Is Live Streaming of TV Channels legal???

Hi Friends,
I would like to know if "Live Streaming" is legal or illegal?? I have seen lot's of websites doing live streaming of sports and other channels including Pay-per-view channels/movies and some softwares like TVU and SopCast help you broadcast any channel you want.

Is this illlegal??

If yes, who is the culprit??
1. The software providers(SOPCAST,TVU etc) who are allowing people to broadcast TV channels.
2. The broadcasters who are using the softwares to broadcast the TV channels
3. The providers who embed these softwares(SOPCAST,TVU etc) into their websites and show channels to the end users.
4. All of the above

Would like to know your feedback on this.

Thanks

 

There is nothing inherently illegal about live streaming.

The issue is do you have any rights to do so. If not, then of course, it is illegal. Without knowing what deals are in place, it is impossible to tell you who specifically may be violating copyright.

 

I'm not a lawyer but it should be legal as long as you have

"the expressed written consent" of the copyright holder.

 

Most sites that do this are in violation of copyright laws. That is a general statement, and as pointed out above, it is possible that a specific site has made arrangements for this. There are other factors as well. The pirate bay is a site that actively promotes infringing copyright, but in the country that the business and servers are based what they do is not considered legally actionable. Canadian laws are also different than US laws in many respects (such as downloading is not illegal, nor is having infringing material in a publically accessible folder).

As far as who is responsible, that also depends somewhat on the countries involved. In the US, for example, sopcast might be seen to have liability as the company seems very aware that the main use for the software is infringing (see the Grokster case). However, since the copmany is out of China (which has a history of non-concern for copyright in other countries) it is unlikely much will happen to them. Other countries would not view the software provider as an offender. The website that embedded the code to do this would be, generally speaking.

 

Hmmm..ofcourse here i mean that the channels are broadcasted without any rights and that means it's illegal.

I have emebedded a sopcast player as well to show some matches and as per your discussions above it seems i might get into big trouble.

But if i take out that player,my website would hardly work

 

One more thing stuck into my mind. I think YOUTUBE does the exact same thing....so if they can do it why not any other site.

YOUTUBE explicitly has a big terms and conditions list that keeps them safe from any copyright media on their website.

Similarly, say if I have Terms and Conditions similar to YOUTUBE that every user has to agree when he registers to the site. And then, if the user posts the code of SOPCAST/TVU channel broadcast say inside his blog, he should be held responsible for any infringement as per the TOS...not the website owners.

Am i rite???Guys, please correct me if i am wrong here.....

 

Youtube is allowed under a law that says that they cannot regulate all user-submitted content.

If youtube gets a complaint, they are legally required by law to remove the video if it is in copyright violation.

 

there are law-suits against Youtube and one of them is 1 billion dollar.

I think: Yes, Youtube is very funny to me, but I have to accept, it's illegal. will always be.

 

Yeah that's the thing...if I get a complaint, I would be more then happy to remove that content...lol

I think YOUTUBE is doing it and earning millions so anyother website should also be able to do it..

 

Well you can,

But it better be user submitted content and you better be able to prove that some attempt was made at weeding out illegal content.

Ex.: Discouraging Illegal Submissions
Regular Moderation
Complaint Form Available

 

It's definitely illegal if you are streaming things like cricket, dramas which you have no right to stream.You can be fined heavily for doing this!

 

Not quite. YouTube gets little to no protection from their ToS. What they do get protection from is the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. One of the main differences between them and a site that embeds a feed is that YouTube doesn't actually add any content to the system (it's user generated). There are other provisions, such as registering an agent with the copyright office for them to contact when a complaint is made.

Your last post indicates that you would have a service where others would post things. On the surface, that would meet part of the criteria for protection. However, you would need to follow the other safe harbor provisions as well. In the case you described in your last post, if you met all of the safe harbor provisions then the person who writes the blog (or comment) would be responsible, not the site itself.

 

I was always wondering about this, because I was using TVU player and wondered if I was doing wrong.

 

Well, players like SOPCAST and TVU are allowed to exist becuase once again, they are user-submitted channels.

 

if u bought the copyrights its leagal

 

I don't think its legal..

 

mickscool,nobody can be sure in here if it is legal or not.But if it is not legal and if you go to court,you can be sure they will punish youvery hard(lots of money or jail )

when you look at that pages,you can see google adds which seems like it is legal.I dont think Google let webmasters to put their adds to illegal pages!But still,you cant be sure!
Like i wrote,it is your own risk!

 

The fact that there are Google ads on is no indicator of whether something is illegal or not. Google does not check every page/site that has their ads on it. It would be impossible. Hell, there are a ton of sites that have AdSense in violation of the ToS of AdSense. If they can't monitor the use of AdSense for their own small set of fairly strait-forward rules, I really doubt they monitor for the complexities of international law.

 

If you buy the copyrights, yes it is legal. But beware, the copyrights might cost upwards of thousands of dollars depending on the channel you're trying for.

 

bluegrass,yes thats right,lots of pages have google adds and they cant check all.But i wrote an email to google with about this (i wrote that page names as an example) and they didnt repply straight!So they know that pages and they didnt want to write if it is legal or not!They are just closing their eyes!