UFC closes pirate site, Pakistani owner seeks cover in Sweden
When it comes to anti-piracy action, the last couple of years have been busy ones for the UFC. Through legal…
When it comes to anti-piracy action, the last couple of years have been busy ones for the UFC. Through legal pressure the organization took down several sites offering unauthorized streams in the first half of 2010 and in July announced that it had reached settlements with 500 infringers.
UFC parent company Zuffa then subpoenaed two hugely popular streaming video sites, Justin.tv and Ustream.tv, to force them to hand over the identities of users who uploaded two UFC events earlier this year.
Continuing with its never-ending battle against piracy, this week another site felt the presence of UFC’s legal team, but saw it employing a slightly different strategy than it has used in the past.
On August 7th, UFC lawyers contacted Domains By Proxy, the shielding service used by the 25,000 member Wrestle Zone, demanding that they hand over the site owner’s details so that they could sue him.
But to their disappointment me being a Pakistani made them cry, Wrestle Zone admin EvilGenius told TorrentFreak. I was given 5 days to comply but nothing happened.
But the world’s biggest MMA outfit weren’t through. This week, UFC lawyers contacted NetDirekt, the German ISP of Wrestle Zone.
We request your assistance in protecting Zuffa, Inc and Ultimate Fighting Championship’s intellectual property rights by removing the protected content from your website and to cease and desist from ever streaming Zuffa’s pay-per-view events again.
EvilGenius responded by explaining that his site is only an indexing site, but NetDirekt weren’t sympathetic. They told him that linking is illegal in Germany and promptly null-routed the site.
This latest action comes after it was revealed last month that the UFC were pursuing a British man who ran the sites Livevss.tv and Livevss.net which carried a stream of September’s UFC 119 event. UFC also sought an injunction to stop him streaming UFC 120 last month.
UFC claimed that by having advertising on the site, owner Daniel Wallace was making money from the illicit streams and on this basis demanded $150,000 per infringement, the same amount being claimed from Wrestle Zone.