The Joseph Parker fight on Saturday highlighted the problem of charging big bucks for an easily accessible livestream.

ANALYSIS: When it comes to online piracy, the loudest people generally fall into two camps.

Either they're rabid advocates of everything being free to everyone everywhere at all times, writing comments about how "piracy isn't theft because I'm just making a copy," or they're corporates like Sky or Duco, who consistently sound completely out of touch.

The furore over a Facebook live stream of Joseph Parker's Saturday night boxing match is a prime example of this. The $50 fight was only available for those of us with a Sky subscription and access to a TV.

Warwick Smith/ Fairfax NZ Duco co-founder Dean Lonergan: "There's two million dollars plus worth of costs in setting up a fight like this."

Unsurprisingly, tens of thousands of Kiwis were interested in a handful of live streams of the fight available free on Facebook. Also unsurprisingly, the guys who had put hard work and a lot of money into setting up the fight weren't exactly happy about that.

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"There's two million dollars-plus worth of costs in setting up a fight like this," fight promoter Dean Lonergan told me this morning. "The silly people who put this on Facebook are going to regret it."

WAYNNE WILLIAMS Economist Eric Crampton: "Where you can set the price is limited by how enforceable your legal option is."

On the other side are the people who point out that most of the streaming viewers were never going to pay for the fight anyway. They decry Sky as a lazy incumbent, sitting on their monopoly and refusing to offer a reasonably priced way to watch the fight without walking to a bar for a $12 beer.

MAKE IT A HASSLE

But most of us aren't so loud. A lot of us will happily watch a downloaded episode of Game of Thrones but make no attempt to justify it to ourselves. We'll pay for Netflix or Spotify not because it is the "morally right thing to do", but because it is a lot less hassle than either Pirate Bay or JB HiFi.

Here, where most of the market actually lies, is the solution to online piracy. You've got to make it a hassle.

Ease of use is the reason Facebook live-streaming is a problem in the first place. A few years ago live-streaming your TV through your phone was possible, but it required a bit of work. Now Facebook are pushing their live video product hard, and the most popular smartphone app in the world can stream anything with a couple of taps and to the largest audience of people ever assembled. It's hardly surprising some of that live-streamed content is expensive sports.

As the New Zealand Initiative economist Eric Crampton explained to me today, companies must take into account black market consumption when setting their prices.

"Where there are opportunities for people to dip into illegal markets then that limits the price you can set on the legal version. Where you can set the price is limited by how enforceable your legal option is," he said.

In other words, if "pirating" something is as easy as opening Facebook on your phone then that $50 plus subscription fee becomes a tougher sell. It's also hard to argue that someone is knowingly breaking the law when Facebook videos begin to play automatically.

"You've got more opportunity to try and segment your market than you used to. You could have a $50 price [for a fight] with a lot of nice add-ons, then a delayed broadcast for a lot less money," Crampton said.

"Sky aren't idiots, they are going to be thinking about this kind of stuff."

Indeed - they aren't. I talked to both Sky and Duco this morning and they indicated they were exploring options to allow non-subscribers to stream pay per view content for one flat fee.

LEAN ON TECH

You'd be naive to think that simply providing an easy way to pay for content will solve piracy.

Customers who buy things piece by piece provide far less revenue than those who buy a bundle. And no matter how cheap you go, there are always going to be people who want something for absolutely nothing.

But you can make it a hassle for them too. Just ask YouTube, who have effectively killed illicit music streaming on their service with their sophisticated Content ID system, which automatically stops you uploading copyrighted songs.

Facebook, who have no interest in being sued by hundreds of companies all over the world, have a clear interest in stopping their live streaming service being used illegally. It is well within their technical grasp to make sure copyrighted material can't be broadcast so easily on their app.

Technical measures take you far beyond legal whack-a-mole and into actually stopping this stuff.

Plus, coders are cheaper than lawyers.