Hello Everyone, I have a situation that i would like your opinion on. I run a MMA site listed in my sig. A recent issue came up with a site similar to mine, the site ufctakedown.com was issued a CAD letter stating that the UFC wants the website taken down for trademark issues and the domain turned over to them. I understand that a company must protect its copyright, but they had a second issue, the site has DM videos of the pay per views and they insisted they take them down. I also post ppv videos after the fights, but withing a day or two the videos on DM are always taken down. Insiders have stated that the UFC keeps a list of all sites posting their videos. My question: what is your opinion on embedding videos on your website. am i looking at a world of pain as my site grows. Thanks
It has been well established in US courts that a site doesn't have to actually host any offending material to be found guilty of contributory infringement. I would stop this practice. At best, the UFC will eventually stumble across your site and have it shut down and taken from you. At worst, you could find yourself saddled with tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of dollars in fines, court costs, and judgements.
People sue YouTube all the time. The reason they have some protection is laid out in the DMCA. YouTube is driven by user generated content (plus they have a registered agent with the copyright office to respond to complaints). The OP is talking about embedding these videos himself. The DMCA provides no protection if the offending material is posted by the site staff.
DO NOT DO THIS, it is illegal in every country in the world there is no defense to PPV transmissions on your site. Youtube found itself in court ove rthis very thing from paramount, not PPV but copyright infringment, do not do it. as for handing over the domain they do not have authority to argue that and would not succeed in judgnent on that one issue but would on the rest.
The UFC could probably take the site if they chose to. The reason is the domain name ufctakedown.com which contains the trademark for UFC and could be seen (on a domain name basis) that it might confuse people into thinking it was an official site. Combine that with the practice of posting their PPV events and you definately have "bad faith" registration issues on your hands. The UFC does not have a history of going after every domain that they feel they have rights to (like bodog fighting does), but they might change their mind if the site was in the habit of posting the PPV events. Since the OP does not list his site, one can't tell if that would be the case for him, but the UFC certainly can ask for the mentioned site. They would easily win if they took this to UDRP.