A few days ago we learned that the UFC had subpoenaed Ustream.tv and Justin.tv for the information of people who had ilegally streamed pay-per-view events. Having spoken to these people in the past, I knew they weren’t sitting around in their offices, rubbing their hands together as intellectual property was being violated all over the place. No, these are legitimate businesses looking to cooperate with companies like UFC whenever necessary.
Ustream has released a statement saying exactly what you’d expect it to say:
Ustream was subpoenaed by UFC via Zuffa earlier this year to provide identifiable information on certain broadcasters, which Ustream fully complied with in a timely manner. Ustream continues to work cohesively with our premium content partners to prevent piracy, including UFC to legally stream officially-sanctioned UFC events. As part of our continued efforts to ensure strong content protection for our partners, we also recently updated our copyright protection tools to enable copyright holders to easily and quickly monitor, and take down infringing content on Ustream.
One thing is for sure: you do not want to mess with Zuffa’s legal department. Those guys don’t mess around, and nor should they.
The big test for the stream police will be this Saturday night, as Anderson Silva looks to defend his Middleweight Championship against former WCW tryout guy Chael Sonnen at UFC 117. I sincerely hope Silva wins decisively. He’s a great heel, managed by an even greater heel manager in Ed Soares.
UPDATE Check the comments for Livestream’s point of view. But again, the time to check is on Saturday night. I”ll be looking around for streams and will report back. Fun~!