Livestreaming


Livestreaming









PDF version of this report
You must have Adobe Acrobat reader to view, save, or print PDF files. The reader
is available for free
download.

Livestreaming

by Michael Gariffo

Copyright 2021, Faulkner Information Services. All Rights Reserved.

Docid: 00021045

Publication Date: 2108

Report Type: TUTORIAL

Preview

The term "livestreaming" refers to the broadcasting of any real
world or digital event, happening in real time, to viewers over the
Internet. Modern video capture technologies as well
as increasingly speedy wired and cellular broadband connections have made
it possible for one person with a smartphone to accomplish what would have
previously taken an entire television studio to produce. Similarly,
live digital capture technologies have made it possible for users to
stream what’s happening on their own computer screens and share that with viewers around the world. The
result has been revolutionary in terms of both entertainment and education. Where once the young and old alike turned to
television and celebrities for their viewing needs, many are now more
interested in watching someone most people have never heard of play
their favorite online game or document the latest news story while it is
happening. Meanwhile, others simply use livestreaming to increase the
diversity and volume of traditional programming available to them – from live music, to
sports, to news events and more. This report will examine the history of livestreaming, the current state of the technology and communication
medium, and where it might be headed in the future. 

Report Contents:

Executive Summary

[return to top of this report]

Livestreaming technology allows everyone from massive enterprises to
private citizens to broadcast streaming video to their viewers in real
time. This video can be derived from a camera recording real goings-on,
from a digital source (such as a user’s desktop computer, a company’s gaming
server, etc.), or from any one of a multitude of other video sources. The only requirement
for a given video to be called a livestream is in the name itself: it must be happening live. This real-time broadcasting is what makes
livestreaming special. Not only does it have the potential to bring
viewers ongoing entertainment, news, and other events from anywhere on the
globe but it can do this with resources as modest as a Web cam
or even a smartphone. Television networks have long understood the
importance of a live broadcast, with most of the greatest historical
television moments having happened live. However, where it took an entire
studio with hundreds of workers to broadcast events like the first moon
landing or a World Series game, any random individual can now pull out his
or her phone and suddenly make their situation accessible to an audience
of millions of users. 

The impact this level of instant access can have on the
news, social media, and traditional television broadcasting cannot be
overstated. The ability to bring an event in a single location to the
whole world has gone from being the sole dominion of the television media
to a democratized process in which everyone can join. This new level of
diversity has brought some controversy with it, as any technological
development
tends to do. However, nearly everyone agrees that this transformation of
the communications media is a positive step for humanity and one that could
help people to better understand each other, access their non-mainstream
interests, and communicate in a whole new way.

Description

[return to top of this report]

Livestreaming was not a technology that appeared overnight.
On the contrary, it is only one of the most recent developments in more
than two decades of advancing Internet technology, progressing from early video capture, compression, and transmission technologies. Where
television began with live programming as its most common feature and
moved towards more and more recorded content, videos on the Internet have
taken the opposite path. Early Web videos were paltry affairs when
compared to today’s offerings. Most footage was compressed
and processed to such a degree that it was hardly recognizable once
finally posted to the Web. However, this level of degradation was necessary at the time. Without it, the dial-up modems and
relatively underpowered PCs of the day would never have been able to cope.
As the years progressed, computers became faster, video capture and
processing technologies improved, and users moved from 56Kbps dial-up to
1Gbps broadband. Such advances made it possible to not only post a video
in much better quality, but it made it possible for that video to be pushed out to users so quickly
that they could actually begin watching what was occurring while it was
still going on. There were, of course, stumbles along the way with some
highly public failures resulting in the concept of livestreaming being
seen as more of a joke than a viable alternative to television. Because of
this, it is important to understand how livestreaming came to be the powerhouse
of entertainment and social media that it is today. For that, one must
take a more detailed look at its birth and subsequent growth.

History 

Of course, for livestreaming to be a possibility, the Internet first
had to be created. This may seem like a bit of a silly
statement, but it is nonetheless an important one as the Internet created an entirely new channel through which information and media could be
brought to the average citizen of the developed world. More importantly,
in livestreaming’s case at least, the Internet is a channel through which
any individual can share their own information or media.
This was, however, not always the case. Following the same trickle-down
effect seen in numerous technologies before it, livestreaming began as
something only large companies could accomplish. One of the first to attempt a livestream on a grand scale was RealNetworks.1 The
company, known primarily at the time for its RealMedia online video player,
chose one of the earliest types of live television broadcasts
for its initial attempt at livestreaming: A baseball game. To be fair, it
should be noted that this was almost two years after what some consider
to be the first-ever livestream, which took place in 1993. That event, a live performance from
the band Severe Tire
Damage, occurred in a somewhat accidental way as the audio/video
engineers working the concert, which was being held at Xerox PARC, decided
to attempt to stream a video of the event to the Internet using some new
equipment that had come into their possession.2 While no
recording of the streams of either of these events exists today, they were certainly
modest affairs due to the extremely limited bandwidth available at
the time. 1995 would prove to be an important year for livestreaming, as the
RealNetworks broadcast was subsequently followed by livestreams from the Seattle
Symphony and Word Magazine, which created the first continuous livestream
of a looping soundtrack.3 While the latter did use pre-recorded
audio, it was being played back in real time by a human DJ.

It would be a few more years before livestreaming technology would
truly come into the public eye and gain its first round of mainstream
media coverage. This occurred in 1999, when it was announced, during Super
Bowl XXXIII, that lingerie retailer Victoria’s Secret would be
livestreaming that year’s edition of its annual fashion show.4 The massive viewing audience of the Super
Bowl was suddenly introduced to the concept of livestreaming in what can
only be described as provocative fashion. The result was a livestreaming
event that ended up drawing in some two million estimated viewers.5 Unfortunately
for the genre of livestreaming, the event did not go particularly well.
Widespread reports of crashes, freezes, inability to load the video, and
general malfunctions were reported, with relatively few of those
viewers having anything that could be described as a smooth viewing
experience. Taken in context, this is hardly surprising. Today, some users
still face constant buffering when streaming an online video, and issues
with plug-ins like Adobe’s Flash or even the HTML5 protocol often break
streaming content. Imagining the contemporary equivalents of all of these problems being faced
by the much less tech-savvy world of 1999, with dial-up Internet
connections thrown into the mix, is a cringe-worthy scenario indeed. The
large-scale and very public issues with the event did significant harm to
the reputation of livestreaming and made it the butt of widespread jokes
for several years. Although Victoria’s Secret once again
livestreamed the show in 2000, the damage was done.6

It was not until around the middle of the decade when livestreaming would begin to rebound and be thought of as viable. One of
the driving forces behind this was a Web site called Justin.tv. The site’s
co-founder and original star, Justin Kan, created the constant stream to
provide a 24/7 look into his daily life. This single-handedly created a sub-genre of
livestreaming known by many as "lifestreaming."7
While this was an important step in the history of livestreaming, it was
in 2007 when the site became one of the first platforms for
livestreaming by the public. This occurred when Kan, along with the site’s
other owners and founders, chose to cease his personal livestream and open
their network to the public. Thanks to this change, users could create
channels where they hosted their own streams from various Web cams and
get their content out to anyone on the Web with a sufficient connection.
While still relatively rudimentary compared to today’s streaming
technology, a new compression technique from collaborating provider On2
made this new service possible by compressing the livestreamer’s video in
real time, significantly reducing the bandwidth required to view it.
Still, the quality of the stream, particularly its resolution and frame
rate, would satisfy few modern Web surfers used to the instant,
high-definition streams made possible by today’s technology.8

In TechCrunch’s 2007 coverage of the aforementioned Justin.tv relaunch,
writer Ilya Kochanov said:

"I think the live
streaming model has a lot of growing up to do before we see any stand out
successes. There are several hurdles to mass consumption of the medium.
User generated content is often not of the highest quality. Also, live
streaming doesn’t lend itself to the same embeddable distribution model
that made YouTube so successful since you don’t know what live content
will show up (most sites have since tied in recorded video clips). Live
streaming does shine when it comes to user interaction, which has led many
startups to focus on shows and events."9

Indeed, livestreaming did have some growing to do. There were still many
obstacles in its path, not the least of which were the technological limitations
that would not begin to erode until a few years later. However, the author’s concern over the quality of
user-generated content seems to have been unfounded. Not only would
user-created videos come to dominate on-demand video sites like YouTube,
they would also drive massive streaming media sites and services based
entirely on user-generated streams on a variety of topics.

From around 2007 onward, the history of livestreaming became a steady,
gradual climb to what it is today. During this time, in-home Internet
connections got faster, video compression technologies improved
to the point where a minimal broadband connection could still provide an
uninterrupted stream, and, perhaps most importantly, cellular data
connections were offering speeds that would
have been dream-like for terrestrial Internet service providers just a
decade earlier. All of these factors combined to create a landscape in
which livestreaming began to flourish like never before, both on desktop
and mobile platforms. This is when the technology truly began to shine,
and the start of the livestreaming boom in which we still find
ourselves. 

The Birth of Modern of Livestreaming

Modern day livestreaming services run the gamut of interests, topics,
and platforms. However, all of them can be divided into two categories: Professionally
produced or user-generated. Professionally produced content refers to the
creation of live-streaming video by a large company or organization,
whether solely for the purpose of being streamed over the Internet or for
the purpose of live/broadcast entertainment to be simulcast to the
Web. Examples of this would be a livestream of a music festival or
sporting event, or even a presidential speech or court
proceedings. These types of streams tend to be highly produced with teams
of personnel working on them. They represent livestreaming’s
direct analogue to live television with the quality often meeting the standards of any broadcast network.

The other side of the coin is user-generated content.
Where the
professional streams could be produced by a staff of hundreds,
user-generated
streams are typically the result of just one or a few individuals. The tools
may be as modest as a single smartphone, but the content is
much more varied. Livestreamers today have found great success
streaming everything from artwork being created, to competitive gaming, to
modern equivalents of the original Justin.tv lifestream. The services that
power these user-generated broadcasts, which will be covered in more
detail later, are growing in number, size, and diversity. Some rely on a single
type of stream such as gaming or sports, whereas others serve as agnostic
platforms, able to stream whatever the user chooses to put in front of their
camera.

User-generated
livestreams began primarily as a desktop-based pursuit. This was due to
the limitations of cellular hardware and networks, which typically lag
behind their desktop counterparts in processing power and speed. However,
as smartphone cameras became better and cellular networks became larger,
faster, and more stable, livestreamers could leave their desk and produce
a broadcast from almost anywhere. This did not have a massive impact on
the professional gamers and digital artists who were making money by
allowing viewers to watch them ply their craft on a desktop, but it did have an
incredibly huge impact on the average person thanks to its facilitation of
an entirely new type of citizen journalism. Suddenly, a news agency that
would typically have had to wait for a camera crew to arrive at an event
could instead derive their coverage on emergent goings-on from a
livestream produced by someone already at the scene of the incident. This
is a use of livestreaming that is only now coming to light, and one that
is likely to have a growing influence on news coverage going forward.

Simply put, nearly everything in the world can now be livestreamed. As
long as someone with a smartphone and some form of data connection is
present, then millions of viewers can join in on whatever is
going on. This creates a whole new way for people to access sports, music,
stage shows, and more. It has also became a way for people to find
entirely new forms of entertainment that were scoffed at just a few years
ago. After all, the concept of paying someone to watch them play video
games is still laughed at by many, but has nonetheless become one of the
most talked about trends currently on the Web.

Current View

[return to top of this report]

Leading Livestreaming
Platforms

Livestreaming services are growing in number and size and there are already far too many to cover any but the most
well-known and major among them. To better illustrate what these platforms
specialize in, they will be broken into two categories: Desktop
livestreaming platforms and mobile livestreaming platforms. The former
includes all professionally produced providers as well as all
user-generated content creators that broadcast their streams from a Web
cam, from their PC’s current monitor view, or some combination of the two.
For the desktop section, these examples will be further divided into
those specializing in professionally produced content and those that
specialize in user-generated content.
Meanwhile, the mobile livestreaming platform section will cover those
services that focus on allowing smartphone and tablet owners to stream the
view from their smartphone camera. 

Desktop Livestreaming Platforms

Professionally Produced

MLB.tv
One of the first and still best examples of sport-centric streaming
services was founded by Major League Baseball. This offering provides
subscribers will full broadcasts of all MLB regular season, postseason,
and most spring training games. It features a set of rich-media tools that
allow users to view stats, track pitches, and get more info on the players
in any game they view. It also supports the choice of listening to the
broadcaster commentary from either participating team as well as non-English
commentary, where available. Unlike most of the platforms on this list, MLB.tv exists entirely behind a paywall, with a user being required to
purchase a "Season Pass" giving him or her access to all MLB.tv
content for the entire season as well as access to the companion
streaming audio service for listening to radio broadcasts of all MLB
games. It should be noted that all four major sports leagues in the US
now offer some form of subscription-based livestreamed version of their
games, with some lesser-known leagues also providing their own
offerings.

YouTube
Although YouTube is primarily known for its on-demand
videos, the site also fully supports the ability for users to livestream
from both desktop and mobile camera setups. It currently has the advantage of
having one of the largest in-place user bases as well as the option to
take the livestream that has just been broadcast and immediately post it
as an on-demand video for later viewing. YouTube is also one of the
livestreaming sites that offer DVR (digital video recorder) capabilities,
meaning viewers can join a stream already in progress and rewind to a
point before their joining or jump back to the live feed. YouTube’s
parent company, Google, has taken advantage of its own livestream capabilities
on several occasions, livestreaming its own product launch events and I/O
Conference keynote addresses. Thanks to the streaming of the latter,
an event that was once only accessible to the elite of the tech press is
now being shown, in real time, to anyone with an interest in watching.
It should be noted that, thanks to the very attainably hardware
requirements of streaming on YouTube, this site could just as easily fit
into the User-Generated section below.

ABC.com
ABC was one of the first broadcast networks in the US to provide a
live version of its broadcast stream to Web users. This option is
available via the company’s Web site but requires the user to provide
proof that he or she already has access to the company’s broadcast via an
existing television network. This is typically accomplished by providing
the user’s sign-in information that was set up by his or her cable or
satellite provider. Aside from this small obstacle to accessing ABC’s livestream, the company offers one of the most comprehensive online
versions of their broadcast of any major network, with the delay between
the broadcast version and online typically being just seconds. ABC was
also one of the pioneers of using localization and targeting technology
to continue providing relevant ads to its viewers. Where TV broadcasters
can rely on their local affiliates to populate the space during
commercial breaks with locally relevant content, online broadcasters
must accomplish this via different technological means, reading the viewer’s
current location and adjusting accordingly. Although this was one of the
most troublesome obstacles to bringing live television to the Web, it
has largely been conquered. While this stream often features
pre-recorded content, it qualifies as a livestream in the sense that,
even when the program is a recorded one, it is being provided as a live
representation of what is currently being broadcast on ABC’s television
network. As with MLB.tv, ABC’s efforts proved to be trailblazing for its
peers, with essentially all live networks now operating their own
live-stream versions on the Web. The most elaborate of these is likely
CBS’ All Access service, which combines live streamed broadcast content
with on-demand offerings and Web-exclusive shows like Star Trek:
Discovery.

Hulu
One of the best-known online providers of scripted and reality TV
content, Hulu, joined the live
TV market in 2017.10 Via partnerships with Fox, ABC, ESPN, FX,
and others, the service provides traditional broadcast content
alongside the personalized recommendations its on-demand offering has been
providing for years. It launched into a burgeoning market with competing
offerings such as YouTube TV, Sling TV, DIRECTV Now, and more. Nonetheless, Hulu’s live programming was among the first offerings to
provide a truly Web-only way to access content from broadcast and cable
networks without the need to have an existing cable subscription. These
types of services could bring livestreaming to a level of parity with broadcast television
that it has never before seen, and be the last step in making the
technology a legitimate competitor for subscriptions from the likes of
Comcast and Verizon. Hulu is by no means alone in this category.
In fact, YouTube, DISH Network's Sling TV, and even Comcast all have a
stake in the live TV streaming market.

User-Generated

IBM Cloud Video
One of the best examples of the multi-purpose livestreaming
platforms, IBM Cloud Video (formerly known as Ustream) is also one of the most popular. Users can stream their camera
view, desktop, or other video source to the site’s millions of users.
While it does restrict some content, this is primarily to protect against
things like violence, crime, and adult content. Other than these
prohibited categories, the sky is the limit for what can be shown on
IBM Cloud Video. This versatility has led to the service signing partnerships with
several major companies and organizations in livestreaming team-ups
including Samsung, CBS News, PBS NewsHour, and Viacom.11 Although
the platform itself has changed its name to reflect its new ownership,
the most common way of accessing the platform remains its Ustream app,
available via iOS and Android.

Twitch
One of the largest livestreaming sites today and arguably the one
that brought livestreaming to the gaming sector, Twitch provides a
platform through which users can stream nearly any video game they are
currently playing. Through a variety of video capture hardware and
technology, these streams can be derived from almost any console – from an Atari made in the 1980s
to a modern XBox One X . They
can also be generated by games being played on the very same desktop where
the stream itself is being broadcast. In any of these cases, the livestream of the video game being played is typically accompanied by a
live view of the player. This provides the users with the ability to view
both the streamer and his or her gameplay. The main thrust behind Twitch
streams generally revolve around gaming, but vary in tone from
extremely serious tutorials on how to play a certain game better to
comedic interactions that don’t involve much skill, but bring plenty of
humor with them. Twitch has also become one of the primary livestreaming
platforms for professional gaming leagues. This includes content from
well-known pro leagues and games such as MLG (Major League Gaming), the
League of Legends LCS (League Championship Series), DOTA 2, and Starcraft
2. While the pro
leagues make their money on Twitch via ad deals and sponsorships, many of
the individual users can find the site very profitable as well since they
are able to accept donations and subscription fees from fans. These
are often small, even less than one dollar, but some very popular streamers
have actually received tips numbering in the tens of thousands of dollars
from wealthy fans.12


Mixer
Mixer remains part of this report as something of a cautionary tale in the livestreaming world. The
now defunct service was
Founded by Microsoft, Mixer as the company's direct competitor for
Twitch. While the service was, for a time, flying under the radar following its launch, that all changed when Tyler "Ninja"
Blevins, one of the most popular livestreamers on the planet, announced that he
would be leaving Twitch for Mixer in mid 2019.13 Despite momentary
concerns that this would alienate his massive Twitch following, the Fortnite
player’s fans seemed more than willing to follow him to the new streaming
platform, with his Mixer profile boasting over 1.6 million subscribers just one
week after the transition.14 Despite the massive financial power of
Microsoft, and the obvious will to make Mixer succeed by pulling down one of the
largest streamers in the world, the site could not defeat the titan that Twitch
has become in recent years. Less than a year after signing Ninja, Mixer was shut
down in July 2020. The reason for this was simply a lack of viewership numbers
on par with Twitch. The reason why the site could never quite achieve those
figures remains up for debate. However, as of mid 2020, Ninja, as well as
several other major streamers, were once again communicating with their fans on
Twitch, while Mixer was just a memory.

Livestream
As its name would suggest, Livestream was one of the first
livestreaming services to pop up once the genre started gaining widespread
attention. Today, the company offers something of a hybrid between professionally produced and user-generated offerings thanks to its
partnerships with companies as well known as Tesla, Nasdaq, TED, and many
more.15 Despite this, it still offers any individual the
opportunity to sign up a platform through which he or she can stream
their video content. In 2017, Livestream was acquired by the parent
company of streaming video site Vimeo, which it remains a part of.

Mobile Livestreaming Platforms

Twitter (formerly Periscope)
Periscope, and its unusual birth, arguably started the current
livestreaming obsession and ignited the stiff competition that is
currently going on between the mobile entrants in the market place. The
reason for this may be the fact that, in 2015, Twitter paid $120 million for
the startup despite the fact that it had not yet
officially launched a public version of its app.16 The
reason why Twitter may have been confident enough in Periscope’s potential
could have something to do with the reason its creator, Kayvon
Beykpour, thought it was needed. The young entrepreneur claims he got the
idea for Periscope while traveling abroad during the 2013 protests in
Istanbul. Wishing to know more about what was going on, he logged on to
Twitter, but was dissatisfied with the fact that he could only read about
the events and not actually see them.17 This concept of instant
communication via video rather than text, as well as the fact that it
was inspired by a limitation of Twitter itself, makes perfect sense as a
motivation for the acquisition. Today, Periscope's functionality has
been absorbed into its parent company's social network. Users can now
"go live" on twitter whenever they wish via their smartphone or other
device camera.

Houseparty
Although it actually launched before Periscope in February 2015,
Houseparty, originally called Meerkat, has generally been seen as an underdog to Periscope’s success.
Nonetheless, the app and streaming platform offers many of the same
features, including integration with users’ Facebook and Twitter social
connections. The latter of these two components is not what it once was,
however. While Meerkat launched with full access to Twitter’s social
graph, the service was summarily cut off without warning just about one
month after its launch.18 Only a few weeks later was it revealed that this
was very likely done at the same time that Twitter was in the process of
acquiring Periscope, making the removal
an obvious, if controversial, act. Despite having lost access to one of its
biggest social networking tools during its infancy, Meerkat soldiered
on thanks to its strong reliance on using streamer’s existing social
connections from multiple social networks to help them
find their connections’ livestreams. Today, the newly renamed
Houseparty app provides users with push notifications when their
connected friends are available to video chat, creating a sort of hybrid
between a livestreaming and a video conferencing platform.

Facebook
The biggest social network in the world has chosen to get into the
mobile livestreaming game. The benefits for both the social
network and its users are obvious. For the network, it provides an
entirely new way for users to engage with each other as well as with
the network’s various revenue producing methods. Meanwhile, for the user,
it offers an easily accessible way to share what they are doing
that second with friends and strangers alike. Features of Facebook’s livestreaming include the ability to see how many viewers are
watching, read comments from viewers, and keep a tally of on-air time.
While Facebook’s offering may not be among the most robust mobile
livestreaming solutions, it has an inherent advantage in that it is
already built in to the iOS and Android versions of the Facebook mobile
app. Where users will have to seek out, download, and install Periscope or
Houseparty, they very likely already have the tools to livestream on their
smartphones in the form of the Facebook app. This, alongside
the ability to access the user’s well-established and curated friends list
"out of the box," means that despite being the newest offering
in this section, Facebook’s livestreaming service is already vying to be
the most popular.

Instagram
Although Instagram is also owned by Facebook, the photo-sharing
service has launched its own livestreaming solution called "Instagram Live
Stories." The service lived within the standard Instagram app, allowing users to
"go live" whenever they choose. When this occurs, that user’s followers will
receive a notification telling them that the user in question is streaming. The
offering has since been rolled into Instagram's "Live Video" functionality, but
it still allows users to instantly share up to one hour of live video once their
stream ends. The app also supports the
ability for users to like and comment on live streams.

Outlook

[return to top of this report]

There is essentially no reason why livestreaming as a social media and
entertainment category will not continue to flourish. While it has been around
for the better part of two decades, it is only in recent years that the genie
has been let out of its bottle and the potential uses have been seen. Creators
of sports, music, and other entertainment content now know the ways in which
livestreaming can provide them with access to millions of new potential viewers,
while social media enthusiasts have discovered a way in which they can connect
with friends, family, fans, and followers. Livestreaming is no longer an
outlying technology waiting for the right moment to pounce. It has officially
landed and is now a major tool in the arsenal of everyone from upstart
individuals to multi-national corporations.

This is even more true now than ever before, with humans across the globe
looking to the Internet for social connections that they simply cannot
experience in person due to the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic. While this
factor will, hopefully, be a temporary one, the impact it has on the ways people
interact with each other will likely remain long after COVID-19 goes the way of
the Spanish flu or polio. The safety and ease provided by the digital
connections livestreaming offers cannot be overstated in a world that often
seems increasingly determined to throw up new roadblocks to in-person
interactions.

Even with all of this working in livestreaming's favor, it can still stumble
as a genre of communications. As livestreaming has
continued to show its potential, it has also displayed some worrisome pitfalls.
Take, for instance, the broadcasting of copyrighted content. Creators,
broadcasters, and event planners take painstaking steps to protect their content
from being viewed by those that haven’t paid for it. These protections are
typically designed to deter piracy and illegal access to broadcasts. With the
prevalence of livestreaming apps, content owners now have an entirely new
vector through which unpaid customers can access their work, potentially
losing them significant revenue. Numerous stories have arisen of fans livestreaming a Game of Thrones episode (which
is only available via HBO’s paid services) as well as a pay-per-view boxing match that
was being sold for $90 per household.19,20 While both of these
controversial events occurred on Periscope’s now-defunct platform, this was, in no way, due
to any misconduct on Periscope’s part. Rather, it illustrates the nearly impossible task of policing millions of livestreams
occurring at any given time. As there is no technology yet that can reliably
recognize the range of copyrighted or controlled content a user could
potentially stream, it is generally left up to the viewing community to police
itself in the form of methods to report a streamer for illegal content that
violates that platform’s policies. However, when push comes to shove, most
viewers getting to watch a $90 boxing match for free are unlikely to rat out the
person providing the stream by reporting them.

The ways in which people can share and distribute copyrighted and illegal
content are numerous and growing. Just like everything from BitTorrent back
to the first UseNet groups, livestreaming is a tool. Like any
tool, it can be used for good or ill. New methods of combating copyright
infringement and the streaming of illegal content will almost certainly be
legion in the coming years. But, the fact will remain that livestreaming is here
to stay. To bring this report full circle, livestreaming makes it possible for
any individual with a smartphone and a data connection to become their own
broadcaster, to get their own message out to the world, to expose wrongs, to
demonstrate their power and their voice as a resident of planet Earth to
millions upon millions of viewers. How this very new and very powerful tool will
be used remains to be seen, but it will almost certainly be interesting to
watch.

References

  • 1 "RealNetworks, Inc. History." Funding
    Universe    .
    Retrieved August 2016.
  • 2 Mason, Angela Kay. "The First Live Stream Is 20 Years Old."

    Monitor.us
    . February 2013.
  • 3 Vincent, Esther. "The History of Livestreaming."
    Dacast
    .
    July 2016. 
  • 4 Farrell, Greg. "Victoria’s Secret Weapon: Ad Exec Woman Behind
    Spots Has Been to Bowl Before." USA
    Today    . February 1999.
  • 5 Ibid. 
  • 6 Ibid.
  • 7 Kolchanov, Ilya. "Justin.TV Teams Up with On2 and
    Opens Network." TechCrunch.
    October 2007. 
  • 8 Ibid. 
  • 9 Ibid.
  • 10 "Hulu Launches New Live TV Streaming Service, Adds Channels from
    Scripps Networks Interactive" Hulu. May 2017. 
  • 11
    "Ustream Company Profile" Crunchbase. Retrieved August 2016.
  • 12 Conners, Cody. "Who Is Twitch’s Deep-Pocketed Mystery Donor?"
    The
    Daily Dot    . July 2014.
  • 13 Gonzalez, Oscar. "Fortnite Pro Ninja Leaves Twitch for Mixer."
    CNet
    .
    August 2019.
  • 14 "Ninja – Mixer."
    Mixer    . Retrieved August 2019.
  • 15 "Livestream Homepage."
    Livestream
    .
    Retrieved August 2016.
  • 16 Shontell, Alyson. "What It’s Like to Sell Your Startup for ~$120
    Million Before It’s Even Launched." Business Insider. March 2015.
  • 17 Ibid.
  • 18 Terdiman, Daniel. "Twitter Cripples Meerkat by Cutting Off Access to
    Its Social Graph." VentureBeat.
    March 2015.
  • 19 "’Game of Thrones’ Hit by Piracy from Periscope."
    CBS
    News
    . April 2015.
  • 20 Busbee, Jay. "Periscope Proves a New Method for Pirating
    Mayweather-Pacquiao." Yahoo Sports. May 2015.

[return to
top of this report]

About the Author

[return to top of this report]

Michael Gariffo is an editor for Faulkner Information Services. He
tracks and writes about enterprise software, the Web, and the IT services
sector, as well as telecommunications and data networking.

[return to top of this report]