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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
The UFC's continued efforts to thwart online piracy of their events has resulted in a lawsuit against another individual, as the Las Vegas Sun reports they have filed suit against Daniel Wallace of Selsey, West Sussex, England.
Per the report, the suit charges that Wallace's website livevss.tv, also associated with livevss.net, carried unauthorized video of last month's UFC 119 event, which aired on pay-per-view. They are also seeking a court order to block Wallace from streaming Saturday's UFC 120 event, which takes place in London, England and will air via tape delay on Spike TV in the U.S.
According to the lawsuit, "Given that events are streamed for free on defendant’s website, defendant derives revenue from selling advertising space on the website such that the viewer is continuously bombarded with 'pop up' ads during any given broadcast."
Further, the lawsuit states, "Based upon defendant’s history of offering 'live streaming' of plaintiff’s past events, as well as those of other MMA (mixed martial arts) providers, plaintiff believes that defendant will similarly offer an unauthorized 'live streaming' video of UFC 120 on Oct. 16, the date of the event (in London)."
"Plaintiff believes that defendant will 'live stream' UFC 120 to Internet viewers for free."
The lawsuit is seeking "damages of $150,000 per infringement, attorneys fees and legal costs and forfeiture of any revenue derived from the allegedly unauthorized broadcasts."
Penick's Analysis: While it seems a nearly impossible task to halt online piracy of pay-per-view events, the UFC is going to continue going after people that are hosting or posting the streams. That may eventually turn to attempting to find out who is watching the streams to go after them as well, but for now they're going after those who are facilitating the piracy. This is just the latest
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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