Life Experiences & Observations

I am still shocked and perturbed about what happen to me on Thursday evening. While I don’t scope often, I have been an avid user of Periscope to watch many other individuals stream content. So on Thursday afternoon, I decided to scope the comparison between my dog and and a cub. Essentially a bear but that bear happened to coincide with a particular baseball team that was playing on my TV while I was scoping. I really wasn’t trying to distribute a Fox Production without their permission. I was trying to be cutesy.

As it turns out, a big media company like Fox is looking to demolish a big bad conglomerate wolf like myself trying to huff and puff and blow down the rules in massive proportions. That is how I felt after essentially reading a cease and desist note that Periscope sent me after suspended my account for 4 hours and stating I was violating Fox’s intellectual property rights. Did I break the rules… well that’s certainly up for debate. What did happen is 26 viewers… yes 26, saw a blurry ballgame on my TV as I went back and forth between showing the TV and showing my Dog. My Dog was much more interesting which caused me to follow my dog rather than continuing to follow the TV. Even the viewers agreed my dog was more interesting. You may need to work on that content Fox! The broadcast ended after a few minutes of filming my dog outside playing.

If I had to estimate, I would say that no more than couple minutes of the broadcast was showing on my TV with a blurry and barely view-able baseball game on. In fact, I would challenge anybody to view the video and regurgitate to me exactly what happened on 3 separate plays in the game. Good luck with that!! Even if you could still see the video content you certainly wouldn’t be able to tell me what happened in the game. This situation is essentially the equivalent of me driving 1 mile over the speed limit in the middle of the night with no cars on the road. Can you imagine if a cop pulled me over and suspended my license for this offense. It would be so ridiculous it would be funny. At what point does intent come into the conversation? Shouldn’t we at least examine if the scenario was egregious? Apparently NOT!! I had no intent to infringe on anybodies intellectual property. Once again, the content shown was almost indecipherable and lasted for no more than about 60 seconds. If you want to know why the world hates lawyers, this is a great example. Yes there are good reasons to have these rules but they don’t exist to stop 26 viewers from seeing one minute of ballgame on a TV that was really just side content to displaying my dog to the world. This is the La Brea Tar Pits of absurdity.

I could understand a warning email but to suspend my account and threaten to close it down forever? C’mon Fox. C’mon Periscope. This paranoid, alarmist behavior, may one day cause you to lose the most important deliverer of your profits…. viewers like myself. Watch Out!! Netflix is chasing your tail!!

I feel better now that I got this off my chest. Do they allow inmates to write blogs from prison? If not, this may be the bitter end my friend. Damn… did I just infringe on Jim Morrison’s intellectual property rights?