Steve Green of the Las Vegas Sun is reporting that the UFC has filed a lawsuit against the owner of a website that alleged sells pirated broadcasts of UFC PPV events online for $6.99.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship is suing a Web site operator it says is selling pirated broadcasts of current and past UFC fights.
Las Vegas-based Zuffa LLC, owner of the UFC, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas on Thursday against Moazzam Gandu. Zuffa says Gandu lives in Stafford, Va., and runs the Web site www.rage-streams.net.
Zuffa complained that rage-streams is offering unauthorized “live streaming” video of UFC 110 for $6.99, even though the lowest authorized price for the broadcast of the event is $44.95.
UFC 110 is a series of bouts set for Sydney, Australia, on Saturday (Sunday in Australia).
Rage-streams also offers for sale unauthorized video of at least 40 past UFC events, Zuffa charges. Rage-Streams is profiting from these current and past broadcasts by selling advertising with them, attorneys for Zuffa said.
The lawsuit asserts allegations including copyright and trademark infringement, unfair competition and deceptive trade practices. It seeks a temporary restraining order barring rage-streams from providing unauthorized UFC broadcasts.
“Defendant’s Web site is designed to trade off of plaintiff’s goodwill,” Zuffa’s lawsuit says.
“Defendant is using a mark that is the same and/or confusingly similar to the UFC marks in connection with the sale, offering for sale, or advertising of services in a manner that is likely to cause confusion or mistake, or to deceive consumers as to an affiliation, connection or association with plaintiff, or as to the origin, sponsorship, or approval of defendant’s services or commercial activities by plaintiff,” charged the suit, filed by attorneys Michael Feder and John Krieger with the Las Vegas office of the law firm Lewis and Roca LLP.
Payout Perspective:
It’s truly been MMA legal week here at MMAPayout.com, but this certainly isn’t the first time we’ve heard about the UFC’s battles with piracy: Lorenzo and Dana have been on the war path for the last couple months. Now, the lawsuits are finally starting to follow.
Last month the UFC sued the owner of a Boston lounge over the alleged illegal distribution of a UFC event. The UFC has also been very active in recent weeks at eliminating free streaming video from well-known websites like Justin.TV and myP2P.eu.
I just checked and that site doesn’t even exist. Down already, who are they suing? A ghost?
How dumb was this guy and his customers. haha. He’s going to get charged for selling other people’s product. Do the people that bought and gave their credit card numbers to this site also face charges?
If this guy streamed it for free i think he would have a good chance to not get in trouble. But when you directly profit from another persons product without their permission you get yourself in much deeper. A site like Youtibe can claim they cant police everyone on the site at all times. So they can play dumb when copyrighted material gets uploaded. BUt when you charge for that material its hard to play dumb and point the finger at someone else. This guy is an idiot because there are TONS of Free streams out there. So why risk it for the few other idiots who dont know they can get it for free and pay the 6.99? He was probably lucky to get a few hundred bucks. Hope it was worth it.
These types of internet scams have been going on for a long time. I doubt any of this guys information was real to begin with so I think the UFC are chasing ghosts and will soon find out that the lawless land of the internet can not be a place to park your legal issues. They would be best served suing their fighters where they know they can win.
Ah, I missed the fact that they got a name of the person. Curious to see how this all plays out.
Found the filing info online
http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuit.asp?id=54431
I know the guy he owned the domain but ya he did make a decent amount off of it but the guy who had the server is the one who needs 2 be sued he claimed he made over a grand per ppv that includes wwe and tna wrestling but they deserve what there getting they were a-holes 2 talk 2
@JJ – “Do the people that bought and gave their credit card numbers to this site also face charges?”
No. The Zuffa complaint states:
“offering for sale, or advertising of services in a manner that is likely to cause confusion or mistake, or to deceive consumers as to an affiliation, connection or association with plaintiff, or as to the origin, sponsorship, or approval of defendant’s services or commercial activities by plaintiff,”
It would be silly to say that and then go after the people who were confused or deceived.
I believe’s only illegal to sell copyrighted material – not buy it.
To be honest i used a stream tonight for the first time. Ussually my friends chip in and buy it as i have done for every UFC since 1996. Or go to a bar or casino. But tonight i had to work and my friends already paid for it. I wasnt about to pay another $45 to watch it online by myself. It cost $1000 to order it in a business. So that wasnt going to happen. Not something im proud of and i would rather pay. I take my MMA very serious and i dont enjoy choppy video. I had to use 3 different sites because mine kept going down. UFC events are great entertainment. Watching online almost ruins it completely.
That depends Brian,
I watched last nights event at a friends and I thought it was pretty good. UFC 109 was downright awful, so it all depends I guess. I prefer the old days when we had 10 events a year on PPV plus some fight nights here and there. The two PPV event model per month makes things a bit unclear as we can see with the declining PPV buys over the last several months.
10 PPVs and some UFNs are not the old days. I followed the sport for years on MMA forums like ADCC forum when there were only 1 PPV every 3 months. 2 weeks after an event the MMA forums died because there was nothing else to talk about we had to wait 2 more months for the next event. There were no UFN, TUFs, HDnet, etc. We had Eddie Goldman doing MMA radio on Eyada for a little while and that was it. Look at it from that perspective and you will appriciate the amount of MMA we get now. Thats why i get all the UFCs and want a quality product not choppy DLs and Streams. Of course im a hardcore fan who loves all MMA. I enjoy local shows just as much as Big event fights. So i might not speak for every.
Hi Brian,
I have been watching MMA since UFC 2 up until the dark periods. After that I got my fix via Dave Meltzer back in the day when he was doing the radio show on WO always talking about PRIDE. I’m an old fan too. I do remember the days of 1 PPV every 3 months when it all first started waiting to see if anyone could beat Gracie. Us older fans tend to have a better perspective on things and in my opinion the declining PPV numbers is not a result of how many people decide to watch online or not, but it’s a result of over saturation of a sub par product or event. Greed has it’s limits as we see by the whole banking disaster, UFC would be wise to learn this lesson.
Dana White himself has said the UFC doesnt run events expecting everyone to buy every event. The ones on a limited budget will pick and choose which events they can and cant buy. But Dana has also realized that the UFC has a huge fan base that want to buy every event, has a demo that is more wealthy than some other sports who can buy every event. The public sees a poor UFC PPV as a decline in popularity. Dana sees it as making profit on an PPV that otherwise wouldnt have happened. IF there was over saturation then you would see a decline in the biggest events. That is not the case. UFC 100 was still huge and UFC in Philly was much bigger than anyone expect. So there isnt really anyone getting so much MMA they are turned off. The only numbers that have dropped recently are the lessor level PPV cards. That just means people on a budget are being picky about what they buy and what they dont. That si the intention Dana White had to begin with.
Those extra events are extra revenue and those events are also needed to create talent. Its very hard for the UFC to get its stars 3 fights a year, 3 fights for contenders, and bring in up and comers to create the Santos, Cains, Jones, etc. They need to run more events. Until they get a weekly Fight night show on TV they are going to keep using PPVs.
Brian, I think the expectations for UFC 100 were pretty huge and the coverage was the most they have received before or after for any event. I said it then and I’ll say it now; it was the peak for this current rise in MMA. Every sport is going to go through the standard ups and downs that an economic “supply and demand” curve usually presents.
Since UFC 100 we have seen a steady decline in PPV numbers (UFC 101 being an anomaly), I have not looked at the year over year stats but I suspect the numbers are trending downward. The UFC can blame it on whatever they like for the declining buy rates – injured fighters, internet streaming, pick pocketing, bad luck – they can even use the guise of international expansion to provide more fodder for growth, however, if Montreal is an example the sellouts will take longer and longer each time they come back to a particular jurisdiction.
Let’s just see how the rest of 2010 pans out and see if they can even come close to selling 3 or more PPV’s at or close to the million mark and match 2009 total buys. Now with the introduction of WEC on PPV, the picture even gets cloudier. As I have said, greed has its limits and I think those limits have been met.
P.S. – where are those UFC 109 and 110 PPV numbers???