TV viewership for the second presidential debate between Secretary Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was lower than for the first one, when 84 million viewers tuned in. But it may have broken records for streaming of a live event through sites like Periscope, Facebook Live, and YouTube Live.
VFT Solutions tracked 420 live streams of Sunday’s debate and recorded 22 million views. This includes accessing legal streams from media sources like the New York Times and Fox News, which streamed the debate on live-streaming platforms. But it also includes massive views of illegal streams. According to VFT’s CEO, Wayne Lonstein, “Perhaps what is most interesting is that 41% of these views were from illegal live-streams, also known as nano-piracy.” That's about 9 million nano-pirate views, and this is just a sample.
The presidential debates are broadcast for free on numerous broadcast TV channels, the radio, and legal live streams, yet many viewers are choosing to engage in nano-piracy. Why are viewers watching these debates on illegal live streams despite having plenty of free legal options? What does this signal for copyright owners who expect to get paid for their content?
A screenshot of the second U.S. presidential debate on CNN, live-streamed illegally by a Periscope... [+]
This phenomenon is part of a broader trend towards streaming piracy and away from downloading piracy, especially among the young, Internet-savvy population. Anatomy Media recently found that 69% of young millennials (ages 18-24) engage in at least one form of piracy (download, stream, or mobile). Of that group, 60% stream the pirated content and only 17% use torrent sites for downloading. The same study also found 43% of young millennials believe downloading piracy is wrong but streaming piracy is not, and only 18% believe it is wrong to stream pirated content.
To gauge the shift to live-streaming, let’s examine the first Trump-Clinton debate, for which both TV and streaming viewership are available. Some analysts predicted that viewership for the first debate would be 100 million, but it turned out to be 84 million. Yet if you consider the shift to live-streaming, the forecast of 100 million viewers was not too far off. Lonstein states, “We recorded 17.72 million views of the first debate on a sample of 400 live streams, but that’s just a sample. The total may be at least 50% higher.” Assuming the same percent of illegal streams as in the second debate, that would represent at least 100 million total views from legal sources (TV and legal streams), and 11 million views on nano-pirate streams.
Nano-piracy often originates abroad. On Sunday’s presidential debate, VFT tracked 50 international live streams originating in 22 countries like Israel and Cambodia, yielding 4 million views. A June weekend episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones had more than 2 million views of illegal streams originating in Latin America.
Live-streaming the presidential debates in platforms like Periscope and Facebook Live is great for politics, but it should also raise a big red flag about the emerging threat that nano-piracy on these same platforms poses for artists and entertainers. Indeed, illegal streaming of live events and entertainment broadcasts is alarming. Take the Canelo Alvarez - Liam Smith fight last September. VFT tracked 700 illegal streams with 1.82 million views, which represents significant revenue losses for HBO.
The statistics are also alarming for live concerts. A May concert by Beyoncé yielded more than 1 million viewers on just 19 live onsite streams. Fifth Harmony had 9.5 million views on 58 streams of their eight June-September concerts. No wonder Adele called out and embarrassed a fan who was videotaping her in a concert last May.
Live-streaming is bringing with it a new massive wave of piracy. Creatives, government, and live-streaming social media platforms will have to unite to combat it, just like I argue they should for other types of piracy. Just last week, 35,000 creatives from film, TV, music, books, photography, and others came together to plead to incoming policy makers the need for a copyright system that works.
Within the current system, where copyright holders have to request the take-down of every single piracy source, it has been an uphill battle to keep up with download piracy infringers. Nano-pirates are making things worse, with the aggravated fact that live streams leave less trace than downloads. Ironically, illegal live-streaming of the presidential debates is rampant, so hopefully the winner will be motivated to take matters into his or her own hands.
