UFC settles with 500 businesses and individuals as part of aggressive anti-piracy effort

Dana, bigger companies than you have tried. What most have come to realize is that there will always be more….exponentially more people who will work to get your product for free then there ever will be people who combat it. Not only that but most companies (video/PC game makers I’m looking at you) have found that even though there will always be a level of piracy that when they release A QUALITY FUCKING PRODUCT, it sells and sells well. You are better off putting the money it is costing you combating this shit in to higher quality events, bigger fighter payroll, etc then by trying to fight a battle that you are destined to lose.

Let’s put it like this. If you take every UFC employee on the payroll right now, and ever, and combine that number, you have a fucking small fraction of the people I see downloading the latest UFC PPV torrents at any one time.

I’m sick of hearing that companies pulling resources to combat piracy. PC gamers have gotten bent and screwed so bad by copy protection that in some instances you have to download an illegal crack to run a retail game because the copy protection won’t let you play it if you happen to have two DVD-rom drives because it assumes you are copying the game.

I spend hard earned money to support hobbies I enjoy but god damn it it’s getting to the point where I want to say forget that because I don’t get any value out of my purchases anymore. And when I do make the purchases I have to find out ways to actually make them work.

Dana, here’s how you encourage piracy – Rampage vs. Rashad main even, Rashad vs. Thiago Silva main events, basically every card in the UK, not putting on the matches people want to see and loading the undercard with crap.

Here’s how you encourage people to buy – top tier fighters fighting top tier fighters for title shots regardless of the fact that the loser may no longer be as marketable, putting on multiple top tier matches on every PPV – no god damn Kimbo Slice fights on the main card, and for fucks sake don’t have a PPV every month that I have to shell out $50 for. Less events of higher caliber are a sure fire way to build and audience. If you over saturate with sub par cards you are inviting piracy. Do you think everyone is going to pay $600/year on PPV’s when each PPV has one, maybe two fights that mean something? NO!!!!!

Whatever, I’m done with this crap. Dana, the UFC will be no different then the gaming industry, the movie industry, and the music industry. The more you fight piracy the more you encourage people to pirate because people will see the large, multi-billion dollar company with deep pockets penalizing the working stiff. It is a losing battle. Hell, it’s not even a battle, it’s like euthanizing a cat. The cat doesn’t stand a chance.

because it is sooo easy to find it and watch it online, dont break your arm patting yourself on the back UFC.

I’ve been watching/enjoying mma for a long time now, including borrowing vhs tapes to see old fights when I was in high school. I really love what the sport has become. But i’ll be honest even now from time to time i’ll stream a UFC PPV or a Strikeforce fight. When the UFC was putting on 12 big shows a year, with one or two being free, I could afford $45 for that. I figured it was worth it and my girlfriend and friends had a good time watching all of them. It was an event to look forward to once a month or so. Now they are diluting themselves with too many cards for that price. Believe me, I am not complaining about having too much mma out there. I love that it’s so accessible and constant. The problem is the price. I know they have a contract with DirectTV and other PPV providers, but they need to renegotiate it because paying $45 for a great card on paper is just fine (and yes when you buy it that’s what matters…you wouldn’t buy a $45 TFC card just because the fights ended up being great). But $45 for good fights with little to no relevance isn’t worth it. If they had a staggered price scale for their PPV line-ups, I think they would see a decrease in streaming. Franklin vs Liddell was a good card on paper, but was it really worth the same amount of money as UFC 100 or any card with title fights or relevant big names? The ratio of streaming viewers to paying viewers is likely much higher on lesser cards. I think minor tweaks would ease the streaming problem and increase PPV revenues for lesser cards. Like others have said, you aren’t going to stop streamers all together. It’s just not possible. If they would just lower prices on some lesser cards, the fans of the sport that are willing to pay a fair price would surely reward them. Sorry for the rant

You’d think that with all the good the Internet has done for this sport the Dana and the Fertittas would be more open minded towards it.

I get why the music and film industry dont like piracy. It’s not income lost to lost sales, it’s the loss of their distribution network. If everyone uses the internet to get their content rather than tv-networks these massive corporations lose their ability to tell people what movies and tv shows to watch and what music to listen to this week, and what news they are exposed to. That is what they fear the most.

The UFC however, delivers its content by PPV, so I fail to see what they lose by selling non-DRM ( copy protection ) video file downloads from their website. The files are already out there for free for anyone willing to do a google search, but at least this gives people the option to pay for them, especially in countries where the events arent commercially available. They dont even need to give the PPV people their taste.

The days when content providers had the ability to decide when where and how people get their content are almost over. Once people open their eyes to the possibilities the internet has, it will replace tv networks as the primary source of digital content. ( HINT: WDTV Live )

The internet is what has made this sport what it is. Embrace it and adjust your business model, or fight an uphill battle you will NEVER win.