In the World of Live-Streaming, Some Creators are In, Others are Out

The live-stream app Meerkat went live on the Android market today. It’s still in Beta form, so things may not be perfect just yet, however as TechGraphs overlord David Temple explained over a month ago, Meerkat — and Periscope — both offer a new way to broadcast video.

Meerkat’s rules page doesn’t clearly define what you can or can’t stream as it is more of an outline of features.

Once you jump into the legal area of their terms of use one can see the company strictly prohibits broadcasting copyrighted material — as do the content creators. HBO has already sent out takedown notices to people streaming the new Game of Thrones season via Meerkat, though perhaps the company is in the takedown notice mood. Other creative minds have gone the opposite way and are embracing Meerkat. Entertainers such as Jimmy Fallon, Snoop Dogg and Jim Gaffigan are sprinkled among Meerkat’s leader-board in order for them to be easily found. If you are so inclined to follow them on Meerkat, expect a push notification when they begin a new broadcast.

Within each cast there is a chat room for interaction between viewers and the broadcaster. One of the pillars of Meerkat is the ability to cast in the here and now, however the company has also added ability to schedule a future broadcast. The quality of the available casts seems to be dependent on the the strength of the caster’s internet connection. In my brief experiences those doing in an office or home setting have had a quality better than Vines — even with their new 720p broadcasts — however what I assumed to be 4G/LTE connections stuttered and froze from to time. Part of it could be the app is still in Beta or it could be that the heavy bandwidth required to stream is too taxing on user’s non-WiFi networks.

These are urky broadcasting rights waters we’ve waded into. From takedown notices, muted streams on Twitch.tv due to music rights to being wary of narcs taking you down in person for an illegally stream boxing match, the gap between producers and end-users appears to be widening.

(Header image via Meerkat)