UFC vs. Pirates
Jake Rossen Oct 12, 2010
If you have ever tried to put out a fire with a squirt gun, you can
imagine the task facing Zuffa’s legal counsel in their
increasingly violent attack on illegal Web streams that
distribute UFC content. Their latest target is Daniel Wallace, a
West Sussex man accused of streaming UFC
119 -- among other events -- free of charge to site
visitors.
What may have struck Zuffa as particularly egregious is that Wallace was selling ad space on his site. So much for rallying against capitalism.
There are literally thousands of feeds that distribute virtually
every kind of media imaginable, from books to comics to
pay-per-view to studio films. It is impossible to squelch them all;
Zuffa, the music industry, and anyone else with a vested interest
in keeping consumers paying for content have no choice but to hope
for the deterrence effect: pummel one guy in the mob so they all
doubt their own chances of getting away. The question is whether
this works, and whether all those billed hours are actually going
to amount to anything.
It’s interesting to note that as piracy has soared in the past ten years, pay-per-view revenue has actually gone up: the UFC had the best two years of any content provider in 2008 and 2009, including a company record with UFC 100; Floyd Mayweather and Oscar de La Hoya sold more households on seeing their 2007 fight than Mike Tyson could in his heyday. The bump is due in part to more households with pay-TV available, but that wouldn’t be expected to outrun streaming if it were as rampant as believed. Unlike the beleaguered music system, Zuffa’s business isn’t flailing: It’s thriving.
That’s not a good rationale for allowing content to float freely through bandwidth: stealing is stealing, and if you spend millions to create content, you’re going to get a sour stomach at the idea someone is freely passing it around. The incredible ease of file sharing has made theft a virtually thoughtless act: if you had to burn 1,000 copies of “The Expendables” and ship them out to pals, you A). probably wouldn’t bother, and B). would have the time to consider your actions.
But pirate streams are nominally accessed by single-parties who don’t subscribe to the social atmosphere of a fight: they’re not inviting friends over to gather around a 15” laptop screen. If you could audit 1,000 viewers of Wallace’s feed, the majority would probably never have paid for the event to begin with. That’s hardly a license to steal, but it does call into question how much damage Wallace and his peers are actually doing to the bottom line.
Zuffa could win ten high-profile, big-money judgments against pirates and it probably wouldn’t do a thing to curb sharing. The money might be better spent offering a readily-available Web product that would make users think twice about going after an unreliable stream. Why not $10 or $15 for a low-resolution Internet feed and access to a video vault of past fights? For consumers who don’t care about an HD picture, it’s a small price to pay for getting a consistent image.
Zuffa can’t do much to stop streams. They can, however, offer alternatives that make them obsolete.
What may have struck Zuffa as particularly egregious is that Wallace was selling ad space on his site. So much for rallying against capitalism.
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It’s interesting to note that as piracy has soared in the past ten years, pay-per-view revenue has actually gone up: the UFC had the best two years of any content provider in 2008 and 2009, including a company record with UFC 100; Floyd Mayweather and Oscar de La Hoya sold more households on seeing their 2007 fight than Mike Tyson could in his heyday. The bump is due in part to more households with pay-TV available, but that wouldn’t be expected to outrun streaming if it were as rampant as believed. Unlike the beleaguered music system, Zuffa’s business isn’t flailing: It’s thriving.
That’s not a good rationale for allowing content to float freely through bandwidth: stealing is stealing, and if you spend millions to create content, you’re going to get a sour stomach at the idea someone is freely passing it around. The incredible ease of file sharing has made theft a virtually thoughtless act: if you had to burn 1,000 copies of “The Expendables” and ship them out to pals, you A). probably wouldn’t bother, and B). would have the time to consider your actions.
But pirate streams are nominally accessed by single-parties who don’t subscribe to the social atmosphere of a fight: they’re not inviting friends over to gather around a 15” laptop screen. If you could audit 1,000 viewers of Wallace’s feed, the majority would probably never have paid for the event to begin with. That’s hardly a license to steal, but it does call into question how much damage Wallace and his peers are actually doing to the bottom line.
Zuffa could win ten high-profile, big-money judgments against pirates and it probably wouldn’t do a thing to curb sharing. The money might be better spent offering a readily-available Web product that would make users think twice about going after an unreliable stream. Why not $10 or $15 for a low-resolution Internet feed and access to a video vault of past fights? For consumers who don’t care about an HD picture, it’s a small price to pay for getting a consistent image.
Zuffa can’t do much to stop streams. They can, however, offer alternatives that make them obsolete.
