by David P. Greisman

It is the night of Antonio Margarito’s fight against Roberto Garcia. I find an online stream of what is otherwise being shown on pay-per-view for $40.

It is the day after UFC 101. I search on YouTube for video of Anderson Silva’s destruction of Forrest Griffin, which was the co-feature bout on a $45 pay-per-view.

It is three years after the pay-per-view rubber match between Antonio Tarver and Roy Jones Jr. I open a package and pull out a DVD I bought online that includes Nate Campbell’s technical knockout of Kid Diamond, a bout from that show’s undercard.

I should feel guilty. All of this is illegal. All of this is increasingly common.

This is the struggle seen in various entertainment industries: How do you make money when the technological evolution has not only made so much information available, but made it available for free? How do you keep from losing money when technology has made it easier for people to bootleg your product instead of buying it?

This is no longer the era of movie companies merely contending with pirates entering theaters, camcorders in hand. And this is no longer the era of cable companies merely contending with descrambled cable boxes that give access to premium networks and pay-per-view channels.

Now, movies can be downloaded and seen before they’ve even hit the big screen. Now, boxing fans don’t need to choose between ordering the big fight on pay-per-view or waiting a week for it to replay on HBO.

Instead, they can watch it live, searching through various websites for streams – video of domestic or foreign broadcasts put online by someone somewhere, for everyone else everywhere to see.

They can watch it the next day once people upload the fight to YouTube and other video sites. They can download it for themselves from message boards, peer-to-peer networks and file sharing sites.

They can watch it whenever is convenient, just like they would with a movie or television series, by buying DVDs. In this case, they purchase the DVDs from dealers online, none of whom share their proceeds with the networks, the promoters or the fighters.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on who you are.

For boxing fans, the price of following the sport has only increased. Fights used to air on network television. Now some are seen on basic cable, bigger bouts are available via subscriptions to premium cable networks HBO and Showtime, and the biggest events require an additional $50 or $55 for pay-per-view broadcasts.

That doesn’t even include fights that the networks won’t even pick up: Antonio Margarito vs. Roberto Garcia was on an independent Top Rank pay-per-view. Vitali Klitschko’s defense of his heavyweight title against no-hoper Albert Sosnowski headlined a pay-per-view that cost $25.

Those fights are marketed to smaller audiences, niche offerings in a niche sport. Boxing fans can speak with their wallets. The most hardcore of followers are willing to plunk down the cash – or seek alternatives.

I purchase the major boxing pay-per-views but am hesitant to spend on the lesser shows. Some I miss altogether. Some are not important enough to buy but too important to miss.

And so this past Saturday I messaged a boxing writer friend, asking if he knew of any streams for Klitschko-Sosnowski. He didn’t. He also wouldn’t.

“I’d buy it anyway if I wanted to watch it,” he said in response. “When there are legal ways for me to pay for boxing, I always do.”

I didn’t ask him whether his philosophy was about the money, the morals, or both. I understood where he was coming from.

In my previous career, I managed music stores. I did so at a time when Napster and other file-sharing networks allowed people to download music and burn CDs without paying for them. This bothered me.

It wasn’t that such piracy took money from millionaire musicians and rich record labels. It also took money away from the lesser-known musicians whose sales would make or break their careers. Every download took money away from the record stores. While I worked for a large company, every lost sale meant less money for my store, fewer hours for my employees and less money for them.

It was also about the principle. Artists, writers and musicians do want their work to be seen by as many people as possible. But they also deserve to have the choice of whether their work is given away for free.

The music industry ultimately adjusted and reorganized, thanks to the popularity of MP3 players, the rise of iTunes and listeners’ willingness to pay for digital downloads. There are fewer music stores these days – the company I worked for went under – but the industry has survived.

The movie and television industries have adjusted as well, whether it is through DVD rentals on Netflix or via ad-supported programming on websites such as Hulu.

The newspaper industry, too, is looking for a workable paradigm shift, one in which people who read news online instead of buying the print version will pay for access to news websites.

It’s not just about turning to technology to earn money. It’s about ensuring that technology doesn’t cost companies money either.

Last week, the federal government sued a man for violating federal copyright laws, accusing him of posting scanned comic books on websites for people to read.

Companies – the WWE, the UFC, boxing promoters – take to the Internet, getting live streams stopped and having videos removed from sites such as YouTube. It becomes a dance between those looking for still-working streams or still-available footage and those looking to take them down.

A boxing writer was suspended last year from the Boxing Writers Association of America because he publicized how boxing fans could watch an illegal stream of the Miguel Cotto-Manny Pacquiao pay-per-view.

As with the music industry, those at the top of the boxing food chain earn millions from pay-per-views. But it is not just about HBO, the major promoters and the star fighters. Losing sales can potentially do harm to the undercard fighters and the companies’ employees.

Is piracy fair to the companies? No. But those who bootleg or who benefit from such bootlegging would argue that this is their way of speaking with their wallets, of protesting what they see as their love of the sport being taken advantage of.

It does make sense for the networks and promoters to look out for illicit streams, footage and downloads on the night of and the days immediately after a fight. What makes less sense is their guarding their interests into perpetuity when those interests are being squandered.

Want to watch the trilogy between Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales legally? You can’t. Broadcast rights for fights on HBO are complicated, split between the network and the promoters. Neither is putting out DVDs for sale.

“Even though there’s a market, it’s not big enough,” Ross Greenburg, president of HBO sports, told boxing writer Don Steinberg back in 2008. “Legitimate businessmen have to release a video the old-fashioned way, with professional packaging and duplication and marketing. If it costs you $50,000 to release a DVD, and you’re only going to sell 1,000 units, do the math. It doesn’t work.”

The key flaw in Greenburg’s argument is this phrase: “the old-fashioned way.” The illicit DVD distributors who set up shop online seem to have found a way to cater to the market without losing money.

As for the rights issues? Viewers of ESPN Classic might notice that HBO fights airing on that network don’t include the original HBO commentary, yet Showtime fights have the Showtime commentators.

Just as artists, writers and musicians have a right to choose whether their work is given away for free, networks and promoters have a right to sit on their libraries. But ESPN Classic’s deal with Showtime provides a blueprint, a way to make it work.

And it can work. The UFC, for example, has found a market, making individual fights available online at a price and selling DVDs of its events. Want to watch the entirety of UFC 101? It’s $14.99. The title fight between Rampage Jackson and Forrest Griffin at UFC 86? It’s $1.99.

Don King, for a brief time, aired cards on his website. The Germany-based Universum Boxing has uploaded a number of fights from its library to YouTube.

Piracy still exists for the UFC – and for the movie and music industries, too, for that matter. The difference is that the UFC, movie studios, television studios and television networks now provide outlets that recognize how technology has changed the market.

Illegal behavior – including mine – shouldn’t be excused. It shouldn’t be unintentionally encouraged either.

Pay-per-views should be worth the price, which often means these days that the cost should be lower or the card should be better. Past fights should be made available for viewing on the networks’ and promoters’ websites, either at a charge or subsidized by advertising.

It’s worth trying.

When customers are treated well, they will reward you by continuing to be your customer. When they are not treated well, they will rebel against you by looking elsewhere.

The 10 Count will return next week.

David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com