Periscope

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eriscope is a phone application that allows your device to stream a live video feed for viewers. It is on both ios and Android app stores and was created by developed by Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein.(BBC) Twitter acquired Periscope in March of 2015 for an undisclosed amount that has been rumored to be around $75-$100 million. (Business Insider) Joe Bernstein is the central founder and he thought of the application idea while he was traveling. He wanted to share his experiences with people in real time and thats when Periscope was born. (BBC) Periscope was officially started in February of 2014 under their previous name, Bounty. (Product Live) Later in 2014 they received funding from several investors including Stanford - Startx, Scott Belsky and Google Ventures and several others. (Angel.co). Periscope was officially launched on March 26, 2015 and four months later it had 10 million users signed up. (Medium).

A user who is live streaming from their phones has the option to stream a private feed or open it up to anyone with public viewing. Users have the option to disables comments on the feed and users can also block other users whenever they wish. If you are watching a video stream you may see a heart appear at the bottom of the screen and that is because users can choose to give the video a "heart". The user who is streaming the video can receive up to 500 hearts per session and can see on their screen when users choose to give their stream a heart or a comment. To allow for this live stream video viewing to come to television Periscope developed an AppleTV app that is currently available for download.(IBT)

Legal Issues

Periscope has come under a lot of fire for copyright related issues. Individuals have been live streaming events, shows, concerts, movies, sporting events and that is where it has been accused of video piracy. The specific event that made light of this issue was an HBO boxing match between the undefeated Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs. the underdog Manny Pacquiao, It was pay per view on HBO for $90 and was on May 2, 2015. Instead of purchasing the pay per view access people turned to Periscope to watch attendees of the fight stream it live for free. (yahoo) Similar issues have arose several times, which has caused some discussion about the policies and legality of the app.

Ethical Implications

Periscope is a powerful application that causes some ethical dilemmas to surface. Users of Periscope can stream whatever they wish, but sometimes what they wish to stream is not always legal. In addition, people that are streaming other people from their phones don't always have the permission of that person. When attending sporting events staff can do their best to stop people from streaming from their phones, but at the end of the day it is too difficult to tell if someone is taking a video, picture or live streaming so it is really up to the users morals.