Well that didn't take very long.
After UFC President Dana White vowed to make life miserable for the chiselers who stream illegal feeds of live UFC programming, the Boston Herald reports that the Zuffa legal team may have bagged their first casualty in the war on pirates.
Argh!
Zuffa is suing "The Draft" and its owner, Derek Brady, for reportedly allowing a patron to connect a laptop illegally streaming UFC 104 to one of the establishment's television sets for all the customers to enjoy.
Bars and restaurants are typicaly required to purchase UFC events through an approved closed-circuit provider and can pay anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars for an event, depending on the circumstances.
They didn't pay on Oct. 24, but they may pay in court -- to the tune of $640,000 plus legals fees if found guilty.
The Vancouver Sun recently outlined the proactive approach from UFC head honcho Lorenzo Fertitta -- who recently testified for the US House Judiciary Committee during a referendum on internet piracy of sporting events. According to him, the Zuffa anti-piracy team uncovered 271 illegal streams of UFC 106 with over 140,000 viewers.
From Fertitta:
"The piracy of live sporting events is illegal, it kills jobs, and it threatens the expansion of US based companies. The UFC is potentially losing millions of dollars a year from piracy."
While I'm sure not many fans are losing sleep over the UFC's lost money, pirating pay-per-views is illegal. They may not be able to stop Internet piracy (many have tried and failed) but it's not unrealistic to think a few high profile cases involving the average Joe would at least help to deter future pirates.
Like the idiots who post their links to the illegal streams in forums that record IP addresses.
Consider yourself warned!
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