AVAST, Ye Scurvy Dogs! The UFC Continues to Crush Piracy

The ufc recently announced that it had reached confidential settlements with over 500 businesses and individuals regarding the unlicensed broadcasting of UFC events. While no terms of the various deals were specified, I don’t think anyone believes that the pirates got off lightly. But lost in this victory is the Hydra-like nature of internet piracy. I think the UFC may make strides in preventing actual businesses from turning a profit by not paying for a UFC event and yet still broadcasting it in their bar or restaurant, but when it comes to nerds on the internet with high speed connections and some savvy know-how, the UFC may as well be throwing stones in the ocean.

For the sake of the argument, let’s just all agree from the start that piracy, is bad, m’kay? I know internet piracy is the subject of a huge amount of debate, but that’s not the focus of today’s article. Simply put: no matter hard bad internet piracy may be, nobody is going to stop it anytime soon.

There’s simply too much technology in the hands of people that have both the will and the knowledge to abuse it. I hate to sound like a jaded old man at age 21, but I can still remember the day my father bought me my first computer, and how utterly amazed I was at the fantastic little machine that could do so much. Today’s generation are practically wired into the internet and computers from birth. And even if you find the technology too difficult to understand, there’s an infinite number of video and file sharing/hosting sites that provide in-depth details of how to get your bootlegged stream up and running.

Making an example of those that stream has proven ineffective at best. Going after streaming websites like justin.tv may seem like a good idea, as it gives the website owners a huge incentive to take down streams as quickly as possible, but for every one major streaming website like justin.tv, there always seems to be a growing number of “underground” websites with no major publicity attached to them. I’d even go as far as to say that a large majority of internet stream sites are the digital equivalent of Fight Club.

So what can the UFC do about illegal broadcasts, and more specifically, illegal internet streams? Me, I’ve always been a firm believer in the saying “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar”. Yes, the UFC should continue to punish those who would steal from them. But why not reward those who buy from them? How about incentives to buy Pay-Per-Views and buy them consistently? Let’s say you send in three proofs of purchase of a UFC PPV in order to get a discount on your fourth, or a discount on an upcoming DVD, or even a free action figure. How about every proof of purchase you send in gets you a spot in a random drawing for UFC prizes? It would make for some good PR, at the very least. At the most, it may even convince people to order instead of stream.

Now, I’m not going to sit here with a holier-than-thou attitude and act like I’ve never streamed a UFC Pay-Per-View. It’s a guilty pleasure, for sure, but to someone who is even halfway internet-literate, it’s almost laughably easy to find a working stream. If it wasn’t so easy, maybe I’d stop doing it. Coming from that point of view, it’s easy to see why the UFC would want to crack down on illegal broadcasts. But it’s a lofty goal with no real end in sight.

So what do you think, fans and friends? Is trying to crack down on internet piracy a hopeless endeavor? And what are your feelings about the whole internet piracy debate? This is one that won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, so let’s get some opinions out there.