Meerkat, Game of Thrones and a Brewing Copyright Nightmare; Natinonal Journal, 3/26/15

Kaveh Waddell, National Journal; Meerkat, Game of Thrones and a Brewing Copyright Nightmare:

"Meerkat, a weeks-old service that allows users to broadcast live video over the Internet via Twitter, is the app du jour. It hit the popularity jackpot at this month's South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. And political media have fallen in love with the prospect of live streaming every speech and candidate interaction for the next 18 months...

But as Meerkat tries to keep up with its exploding user base (Rubin says the app hit the 400,000-user mark Tuesday) it may be loping into a legal minefield. The same characteristics that make the app attractive to the hundreds of thousands of people who are downloading it—its ease of use and engaged users—make it perfect for another of the Internet's favorite pastimes: piracy.

Copyright infringement has been a problem since before the Internet existed, and every new generation of technology presents an easier, faster way to share movies and TV without paying."