Streamer ‘anything but Robin Hood’

‘‘The person they are ultimately stealing from is Joseph Parker.’’ Dean Lonergan

Fight promoter Dean Lonergan has rubbished the notion that the man who illegally streamed Joseph Parker’s fight on Facebook is a modern-day Robin Hood.

Porirua man Moze Galo broadcast the pay-per-view fight on his page ‘‘A Day in the life of #BeastMoze’’ on Saturday night to over 20,000 people, using his phone to film his television.

The $50 fight has now been viewed over 100,000 times.

Responding to a news story about the fight posted to his Facebook page, Galo wrote: ‘‘Modern day Robin hood haha.. see y’all in jail’’.

‘‘They were blatantly robbing people. I just gave them the same medicine haha . . . . Call me the modern day Robin Hood . . . haha,’’ he wrote in another post.

The Sky Arena event fight cost $50 for Sky subscribers, who could purchase it online but were required to watch it through their TV.

Fight promoter and Duco co-founder Dean Lonergan said such claims were ridiculous, and is threatening to sue.

‘‘How can they possibly call themselves Robin Hood when the person they are ultimately stealing from is Joseph Parker, a guy who is literally sweating blood?’’ he said.

‘‘They say Duco is greedy. I live in a rented house in West Auckland. My business partner flats with someone else.’’

He said any litigation would focus on the live streamers, not the people who watched them.

Both Sky and Lonergan indicated they were working towards allowing viewers to legitimately watch pay-per-view events online.

Sky and Duco could spend upwards of $100,000 on court fees if they pursued a case, digital lawyer Rick Shera said.

They would have to prove that a significant portion of the livestream viewers represented lost sales – which would require costly expert witnesses.

‘‘You have to prove how many people actually viewed it. You would start with saying ‘$50 a pop, times a hundred thousand, that’s five million dollars,’ but the court will take that with a grain of salt.

‘‘If the rationale for taking the action is not financial recovery but to ‘make an example,’ then they may want to achieve a judgment. If it was an award of even $100,000 then [the livestreamer] could well be bankrupt.

‘‘The Skys and Ducos of the world may decide that’s something they want to do to set an example,’’ Shera said.

Sky spokeswoman Kirsty Way said the volume of viewers meant Sky was taking the situation seriously.

‘‘He may not have made money, but he may have prevented someone else from making a lot of money,’’ she said.

Sky did not rule out going after the viewers of the stream as well as the broadcasters, but would focus on the streamers.

‘‘The root of the problem and the most effective use of our time is stopping the stream getting out there in the first place.’’

Way said Sky was looking into broadening access to pay-per-view events, possibly allowing nonsubscribers or SkyGo users to access the content on their laptops or tablets.

Yet she doubted this would seriously cut into the numbers of those willing to pirate, as people who paid generally wanted to watch events on a large screen.

Lonergan said Facebook bore some responsibility for hosting the illegal content.

‘‘At the moment their users are breaking the law, which brings them on to the ground of breaking the law.

‘‘The silly people who put this on Facebook are going to regret it.

‘‘If we can find out who these people are we will track them down mercilessly, invoice them tens of thousands of dollars in payment for the theft of our licensed broadcast of the event, and if they don’t pay up we’ll look forward to taking them to court,’’ he said.

‘‘People who thieve by streaming are nothing but lowlifes.’’

Online piracy has long been a problem for pay-TV broadcasters, but free and easy livestreaming is relatively new to the scene.

Facebook has heavily invested in its mobile live streaming product, which has outstripped competitors Periscope and Meerkat.

Shera doubted Facebook would face liability, as it was currently considered to be a ‘‘platform’’ under the law.

‘‘The general rule of thumb is that unless they knew about it and did nothing they won’t be liable.’’

Facebook released a statement yesterday drawing attention to their infringement reporting tools.

‘‘As with all content on Facebook, we have reporting tools in place to enable content owners to report potential infringement, and we have a global team that handles these reports. This can happen at any time during a live broadcast.’’

The copyright battle over the streaming of the Joseph Parker vs Carlos Takam boxing match has sparked a predictable flurry of insults. On the one hand boxing promoter Dean Lonergan calls illegal streamers of the fight ‘‘lowlifes’’ and other, riper things. Sky TV says they are thieves and is threatening legal action.

But Moze Galo, the man who broadcast the fight to thousands of fans for free on Facebook, claims he’s a modern-day Robin Hood. He says the $50 price Sky was charging was ‘‘daylight robbery’’ and he was giving the promoters a dose of their own medicine.

Welcome to the debate over copyright in the digital age, where heat prevails over light – and where both sides claim righteousness.

Let’s agree with the critics that Sky’s price for the match was extraordinarily high. Sky and Lonergan might argue that they are simply asking for a fair return on their substantial investment. But viewers are not coming cold to this argument.

The broadcaster, after all, is remembered as a corporation whose dominance of pay TV lasted for a long and lucrative time. That era has thankfully gone, but the memories remain.

Sky hasn’t always helped its own cause, either. The pay-TV operator botched its introduction of a longoverdue software upgrade last year. And subscribers continue to complain about paying more for a poorer quality service.

Are those who watched the fight for free ‘‘thieves’’ and liable in law for damages? Only the courts can give a final answer to that.

But there is a fair argument to be had about the extent of the loss. Auckland lawyer Rick Shera asks, ‘‘Would 100,000 people have paid $50 to watch it? The answer is probably no.’’

And Sky’s critics say that if it had not charged such a high price, many would-be viewers would have been prepared to pay.

Here is the nub of the wider copyright argument in the digital age. It is extraordinarily easy to find a way of breaching copyright rules, and technology keeps making it easier. In this case all it took was a smartphone filming a TV screen and then the use of Facebook to spread it to the world.

Given that copyright is now so hard to protect, some new approach to the problem is needed. In the music industry, the widespread problem of piracy was clearly damaging. But digital streaming through mechanisms such as Spotify is once again returning money to the musicians and songwriters.

The answer to the copyright problem, it seems, is to make copyright works available at reasonable prices to a mass market. Consumers, according to this argument, are prepared to pay if the price is right: most people don’t expect to get something for nothing.

This argument, of course, is of crucial interest not just to Hollywood, but to the music industry, sports impresarios and the pay-TV moguls.

Lonergan claims the real victim is Parker himself, who ‘‘sweated blood’’ during the 12-round fight and was denied a bigger slice of TV revenue. The reality is Lonergan, as the promoter, misses out too. Perhaps that better explains his foul-mouthed outbursts.

The vexed problem of copyright in the digital age.