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Jan 10, 2010 - 4:42:44 PM

By Bjorn Hansen, MMATorch columnist

The pink elephant in the shape of file-sharing piracy is starting to get called out by the UFC brass.

Of course, Dana White is resorting to the only method of conflict resolution he's familiar with: intense head-on combat. Instead of trying to surf this extremely powerful and useful wave of web profitably, he's trying to build a great wall of legal intimidation.

File-sharing has been a thorn on the entertainment industry side for quite some time now, and only those who have rolled with the punches and reinvented themselves have succeeded. MMA is actually one industry that used file-sharing as life-support respirators while the UFC was in the dark ages. Every hardcore MMA fan knows his way around the internet.

Instead of using brute strength to punch his way out of a Lesnar-style G'NP, Dana should use his creativity and discover a business submission using the internet-savvy fan-base he has at his disposal. Rather than financially and legally attacking fans for wanting to watch MMA so badly they put the time and bandwidth to download it, he should provide the fans with what they want: digital availability of all the fights at affordable prices and with a user-friendly interface.

You hear people say "don't forget to factor DVR replays" when calculating viewership. If you gave fans, as Luke Thomas from Bloody Elbow suggested, an "Itunes for the UFC," then not only would you be successfully countering piracy, but it would give Zuffa all sorts of metrics that can be used for marketing, finance, advertising, and fighter contract-negotiations.

Joe Rogan, a man known for his, em, high IQ, shall we say, regularly mocks Zuffa's counter-piracy efforts by saying, "You can't stop the internet, baby!" Well, in this case, I'm suggesting, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Grab the bull by the horns and start providing user-friendly, low-cost online library of Zuffa fights (one low monthly rate offered to PPV purchasers makes sense to me).

Think about it. Every time a pirated UFC event is played, it's not like the advertisements are blurred out from the Octagon, or like Buffer/Goldberg's voice gets distorted when they pitch a company's message. The business' advertising in the Octagon still receive eyes on their products, yet the UFC doesn't get the credit.

So if I recorded UFC 107, to be partially aired free on Spike as part of their counter-programming efforts, and then later as much as I pleased, lent the tape to as many friends as possible, I've already circled the system without paying, with 1980s technology. Think about today's technology. The file-sharing toothpaste is out of the bottle, and it's not going back in, it's actually evolving.

All we want is to be able to play a fight, digitally, whenever we want to. I know many, who download the events, after paying for the PPV, just so that they have a digital copy for playbacks (after paying fifty bucks we should get a digital copy for at least a week, right?)

These are UFC fans, who only want the sport to grow and don't actually enjoy navigating through those legally murky waters, but do so because feel they've earned a digital copy after purchasing a PPV. File-sharing is deeply rooted in our history, and it's going to take an even better alternative for that to change.

Don't fight the fans Dana. We all love MMA, we just don't feel like waiting forever to purchase a scratchable, losable, tangible disc. Create an affordable, easy to use, online library fights. Help us, help you.

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Any questions, comments? Bjorn.hansen@fiu.edu.

[Dana White photo by Wade Keller (c) MMATorch]

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