<story><title>Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/12/18662968/la-liga-app-illegal-soccer-streaming-fine</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kelnos</author><text>This has the same solution as any other story around copyright infringement.&lt;p&gt;If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won&amp;#x27;t resort to illegal means.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying these bars are correct to resort to illegal streaming, but a wise businessperson would see this as a signal that their product offering doesn&amp;#x27;t actually match demand, and work to fill that demand.  You&amp;#x27;re not going to make 100% of people happy in 100% of cases, but you can get to a point where the level of illegal streaming just isn&amp;#x27;t worth cracking down on.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s such a sad waste that all this money has been spent to identify and track down illegal activity when it could have been spent making the overall legal experience good enough that most people wouldn&amp;#x27;t need to resort to illegality.  It adds insult to injury to note that companies like La Liga are already making money hand-over-fist; it&amp;#x27;s not like they have some sort of crisis where the lost revenue due to illegal streaming is posing an existential threat to their business.  Instead of cracking down and making enemies, they could instead work to make the experience better and turn potential enemies into satisfied customers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stornetn</author><text>&amp;gt; a wise businessperson would see this as a signal that their product offering doesn&amp;#x27;t actually match demand, and work to fill that demand&lt;p&gt;This is not necessarily true. It depends entirely on the shape of demand. By way of simplified example, imagine that there are two types of consumers equally distributed: those willing to pay $1000 and those willing to pay $100. Unless you can distinguish at time of payment between these users and charge them different prices (without possibility of resale), you will always be better off forgoing half of the market and charging only the higher price.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;possible&lt;/i&gt; that the business has estimated things incorrectly and is acting suboptimally, but I think it&amp;#x27;s as least as likely that they are maximizing profits the way we&amp;#x27;d expect a rational business operator to do.</text></comment>
<story><title>Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/12/18662968/la-liga-app-illegal-soccer-streaming-fine</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kelnos</author><text>This has the same solution as any other story around copyright infringement.&lt;p&gt;If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won&amp;#x27;t resort to illegal means.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying these bars are correct to resort to illegal streaming, but a wise businessperson would see this as a signal that their product offering doesn&amp;#x27;t actually match demand, and work to fill that demand.  You&amp;#x27;re not going to make 100% of people happy in 100% of cases, but you can get to a point where the level of illegal streaming just isn&amp;#x27;t worth cracking down on.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s such a sad waste that all this money has been spent to identify and track down illegal activity when it could have been spent making the overall legal experience good enough that most people wouldn&amp;#x27;t need to resort to illegality.  It adds insult to injury to note that companies like La Liga are already making money hand-over-fist; it&amp;#x27;s not like they have some sort of crisis where the lost revenue due to illegal streaming is posing an existential threat to their business.  Instead of cracking down and making enemies, they could instead work to make the experience better and turn potential enemies into satisfied customers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>batiudrami</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know about La Liga specifically but in general bars pay a much higher fee than end users to stream sports because it&amp;#x27;s such a big value-add for them.  It&amp;#x27;s likely that these bars are streaming publicly on a user license, rather than using an illegal stream.  The value proposition isn&amp;#x27;t necessarily that far out - just people want to pay less for things and will do if they can.</text></comment>