Professor Mark Lemley comments on the legality of streaming live televised events over the internet for NBC News.

When Manny Pacquiao fights Floyd Mayweather on Saturday, millions are expected to pay big bucks to watch the bout on cable and a select few will drop thousands to see it live. But when even the cheap seats are exorbitantly expensive, many will turn to a third option: watching for free on the Internet and through new services like Periscope and Meerkat.

“This could be one of the biggest live-streamed events, at least from the piracy side,” Ernesto Van der Sar, founder of the website TorrentFreak, told NBC News. “I think it will be bigger than the Super Bowl and the World Cup.”

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Boxing fans who film their TV screens are taking a much bigger risk than those who stream from the fight, both Lemley and Edelman said. That is because the fight on HBO and Showtime is a copyrighted broadcast. While live-streaming from events is still a legal gray zone, there have been plenty of instances of people getting arrested for streaming TV feeds.

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“By the time you send a properly formatted complaint and it’s received and the feed is taken down, the fight is over,” Mark Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School, told NBC News.