MMA Junkie has more information on the UFC’s ongoing plans to sue individuals who streamed pay per views off the website Greenfeedz.com:
[T]he number of customer records is “voluminous,” according to Julie Cohen Lonstein, a lawyer with an anti-piracy firm representing the UFC. She said the information is currently being sifted to “extract certain data and make determinations internally.”
“We just got these files, so I am prioritizing them, but I don’t have the answer (of how long it will take to deliver the lawsuits),” she later added. “It will be in the very near future.”
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Epstein said he hasn’t set guidelines for who gets sued and who doesn’t.“Other than we need to have the requisite proof that they actually took it,” he said. “I think through this seizure, I think we’re going to be able to find lots of names, emails, telephone numbers and sometimes even addresses to identify those people that are watching illegally.”
It’s going to be interesting to see if the UFC actually has the information they need to connect the dots here. While they certainly have a big pile of usernames and emails, trying to tie those to real people could prove difficult. Then they’d have to establish who watched what, which means they’d need IP logs tied to specific pay per views. It’s a possibility that this information may be laid out in sue-friendly server logs, but there’s also dozens of potential ways that data could be rendered inconclusive because of how the technology works.
One thing is for sure though: the UFC is coming after streamers, and they have no moral qualms about it because these people aren’t real fans of the sport.
“If you’re a huge [Georges St-Pierre] fan, would you steal from him? I don’t think so. So we love our fans, we respect our fans, but people who steal from us, frankly, aren’t our fans.”
What about the fans that pay most of the time but pirate sometimes? AKA 90% of MMA fans out there? It’s going to be very interesting seeing who gets pinched for pirating and what the specifics of their cases will be. That’ll probably determine if the UFC manages to create a new revenue stream strong-arming people into settling expensive copyright suits or if this whole endeavor blows up in their face like it did with the music industry.