity, Periscope won't function.' That would stop them. You're not gonna do it at the TV side. That won't work. But you can certainly block the signal [at an event]."

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.