Mr. Mayweather, You’re No Artist And There’s No Copyright In A Silly Fight

I might be the only person on earth who became interested in the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight yesterday, long after it finished. Don't be confused though, as I couldn't care less about boxing. My interested was piqued by the piracy articles that spun out of the fight coverage in the media yesterday. The New Yorker declared, "Pirates Crash the Mayweather-Pacquiao Fight." CNN said "Mayweather-Pacquiao Fight Plagued by Piracy on Periscope, Meerkat." NBC asked "Mayweather and Pacquiao: The Perfect Storm for Piracy?" Even the BBC jumped in with "Boxing Broadcasters Battle Periscope's Pirates."

The New Yorker's article featured the photo below, seemingly as evidence of its sensational claim:

If you are familiar with Meerkat and Periscope, skip to the next paragraph. If not, these services allow users to broadcast nearly-live video from mobile phones. Rather than simply recording your kid's little league game, these apps allow you to live broadcast it so grandma and grandpa can see the play-by-play live.

Has the world gone mad? Does everyone really think there is something wrong with taking video of a boxing match and broadcasting it to your friends? Reading the articles made me want to pull my hair out.

Mayweather-Pacquiao: boring, yes. Illegal-piracy: not so clear. The context for piracy (as implied by the Napster reference) is copyright infringement. When someone broadcasts the original sound recording of a person's song, you have slam dunk copyright infringement/piracy. This is because sound recordings are protected by the U.S. Copyright Act and international copyright treaties as works of authorship.

So why do I say "not so clear"?

Rebroadcasting the televised boxing match is piracy Broadcasting the boxing match from your phone in the arena is not piracy. No matter how much money society wastes on boxing, the underlying match itself is not a work of authorship and is not entitled to copyright protection. If you don't believe me, I have provided references at the bottom of this post.

The odd thing is that the only reason HBO and Showtime have any copyright rights at all in their own broadcast of the fight is because of the thin layer of artistry they create through unique camera angles and orchestrated shots of the fight. But the guy sitting in the stands on fight day...