MMA Promotion Sued for Copyright Infringement

Posted on May 31, 2010 by David Nelmark

Tuff-N-Uff Productions Inc. and its President have been sued for copyright infringement.   According to the Las Vegas Sun, its rival newspaper Las Vegas Review-Journal has sued multiple parties for using the Review Journal's copyrighted content without permission.  In Tuff-N-Uff's case, the promotion allegedly posted a Review-Journal article about a Tuff-N-Uff fight on the Tuff-N-Uff website. I don't know the exact article at issue, but I was able to find at least one such article on the Tuff-N-Uff website. It appears to be an exact cut and paste of an article that appeared on the Review Journal's website.

The Sun quotes Tuff-N-Uff's vice president as saying "Tuff-N-Uff didn't intend to infringe on copyrights and had taken steps to ensure stories posted on its website properly credited the source."  Therein lies the problem.

Many people believe that reproducing someone else's article or other content is okay as long as you note the source.  That is simply not true. 

Giving credit to the original author just means you are not guilty of plagiarism.  It does not mean you have not committed copyright infringement. In fact, it might just make it easier to get caught.  

In the case of the Review Journal, the newspaper assigned its copyright in the article to a company called Righthaven, LLC.  That entity uses software to find people infringing a copyright and then sues.  So, citing the Review-Journal as a source just makes it easier for Righthaven to find you.  I have no knowledge of the contract between the Review-Journal and Righthaven, but I would not be surprised if the Review-Journal gets a cut of any damages award or settlement that Righthaven gets from the infringers.

The moral of the story is that if you don't have permission (and you're not engaging in "fair use" by, for example, quoting a bit of an article to offer critique on the article) then you can't just reproduce someone else's article, photograph, song, etc.  That's why you see MixedMartialArtsLawBlog posts linking to other articles, rather than just cutting and pasting them onto this site.

So, I've explained why a newspaper, can sue someone for reproducing an article and giving due credit--and thus publicity-- to the paper, but I can't explain why it would want to in this instance.  Perhaps if it was the Review-Journal directly making the decisions on who to sue (rather than Righthaven) this would have been taken care of with a polite phone call and a license to re-post the article in exchange for a promise by Tuff-N-Uff to place an ad for its next fight in the paper.

As far as this blog goes, as long as you give me credit as the original author of an article, re-post to your heart's content.  I just want people to hear what I have to say, whether on this site or somewhere else where a reader chooses to re-post my content.  So, Underground, you're safe.  I have plenty of people to sue in my day job.

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Square Ring Sues UStream for Pay-Per-View Piracy

Posted on August 23, 2009 by David Nelmark

Square Ring, Inc., the promotional company owned by Roy Jones, Jr., was the entity behind "March Badness" a hybrid boxing/MMA card March 22, 2009, that featured Bobby Lashley in the main event.    Square Ring has now sued UStream for copyright infringement, alleging that the company knowingly allowed users to upload and illegally watch streaming footage of the pay-per-view event.

Copyright laws prohibit copying or re-broadcasting someone else's program.  Thus, if UStream was directly putting copyrighted MMA events online, it would certainly be liable.  The grey area here is that UStream isn't posting any content directly.  Like YouTube or a typical internet bulletin board, users post the content that appears on UStream.  Typically, when a company just provides the space for others to speak, it is protected by "safe harbor" provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  The protection is not absolute, however, as companies like Napster found out.

Square Ring's legal theory is, in a nutshell, that UStream knew copyright infringement was taking place and allowed it to happen.  In fact, before March Badness, Square Ring warned companies like UStream that it would crack down on internet piracy. 

Pirating pay-view events is as old as the events themselves, but the internet presents a whole new set of challenges. It's especially difficult for MMA promoters who serve a young, tech-savvy fan base.  Dana White has acknowledged that the UFC had an "incredible underground internet fan base," reported to have kept the sport of MMA alive in the lean years when its pay-per-view events were banned by cable distributors. 

The UFC has attemped to capitalize on the marketplace of the internet, offering live broadcasts of UFC events on Yahoo! for $44.95.  The flipside is that it also has to deal with mirror sites, like this one registered to a user in Istanbul, which offer the same broadcasts for substantially lower fees.

Like Viacom's ongoing lawsuit against YouTube, this case could have a dramatic impact not only on how MMA fans watch future broadcasts, but how user-generated content is distributed on the web in general. 

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