Uh Oh...Boxing Piracy Article

If you don't like paying $50 for a mediocre PPV, don't buy it. The promoters will lose money and soon there are no more mediocre $50 PPV's. Problem solved. There is no such thing as "free" boxing. Fighters get paid, promoters get paid, the venue gets paid, the judges and referee get paid, and on and on. A cable channel like ESPN is great for boxing because a lot of subscribers have ESPN. HBO and Showtime are down a notch in number of potential viewers, and both lag far behind an over the air network. So how does boxing get back into the network schedule? It won't. There are far too many bogus belts from too many alphabet groups, and far too many mismatches due to faked ratings and undeserving mandatory challengers. It all spells confusion and dilution, and nobody will invest into that mess. I just don't know how this ship rights itself. At least half of the wieght classes can be scrapped, and there needs to be only one champion at each weight. I have stopped paying attention to the alphabet belts and if enough do, that's a start. Obviously there is no motivation for each alphabet group to play along, and they will protect their own piece of the pie, even as the pie shrinks and they will all eventually starve.

There are barely any upcoming fights i would pay 50 bucks to see, maybe mayweather V zab. Other than that its ridiculous, British Boxing used to be great because it was free and the best fought the best, people loved it back then, same here too. Tyson, hagler, leonard etc all the great fights and fighters of the 80s and 90s, now what do we have? John ruiz V apeman. Fraudly Harrison V danny "what a joke" williams, "Schiaffo all the promoters"

Yeah, it is near to impossible for the law to keep up with the rate that the technology is advancing and I really doubt that anyone will pursue any lawsuits in regards to this. Even with movies and music you really have to be downloading/uploading a pretty big amount to pop up on the radar. Plus, if the server is located in Sweden the laws allow for sharing (at least according to some websites) and it is hard to get these websites taken down. Fuck the promoters for making PPVs $50 for shit. They should concern themselves with making boxing popular again rather than just raping the consumer for all their cash.

Great post mate, good k comin your way for that. I bought 3 fights in 2005 b-hop and Jermaine Taylor 2, Tyson vs McBride and RJJ Tarver 3. And only one was worth the money in my opinion. I've got quite a large number of fights on my computer, and will continue to download them. Lawsuits will fly, but the consumer will always win where the internet is concerned.

I agree but I think boxing needs a bigger fanbase in order to begin reforms. The fans have to demand changes in the way boxing is run before anything will actually change. People are still making too much cash to see that they are killing the sport. It breaks my heart when you watch the old heavyweight broadcasts and hear them refer to the title as the biggest in sports. Now it is not much more than a joke. All the fighters just want $$$, which obviously is understandable but there seems little motivation for the best to fight the best. None of the current crop exactly inspire awe but someone like Brewster or Toney at least are crowd pleasing. Hopefully one of them manages to unify. But no heavyweight fight should be PPV until there is actually something worth paying for. Hauser is stupid for assuming that it is the internet that will kill boxing...the promoters have been doing that for years.

UFC is getting more fans by being on Spike regularly and it is even more fringe than boxing. If boxing goes back to the networks, or even ESPN/Spike/other cable channels than it would generate more fans which equals cash. The fucking PPVs are what is killing the sport...

NETWORK TELEVISION is the answer...

If I want to watch Frank Bruno-Mike Tyson 2, there is no way I can rent or buy that in the store and HBO/Showtime don't really reair their catalog with any frequency so why shouldn't I download a random fight like that. I do understand them being upset about the fight being up an hour after the ppv. I'm sure they'd prefer it not be up until the free reair a week later.

I would by numerous PPV's if they were 10-20, I'd pay to see any remotely important fight + undercard. 50 is hard for me to justify throwing it away on a fight that I'm not too interested in. Boxing's limelite will return with more exposure to the general public. ESPN televising larger fights with more advertisement, and HBO and Showtime having more main events outside of PPV's. I wouldn't hold my breath though.

all i want to know is if i go buy a tape of gerald mcclellan is he going to get that money ..hell with hbo and all them if the fighters not getting it

I still like Hauser but he really should consider the shit they try to pass off as PPV these days. It is not like they are only charging for great superfights and we are all just too cheap to add HBO...they charge for anything they think anyone will buy (Barrera-Fana???). Hauser should consider the other side of the coin. The same thing goes for movies. I don't download them because I would rather see them in the theatre but at $10 a pop these days how many people can afford to go to that many movies? So people download the ones they are less interested in. Big deal.

Next, the fight is "resampled" to a slightly lesser quality, which reduces the file size exponentially and makes uploading and downloading the file less time-consuming. The person then uploads the fight file to a server and posts a link to it. After that, viewers click on the link and download the file. The number of simultaneous downloads that are accommodated depends on bandwith and how the server is configured. Most PCs and Apple computers have built-in software that allows them to watch the downloaded files. If not, a viewer can search the Internet, easily find the software, and download it for free. In other words, for the cost of a high-speed Internet connection, fans can now get pay-per-view fights for free. If a viewer doesn't want to watch the fight on his computer monitor, he can burn a DVD and watch it on television. Many boxing websites and file-sharing networks have reader forums that offer direct links to URLs where viewers can download the fights. Some readers offer to send fight files directly to fellow forum members via messenging software. Here, it should be noted that SecondsOut.com considers this file sharing to be illegal and has a policy against allowing postings on its website that violate the copyright laws of any country. But many websites actively promote the postings and go so far as to "pin" references to downloadable fights in conspicious places. Also, if a potential viewer wants to watch a fight and can't find a link to it, he can make a request in a chat room and either the link will be forthcoming or the file will be emailed to him. Alternatively, he can use the search facility within a given forum or Google to find the desired URL. In some markets, this is the only way that fans can see a particular fight. For example, John Ruiz versus Nikolay Valuev was unavailable in the United States except through piracy. But more and more viewers are taking advantage of this piracy simply because they don't want to pay for fights. The new piracy is more attractive to consumers, technologically and psychologically, than the old black boxes. The boxes required a clear crossing of the line; buying a piece of equipment for illegal purposes and installing it. By contrast, for the viewer, Internet piracy simply involves logging on. To draw an analogy; suppose a rogue cable system announced that it was carrying HBO's pay-per-view telecast of Roy Jones versus Bernard Hopkins for free on one of its public access channels. Which boxing fan wouldn't tune in? How many people would say, "I don't want to watch the fight for free. I think I'll pay $49.95." At present, virtually every pay-per-view fight can be seen on the Internet within an hour of the final bell. Archival fights (including almost every fight ever shown on HBO, Showtime, and ESPN Classic) are also available. Most of the pirates are acting on a non-profit basis. It's people sharing files for free. In theory, it's no different than taping a fight that's on television and then lending the tape to a friend. But here, the fights are going to thousands of friends. And it's just a matter of time before pirates with a commercial agenda step in. Also, black boxes facilitate one theft at a time. Internet piracy is exponential. Some servers limit the number of times a file can be downloaded to a total of twenty times or twenty downloads per day. But other servers have no such limitation. And often, viewers who download a file proceed to upload it themselves to keep the chain going. If twenty people download a file and share it with twenty more people, that's four hundred viewers. Multiply by twenty again, and eight thousand people are watching for free. Moreover, the technology keeps advancing. Instant messaging software (such as Skype, Microsoft Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and AOL Instant Messenger) now provides for file transfers. A device called Slingbox (sold in four thousand stores in the United States alone) allows consumers to stream video and audio in realtime from their own cable box or satellite television hook-up to computers with the appropriate software and broadband capacity (including laptops away from home). The assumption is that, by 2007, video conferencing will also allow for realtime transfers of pay-per-view fights. Meanwhile, corporate inertia is stalling a response. If the music industry had dealt with Napster earlier, it wouldn't have become as significant a problem as it did. But Napster got a foothold because of the perception that the music industry didn't care. Users downloaded thousands upon thousands of songs, shared them with strangers and friends, and soon there was a crisis. The same phenomenon is moving out of infancy now in the pay-per-view industry. How can the industry fight it? The answer involves a panoply of legal issues ranging from copyright law to the governance of cyberspace. Initially, the pay-per-view industry can be expected to make an effort to impede the flow of information that directs viewers to free fight files. Some websites and file-sharing networks go so far as to promote Internet piracy by referring people to a particular area of their site. It's likely that, in the near future, copyright holders will seek to shut down website forums that carry this information. First Amendment issues in the United States and similar free-speech considerations in other countries will be involved. But as a practical matter, most United States and United Kingdom websites will capitulate and remove the offending material under threat of a lawsuit. Then, most likely, the industry will seek civil and criminal penalties and make an effort to seize offending servers. Advertising dollars will be used as a carrot and a stick. Technological steps will also be taken. Many file-sharing networks are now installing software to curtail music piracy and appease the music industry. The same will happen here. But whatever happens, it's clear that the implications reach far beyond boxing. Pay-per-view piracy will soon expand to feature films. In the United Kingdom, consumers already have access to 24-megabyte broadband that allows them to watch the equivalent of high-definition television with Dolby surround-sound in real time over the Internet. As bandwidth expands around the world, the problem will spiral out of control. Imagine King Kong (and every other movie) being available for download online and transferable to DVD for free the day it opens. The adverse impact on box office receipts, revenue from cable-TV movies-on-demand, and DVD sales will be enormous. Meanwhile, for the moment, boxing is on the front line. And the powers-that-be should take note. A person can sit at the edge of the ocean and pretend that the tide isn't coming in. But sooner or later, the tide comes in. Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com