In recent years, software applications that provide access to the latest movies, TV shows, live TV and premium sports events have become increasingly popular.

Most commonly available for Android, PC, and iOS platforms, these tools often come pre-configured for piracy meaning that when they installed, the latest content is just a few clicks away. This approach means that such apps can be quickly ejected from Apple’s App Store and Google Play on the basis they are self-contained piracy tools. However, there is another way.

Evading App Store and Google Play Removal

Exposure on official app stores is a tried-and-tested method to grow public awareness of an app but if they are quickly removed for infringement, that all falls apart. To prevent this from happening, apps have been appearing on both platforms that are capable of supplying infringing content but have crucial components missing at the point of download. These need to be added in at a later point to provide functionality.

One example is the ‘ Watched ‘ streaming app which at the time of writing is in the Top 30 most popular entertainment apps on Apple’s App Store. No content is presented in the app but after installation, users are prompted to supply a ‘bundle’ via a URL of their choosing. No information is provided as to what this URL should be but a little searching online reveals that certain URLs make ‘Watched’ much more useful.

‘Watched’ Bundle Available at Oha.to

One of the more popular ‘bundle’ URLs is Oha.to and when this is entered into ‘Watched’ it transforms the app in much the same way as adding a third-party repository/addon to Kodi might. The website at this URL contains the necessary components to fill ‘Watched’ with movies, TV shows and live TV channels, which are all accessible via the provided interface.

(Before adding ‘Oha.to on the left, after on the right)

While the ‘Watched’ app remains accessible on app stores and via the software’s homepage, there are moves by global entertainment industry companies to target bundle URLs, including Oha.to .

ACE Goes to Court in the United States

The Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is a global anti-piracy coalition that brings together dozens of the most powerful entertainment industry companies in the world. These include the major Hollywood studios plus Netflix and Amazon, all of which aim to disrupt the illegal streaming market to protect their businesses.

Yesterday, ACE members filed an application for a DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare in a California court and the complaint itself shows how convoluted these matters can become.

Cloudflare provides services to Oha.to but at least as far as we can tell (and like Cloudflare), Oha.to doesn’t carry any infringing content either. Instead, Oha.to provides a service that enables end-users of ‘Watched’ to find content to which ACE members hold the rights.

“We have determined that individuals operating and controlling Oha.to have infringed ACE Members’ Copyrighted Works by using Cloudflare servers, networks, and other services, to connect end users of the ‘Watched’ mobile application to websites containing infringing content,” explains MPA Executive Vice President & Chief of Global Content Protection, Jan van Hoorn.

“The Oha.to service receives requests for infringing content from the Watched application, scrapes various links to identify cyberlockers containing the requested infringing content, and returns a response containing the scraped links to the application, which allows users of the Watched application to stream infringing content.”

ACE Wants To Unmask The Operator(s) Of Oha.to

The purpose of the ACE legal action is to find out who is behind the Oha.to repository/bundle. In common with similar requests, it requires Cloudflare to hand over the personal identities of the people behind the website, including their names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, payment information and account histories.

Whether Cloudflare will have any useful information to hand over is unclear but this is not the first time that ACE has gone after component services that allow ‘Watched’ to function.

As reported last November, ACE previously filed an application for a similar DMCA subpoena against the Tonic domain registry in an effort to discover the identities of the individuals behind Huhu.to.

This domain operates in a similar if not identical manner to Oha.to, in that people who use the ‘Watched’ app can enter the domain when prompted to supply a ‘bundle’ URL, prompting the ‘Watched’ app to do something useful. It’s unknown whether Tonic was able to provide any useful information in this case but the domain is fully functional at the time of writing.

The ACE application for DMCA subpoena can be found here ( 1 , 2 )

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

With millions of daily users, Reddit is without a doubt one of the most visited sites on the Internet.

The community-oriented platform has “subreddits” dedicated to pretty much every topic one can think of, including several that are linked to online piracy and related issues.

A few years ago copyright holders paid little attention to these discussions. In 2017, the site ‘only’ removed 4,352 pieces of content in response to copyright holders’ complaints. Three years later, however, this number has skyrocketed to hundreds of thousands.

This surge in takedowns is highlighted in the social media platform’s latest transparency report, published just a few hours ago.

The company reports that it received a total of 86,866 takedown notices, which resulted in 375,774 pieces of content being removed. This is a 300% increase compared to the previous year.

While the number of takedown notices and removed content has skyrocketed, Reddit also rejected many complaints. Last year, the site decided not to remove roughly 27 percent of the 517,054 items that were flagged.

The reasons to reject takedown requests vary. The vast majority were duplicate requests, but Reddit also refused takedowns because an entire subreddit was targeted, the reported link wasn’t a Reddit URL, or simply because no infringement was found.

In addition to links and other content taken down, Reddit also reports how many users and subreddits were removed from the platform on copyright grounds. This typically happens when they are classified as repeat copyright infringers.

“We have a policy that includes the removal of any infringing material from the Services and for the termination, in appropriate circumstances, of users of our Services who are repeat infringers,” Reddit writes.

In 2020, Reddit removed 303 users following repeat copyright infringement complaints, which is a small increase compared to last year. The number of subreddits that were taken down under this policy saw nearly a fourfold increase, from 137 in 2019 to 514 last year.

In the past we have seen several instances of subreddits being removed for repeat copyright infringements, including /r/mmastreams . Other subreddits, such as /r/piracy, were repeatedly warned and had to clean house in order to survive.

Finally, Reddit also received several 143 counternotices from users who argued that their content had been removed without a proper reason. It’s not clear how many of these were reinstated.

All in all, copyright takedowns only result in a small fraction of all content that’s removed from the platform. In total, Reddit admins and moderators removed more than 225 million pieces of content for a variety of reasons.

—

The full 2020 transparent report, which also covers law enforcement requests, is available here

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

After years of battling peer-to-peer sharing carried out on networks including BitTorrent, the major record labels now view stream-ripping as the major piracy threat.

Broadly speaking, stream-ripping is carried out in two ways – either by using tools such as youtube-dl (which allow users to rip content from YouTube directly to their machines) or via dedicated websites that simplify the process. Some of these sites have become extremely popular, attracting the attention of the labels on the way.

Application For Injunction – Stream-Ripping

For well over a decade, entertainment industry companies have appeared in the High Court of England and Wales demanding that the UK’s leading ISPs block access to torrent and streaming sites. If the major record labels have their way, the same will soon apply to stream-ripping sites too.

This week a group of record labels under the umbrella of the British Recorded Music Industry Ltd (BPI) and Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL) appeared at the High Court demanding that six major Internet service providers (including BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk, EE and Plusnet) should block access to eight stream-ripping sites.

“On 3 February 2021, the High Court in London held an online hearing for a new set of website blocking cases, brought by the BPI to help reduce music piracy in the UK,” BPI General Counsel, Kiaron Whitehead informs TorrentFreak.

“The judge, Mr Justice Miles, has reserved his judgment and so we await receiving his ruling, and his written reasons for it, in due course.”

As the Judge is yet to render his decision, the BPI doesn’t want to go into too much detail at this legally sensitive stage, including by naming the plaintiffs and the sites being targeted. Nevertheless, we have been able to independently confirm some of the action’s key details.

According to the labels – which include Warner, Sony, and Capitol Records – 2conv.com, flvto.biz, 2Convert.net, H2Converter.com, H2Download.org, Flv2mp3.by, Flvtool.com and Ytbapi.com are sites that help users to rip music from sites like YouTube, in breach of the labels’ copyrights.

2conv and flvto.biz are already being sued by major labels in the United States and H2Converter has appeared on the EU’s ‘Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’.

Notably, several of the targeted ripping sites are already blocked by ISPs in Australia following successful legal action by Sony, Universal, and Warner, with assistance from Music Rights Australia and the Australasian Performing Right Association.

Stream-Rippers ‘Authorize’ Users’ Piracy

TorrentFreak understands that this week’s application was made under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 . This allows the High Court to grant an injunction against a service provider, where that service provider has actual knowledge of another person using their service to infringe copyright.

The labels told the Court that since content uploaded to YouTube is generally licensed to be streamed via the site, people who download the labels’ tracks to their machines are making unlicensed (pirated) copies.

By extension, the labels argued that since the stream-ripping platforms authorize and facilitate the creation of those pirate copies contrary to the Copyright Act, they too can be held liable for users’ infringement.

While these arguments will be assessed on their merits in respect of the labels’ copyrights, the sites in question appear to be general tools that can be used to download content to which none of the labels hold the copyrights. Whether this aspect will be investigated by the Judge remains to be seen. It certainly didn’t prevent the sites from being blocked in Australia.

What we do know is that opposition won’t arrive in the form of objections by the ISPs. The service providers say they won’t oppose the application but do want to provide input should Justice Miles grant the application, presumably so they can protect their interests at the blocking stage.

Second Application For Injunction – Cyberlocker

In a second application for injunction reported by Law360 , the labels want the same ISPs to block access to cyberlocker site Nitroflare.com.

Record company lawyer Edmund Cullen of Maitland Chambers told the Court that Nitroflare could potentially claim safe harbor under the UK’s electronic commerce regulations but in this case, protection from liability isn’t available.

“This is not a provision designed or available to a service like Nitroflare which is essentially structured for infringement and it can’t be a protection for pirates,” Cullen said, alleging that Nitroflare encourages its users to store and share copyrighted content.

At this stage it is not known when Justice Miles will render his decision.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Back in 2014, the MPAA made its usual ‘notorious markets’ submission to the USTR and among regular targets such as The Pirate Bay and Popcorn Time, the Hollywood group highlighted the activities of China-based YYeTs.com.

At the time, the site – which is also known as Renren Yingshi – was described as the most popular dedicated download site for copyrighted content in China, providing links in various formats, including for the popular Xunlei and BitTorrent clients. It rose to fame after being founded in 2004 by a group of Chinese students living in Canada.

Notably, the site was also called out for offering crowd-sourced Chinese subtitles for Western content, something that helped boost infringement of US-made movies and TV shows. On the other hand, it allowed local users to easily consume otherwise unavailable content, to the disappointment of both Hollywood and the Chinese government, albeit for different reasons.

Chinese Government Takes Action

On November 22, 2014, visitors to YYeTs and another subtitle-focused site, Shooters.cn, found the platforms in considerable trouble. With Shooters announcing its immediate closure, YYeTs said that it would be offline for a while, ostensibly to “clean up” its site. State-run news services indicated that the sites had been targeted for infringing the rights of foreign companies.

YYeTs somehow managed to survive, as it had done previously following similar enforcement action in 2010. This week, however, it became clear that the site is under pressure once again after being targeted by local police.

According to local media reports, police in Shanghai arrested 14 people under suspicion of being involved in the operations of YYeTs/Renren Yingshi, which was recently reported to have eight million registered users.

“Investigations showed that the suspects set up several companies engaging in the distribution, operation and maintenance of the ‘Renren Yingshi’ mobile app and a related web portal by setting up or leasing servers in China or overseas since 2018,” the People’s Daily reported Wednesday.

It’s believed that those arrested in this week’s operation systematically downloaded movies and TV shows from pirate websites located outside China, added subtitles, and distributed the captioned videos from their own servers in breach of copyright.

Specific dates for the arrests haven’t been circulated in the media. But, in mid-January, there were several reports that China-based pirate sites had closed their doors to new members. It’s likely those precautionary measures were linked to the current arrests.

A report from SCMP notes that China has hundreds of subtitling sites similar to Renren Yingshi that originally used volunteer translators. Over time, however, site operators have chosen to hire translators to generate Chinese subtitles for foreign movies and TV shows, paying around $60 per video.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In the closing months of 2020, enforcement measures against private torrent sites in Denmark became evident when the alleged 69-year-old operator of NordicBits was arrested by Spanish police.

Then, following a complaint from local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, the State Prosecutor for Serious Economic Crime (SØIK) had a 33-year-old Danish man arrested in Morocco on suspicion of running DanishBits .

With both sites shut down, two other sites – Asgaard and ShareUniversity – opened their doors to new members but were quickly warned they too faced similar treatment.

Asgaard quickly shut itself down as did ShareUniversity, but fresh arrests earlier this month showed that the authorities were ready to pursue their operators.

Attention Switches To Persistent BitTorrent Pirates

When torrent sites shut down, there is a tendency among users to find new homes, as illustrated by the exodus from NordicBits and DanishBits to would-be replacements. While this can happen seamlessly, the authorities in Denmark have already signaled the possibility of tracking down site users, using data obtained during earlier raids.

“The most important thing is clearly to stop the illegal services, but it can certainly not be ruled out that seized data can lead to the identification of the users of the two illegal networks,” Deputy Police Inspector Michael Lichtenstein said in December.

It’s not uncommon for pirates to dismiss these kinds of statements as scare tactics or lacking in substance but there are now signs that SØIK and Rights Alliance intend to make good on their warning. In a statement published Friday, Rights Alliance says that it intends to “sharpen its focus” on these entrenched users “who stubbornly stick to their illegal activities.”

Referencing the closure of Asgaard and the associated arrests, Rights Alliance notes that SØIK is maintaining a keen interest in persistent pirates, something that it believes is “enormously important” in its battle to prevent online copyright infringement.

According to the anti-piracy group, its earlier actions against the sites listed above reduced the number of private tracker users by more than 75% but that leaves around 25% who, despite the enforcement actions, still aren’t getting the message. As a result, further measures will be taken.

“With the IP Task Force behind it, technical insight and access to the illegal services where the Danish incarnated users have moved from, it is now possible to take an active part in sanctioning them,” Rights Alliance warns.

Interestingly, the anti-piracy group makes a specific reference to users deploying anonymization techniques, noting that they have the tools to unmask them, whether they’re using a VPN or not. TorrentFreak asked for more information on this claim but Rights Alliance declined to elaborate at the moment, instead offering to supply more information in the coming weeks.

Warning To Operators and Users Of New Pirate Sites

With Asgaard and ShareUniversity no longer open for DanishBits and NordicBits refugees to get their file-sharing fix, there are reports that other sites are already stepping in to bridge the gap. However, Rights Alliance warns that these services won’t be the safe haven most users prefer.

“In the coming period, the Rights Alliance’s activities will be focused on the perpetrators and users of the newly established Danish services, including NorTor, which is trying to establish itself after the closures in December,” the group says.

NorTor is a reference to NordicTorrent (NorTor.org), a torrent site that’s attempting to get off the ground at the moment. The site’s operators bought the domain at the end of December and appear to be using hosting registered in Seychelles.

Potential visitors should also be aware that while easily blocked, the platform already has not one but two cryptocurrency miners running on its main page.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Plex is a multifunctional media software and service that allows users to easily access all their entertainment in one place.

Whether it’s movies, music, TV-shows, or photos, Plex can organize and index, making the content ready to stream on a wide variety of supported devices.

Like many other technologies Plex can be used for good and bad. There have been reports of people sharing vast libraries of the pirated content via Plex-powered servers, for example. But at the same time Plex is a gateway to legal streaming content including movies and series on its own Mediaverse platform.

The Mediaverse part of the Plex site appears to cause some confusion. While it offers content that can be legally streamed for free, it also lists many other titles, such as The Mandalorian , Game of Thrones, Wonder Woman 1984, and Tenet.

These other titles are not freely available for streaming, of course. Plex merely added an informational page to its library so people can put these titles on their watchlist. However, not all copyright holders appear to get this distinction.

Over the past month alone more than a handful of DMCA takedown requests were sent to Google, asking the search engine to remove these “copyright-infringing” pages. The takedowns suggest that Plex offers access to the full videos and list its URLs together with those of notorious pirate sites.

For example, ‘CTW Anti-Piracy’ sent a DMCA takedown request to Google on behalf of Vertigo Releasing Limited, asking the search engine to remove the Plex information page for the film “ Becky “. The Plex page is highlighted below among more traditional pirate sites.

Similarly, ‘Shoot-Down’ sent a takedown notice on behalf of DDI Double Dutch Inc for Plex’s “Elliot the Littlest Reindeer” page, while Groupe V Media hired ‘Police Du Net’ to remove the page of “Cardinal” season four. None of these pages link to pirated videos, obviously.

We assume that these requests, and many others , were all sent by mistake but that doesn’t mean that they are harmless. While Google is generally quite good at spotting errors, it missed these ones. That means that the Plex pages have actually been wiped from Google’s search results.

Instead of getting the Plex page, people will now see the following notice at the bottom of their search results.

After browsing through several Plex takedown notices in Google’s transparency report we also spotted one for which the search giant took “ no action “. However, that isn’t because it is deemed to be an erroneous takedown, but because the URL wasn’t indexed to begin with.

We reached out to Plex to inform the company about the takedowns and requested a comment. The company informed us that they are aware of these notices and will try to work things out with the copyright holders individually.

That’s probably wise because too many notices put sites at risk of being demoted , which can seriously hurt search traffic.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Dealing with pirates raises all sorts of issues for content providers and entertainment companies. On the one hand these are people trying to get something for nothing but on the other, many pirates are potential and even current customers.

Converting pirates into paying customers is a puzzle that many companies have tried to crack. Many do so with free trials, hoping that after tasting the real thing people will like it enough to come back for more, wallets in hand. Some innovate, offering a product or service that cannot easily be emulated. Others prefer to intimidate.

Screaming At Pirates

As reported last week, UFC President Dana White enjoys tackling pirates with threats and profanity , treating them as a danger to be eradicated by any means. The jury is still out on whether consumers ever respond to this type of approach but if we think of consumers as regular people, few – if any – appreciate being shouted out and called names.

Judging by the number of insults leveled at White late weekend, it’s pretty safe to say that his actions rubbed many people up the wrong way. To be clear, White will not give a damn if this is the case but according to games developer Adam Coster of Butterscotch Shenanigans , being hostile to pirates isn’t an approach he recommends.

No Open Hostility Towards Pirates

Writing in GamesIndustry.biz this week, Coster explains that the problem of piracy is emotionally charged but the overall goal should be to limit the harm, not only on the business itself, but also on the people creating the content.

“We don’t want to spend our time and resources fighting piracy — it’s exhausting, expensive and, frankly, doomed from the start. We want our time going into making games and building an amazing community,” Coster says.

“We certainly don’t condone or accept piracy, and we explicitly tell our players that when the topic arises. We also don’t allow players in our communities to advocate for or help others pirate games. But when we discover pirates in our midst we stay friendly .”

While big companies tend to be outwardly hostile to pirates, stating that “theft-is-theft” and there are no excuses for getting something for free, Coster doesn’t mind acknowledging that there can be reasons why people go down that route. People without financial resources, for example, or people seeking access to his games where they aren’t legitimately available.

Keeping Things Nice Has Benefits For The Developer

Despite his understanding, Coster doesn’t condone freeloading behavior but still prefers to keep things civil. There are benefits to that, he says, including keeping the environment around games consumption (and indeed, games creation) a nice place to be.

“Our non-hostile approach has helped foster a positive community, including a handful of converted pirates. But more importantly, it has been essential for our team’s mental health. Adversarial relationships take a terrible toll,” he concedes.

Keeping the pirating masses happy – or at least emotionally compliant – has some interesting benefits for Coster’s company. He believes that almost all of his potential players are pirates so it makes little sense to have an adversarial relationship with them – especially when a “jillion angry people” descend on community management and customer support teams to air their displeasure.

A Better Approach

Given that this is one of the likely outcomes of being hostile towards pirates (or if one prefers, potential customers, who may walk away after being threatened) Coster says that anti-piracy measures should not be about the pirates. The starting point, whether he likes it or not, should be an empathetic approach along with gentle encouragement to buy his games when they can.

“People will try to steal your game. Huge numbers of them. This is just the reality. Treat it as a design constraint,” he says.

“This is a business problem. Do your best to ignore how you feel about it. Yes, this is far easier said than done. Now get out there and make something worth stealing.”

The full piece, which is a must-read for developers, can be found here

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Due to their very nature, pirate sites become successful by offering pirated content and after staying online as long as they can, tend to die in the same way.

The demise of unlicensed sites often comes about due to legal pressure but for some, it can be possible to move onwards and upwards with a change of business model.

That was the case with former ‘pirate’ site Fakku , a platform that built its popularity on unlicensed scans and translations (scanlations) of adult manga comics, also known as ‘hentai’.

The site launched in 2006 and built a decent audience but by 2015, Fakku had gone completely straight after transforming itself into a site offering only licensed content. As a poacher turned gamekeeper, Fakku now has to contend with sites doing roughly what it did for nine years, i.e posting other people’s content without permission.

Fakku Steps-Up Its Targeting of Pirated Content

The company behind Fakku, Fakku LLC, began sending takedown DMCA notices to Google several years ago, demanding that sites publishing its content have their URLs delisted from search results. While this resulted in many thousands of takedowns, it wasn’t until the start of 2020 that Fakku really stepped on the gas.

Fairly quickly, Fakku was asking for up to 340,000 URLs to be delisted in a week, a number that jumped to 1.1 million in the summer. At the start of this year, Fakku went into overdrive and in the week starting January 4, 2021, the company asked for around 4 million URLs to be delisted, a figure repeated just a couple of weeks later.

This put sites including hentaishark.com, nyahentai.com, and nhentai.net under considerable pressure, with the former being subjected to more than 8 million DMCA notices, something that could cause it to be downranked by Google. However, it’s the 10th most-targeted domain on the list – hentai.cafe – that now finds itself in Fakku’s legal crosshairs.

Fakku Takedown Notice Ignored By Hentai.cafe

On Wednesday, Fakku’s legal representative filed a request for a DMCA subpoena at a court in the Eastern District of Michigan. The application reveals that on December 1, 2020, Eric Green of anti-piracy company Remove Your Media wrote to hentai.cafe demanding that the site take down a copy of Comic X-Eros #66, ‘Bullied Revenge Hypnosis #5’.

“Please act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the infringing material or items,” the letter reads, adding the URL where the content can be found.

Checking out the URL in question reveals that the content remains up, suggesting that hentai.cafe failed to take action in response to the notice.

Fakku Wants To Identify The Operator of Hentai.cafe

This inaction appears to have prompted Fakku take to more aggressive action against hentai.cafe. Fakku’s application for a DMCA subpoena demands that Cloudflare, which hentai.cafe uses to help keep its site online, hands over the personal details of the operator and/or owner of the pirate site.

The information requested is broad and includes (but is not limited to) the “billing or administrative records that show the name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), email address(es), IP address(es), account number(s), credit card numbers and any other electronic or physical documents identifying the name(s) and address(es) or contact information of the operator and/or owner of the Infringing Website.”

At the time of writing the DMCA subpoena doesn’t appear to have been signed off by the court but in the majority of cases, this is usually a formality.

Quite what Fakku intends to do with the information isn’t clear. It could be a straightforward matter of taking some kind of legal action, if possible, but Fakku has also been known to offer somewhat controversial assistance to pirate sites to get themselves out of legal trouble.

The DMCA subpoena can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

UFC President Dana White made dozens of headlines this week when he made threats against an unnamed illegal stream provider.

During the UFC 257 pre-fight press conference, featuring main event fighters Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor, White seemed excited to tell the journalists present that he had someone specific in his sights.

“We got one. We got him,” he said with a grin on his face. “We’re watching this guy right now. All you have to do is turn it on on Saturday. And we got you f****r. I can’t wait.”

In a subsequent interview with BT Sport, White went further still, declaring that he’d hand-picked the alleged pirate and that his house was being watched, his phone calls were being listened to and if he dared to put the fight up on Saturday, he would be arrested.

“I will not be nice. I will not be lenient. I will go guns-a-f*****n-blazing,” he warned.

Dana White’s Threats Riled Up Pirates

At least in part, White’s comments were designed to scare not only his target into submission but also other illegal stream suppliers and their potential customers. PPV revenue is important for the UFC and for its fighters since they too take a share of the spoils.

That being said, there can be a tendency among seasoned Internet users to convert gung-ho threats into just another motivation to pirate, so there was no shortage of people online threatening to pirate UFC 257 anyway, despite the warnings, and whether they were fans or not. However, few could have predicted how the event was to play out.

ESPN+ Goes Down Under Massive Demand

Perhaps the biggest news to emerge from the event is that UFC cash cow Conor McGregor got knocked out in round two, with Poirier’s heavy strikes on the feet proving too much for the superstar Irishman. However, as the drama was playing out in the Octagon, a streaming fiasco had already been underway for several hours.

UFC 257 was always expected to be a popular event (McGregor PPVs always are) but it appears that ESPN+ was unprepared for just how many people would cough up $70.00 to watch the fight legally in the US. According to Yahoo Sports’ Kevin Iole , 1.3 million people tried to log into ESPN+ at the same time and the service simply couldn’t cope.

Still nothing. Tried xbox, android, and smart tv app. pic.twitter.com/AJCrvCfIvy

— Jeff Jones (@SlowSmokeJones) January 24, 2021

Given that the UFC’s US deal is exclusive to ESPN+ this was clearly a major problem. If fans pay to watch the whole card on a legal platform, they don’t expect to face the kind of problems often touted as being a hallmark of pirate services. The disappointed masses also included several UFC fighters who headed onto Twitter to complain that they couldn’t watch the event.

Half the UFC's own roster can't get the ESPN+ app working to watch #UFC257 pic.twitter.com/TbYiQjxVXo

— MMA mania (@mmamania) January 24, 2021

Unfortunately, worse was yet to come.

Illegal Streams Save The Day For Some Paying Customers

With huge numbers of fans bombarding ESPN on Twitter complaining that they couldn’t access the event, the broadcaster said that it was doing the best it could to restore service. However, after shelling out $70.00 the desperation mounted for many fans as the anxiety of missing the action took its toll.

In a now-deleted Tweet, UFC middleweight Ian Heinisch wrote: “Okay I am done send me illegal streams!” a sentiment that was shared by thousands of other individuals including those who already paid and those who never intended to.

Meanwhile, in several of the usual haunts occupied by pirate streamers, there was no shortage of people watching the PPV illegally while ESPN+ subscribers screamed in frustration. That should never happen, quite the opposite in fact.

Dana White’s Sunday Headache

Today’s post mortem will be a difficult one for Dana White. After being ridiculed in some corners for his anti-piracy rhetoric, it seems fairly likely that some fans will have decided to take the legal option for once, a golden opportunity to shine if ever there was one.

Instead, they will have watched their pirating counterparts receive superior service at what would’ve been less than a tenth of the price, which is just about the worst possible outcome on the night. Add that to the fact that McGregor lost, and you have a UFC 257 that White won’t look back on with the fondest of memories. That being said, it wasn’t all bad news.

According to White, the unnamed illegal streamer who he threatened earlier in the week decided that taking on the UFC wasn’t a good idea. Shortly after the pre-fight press event he allegedly made a big announcement saying that he wouldn’t be offering the event after all and had decided to shut down his entire streaming service.

Somewhat ironically though (for both legal and illegal consumers alike) plenty of other unlicensed services remained up long enough to show ESPN+ how to run a streaming service – without collapsing under the stress of too many customers wanting to part with their money.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.