UFC Files Lawsuits Against Commercial Pirates
As promised the UFC has started to set its lawyers on those it say are undermining their business. Although piracy of its events hasn’t stopped, and despite fighting talk from boss Dana White, their strategy is becoming more clear.
In December 2009, Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Lorenzo Fertitta testified at a hearing of the US House Judiciary Committee, claiming that the UFC is losing millions of dollars to online piracy.
Then in January this year, UFC President Dana White said the company was readying a legal assault on those who pirate their content online, even going as far as to suggest the UFC would subpoena sites in order to gain the IP addresses of people who illegally download and share UFC events.
However, the first two lawsuits filed by the UFC show they are going after much more sensible and measurably easier targets.
The first lawsuit was filed in the District Court in Boston early January, with the UFC going after a bar owner for showing their events without an appropriate license.
A second lawsuit has just been filed against Moazzam Gandu, the operator of Rage-Streams.net, a site which has been selling access to live UFC PPV events.
Until it was shut down last week, Rage-Streams.net had been offering UFC events for $6.99, massively undercutting online UFC prices of $44.95.
The lawsuit asks for up to $150,000 per copyright infringement plus legal costs, reclamation of the revenue earned from the Web site and a halt to its operation. The latter has already been fulfilled.
“We take down more streams now than we ever have,” Lawrence Epstein, the UFC’s general counsel, told MMAJunkie.
“At every event, it’s more and more and more. The good news is that the tools that we have in our ability to discover these online streams has gotten better, too.
“I’m hopeful that at some point in the near future, we’re going to see a decided downturn in this activity. But I can tell you that we haven’t seen a decided downturn (at this point); that’s for sure.”
Although the UFC are still threatening that going after end users is still a possibility, they are demonstrating with these first two lawsuits that they intend to pursue those who are benefiting commercially from UFC material, i.e easy targets.
Despite all the fighting talk from Dana White, it is extremely unlikely the UFC will go after individual fight fans. If they do, however, they will reap the same rewards as the RIAA – a huge amount of bad publicity and even more piracy.
Keep Seeding I guess lol ;)
$150,000 per infringement while the online price is $44.95 huh? Let’s hope they don’t stumble upon some lone wolf who will snipe down their asses, especially in case they bring this bull$hit to individual fans.
Making profit, not cool…
Your big scary muscles are of no use to you here…
[...] reasonable to expect that the UFC has managed to shut down some streams of its live events (it hit Rage-Streams.net earlier this year), the suggestion that it would go after end users seems unlikely. Due to their [...]
[...] reasonable to expect that the UFC has managed to shut down some streams of its live events (it hit Rage-Streams.net earlier this year), the suggestion that it would go after end users seems unlikely. Due to their [...]
[...] reasonable to expect that the UFC has managed to shut down some streams of its live events (it hit Rage-Streams.net earlier this year), the suggestion that it would go after end users seems unlikely. Due to their [...]
[...] reasonable to expect that the UFC has managed to shut down some streams of its live events (it hit Rage-Streams.net earlier this year), the suggestion that it would go after end users seems unlikely. Due to their [...]
If they try to go after end users, I’m boycotting the UFC. If they start putting their own fans in jail, nobody will watch the ufc anymore. They need to lower their prices as well, if they’re going to show 2 shows a month.
[...] reasonable to expect that the UFC has managed to shut down some streams of its live events (it hit Rage-Streams.net earlier this year), the suggestion that it would go after end users seems unlikely. Due to their [...]