Round-by-Round: Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren - April 17, 2021

[Ruthless-RKO]

[Ruthless-RKO]

Triller Files Lawsuit Against 12 Websites Alleging Piracy Of Paul-Askren Pay-Per-View

The vow from Triller Fight Club to serve as a disruptor in the boxing industry has now extended into online piracy.

Triller Inc. has launched a nine-figure lawsuit seeking damages from streaming websites FilmDaily.com, CrackStreamsLive.com and at least 10 specified outlets as well as 100 unnamed parties. The 20-page complaint—a copy of which was obtained by BoxingS cene—was filed on Friday with the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California, alleging the illegal distribution of its April 17 Pay-Per-View event headlined by a cruiserweight bout between YouTube star Jake Paul and mixed martial artist Ben Askren.

The PPV show—which aired live from a crowdless Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia—was produced and distributed by Triller Fight Club at a suggested retail price of $49.99. Triller. Inc. has yet to publicly reveal the final PPV sales—which reportedly range from 1,300,000-1,500,000 units sold—though has gone on record to allege that even more viewers illegally streamed the event.

“Triller seeks in excess of $100,000,000.00 against Defendants and each of them all of whom are cyber-criminals, for their outright theft and diversion of upwards of 2,000,000 unique viewers by providing them with illegal and unauthorized viewings of the Broadcast of the Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren boxing event,” Farhad Novian of Novian & Novian, LLP, representing Triller, Inc. in the case. “[Triller] institutes this action to obtain remedy for—and to permanently hinder—the blatantly unlawful infringement and rampant theft of its copyrighted work by the Defendants. Defendants, and each of them, have utilized various torrent and streaming websites such as https://youtube.com, https://filmdaily.co, https://accesstvpro.co, https://online2livestream.us, https://crackstreamslive.com, https://sports-today.club/, https://my-sports.club/, and https://bilasports.com to unlawfully upload, distribute, and publicly display, without authorization, the Broadcast to the users of such websites.

“Upon information and belief, Defendants, and each of them, acted knowingly, willfully, unlawfully and with blatant disregard to Plaintiff’s copyright in the Broadcast by uploading the Broadcast to the aforementioned websites with additional shareable payment links, such as PayPal links, which allow users to remit direct payments to the various Defendants in order to fund and endorse each respective Defendants’ infringement of [Triller’s] Broadcast.”

The list of complaints specified by Triller in the lawsuit are: copyright infringement; violation of Federal Communications Acts 47 U.S.C. § 605 & 47 U.S.C. § 553; conversion, breach of contract; conspiracy; violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 18 U.S.C. § 1039; and vicarious copyright infringement.

“Through their egregious conduct, Defendants also encourage other online users to copy, share, download, distribute and share the Broadcast on the aforementioned websites,” notes Novian. “Defendants further unlawfully facilitate, participate, and induce other users to engage in the unauthorized reproduction, adaptation, distribution and public display of Triller’s copyrighted Broadcast all to line their own pockets with monies that belong to Triller.”

FilmDaily.com and CrackStreamsLive.com are joined by AccessTVPro.co, Online2LiveStream.us, Sports-Today.club, My-Sports.club, BilaSport.com, Trendy Clips, Eclipt Gaming and random entities ‘Mike,’ ‘Your Extra’ and ‘ItsLilBrandon’ along with 100 unknown entities in the complaint. The total value of the lawsuit—if all charges are carried to the fullest—are estimated at $1,500,000,000 according to court records.

Triller seeks pre-judgment and post-judgment interest on all awarded damages as well as all attorneys’ fees and costs accrued and any further relief as deemed just by the court.

“It's shocking to think a theft so grand can be done so blatantly and brazenly and with no remorse," Ryan Kavanaugh, co-controlling shareholder of Triller told Boxing Scene in a shared statement. "There is zero difference between what they did and walking into a market stealing tons of a product and selling it at a discount in the parking lot. It’s neither civilly nor criminally any different, and we are prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law. There were more than two million illegal streams, akin to hundreds of millions of dollars."

Interestingly, Triller, Inc. is also a defendant in a separate ongoing lawsuit filed in the same court last November by Wixen Music Publishing, Inc., alleging direct and contributory copyright infringement of its music illegally used on Triller’s app. Wixen claims the rights to more than 1,000 songs to have been used in videos created on the app “from Triller’s music library that have not been licensed and for which copyright owners are not compensated.”

Wixen seeks the maximum amount of statutory damages for willful copyright infringement, $150,000 per video.

Triller entered the boxing market last fall, with the Nov. 28 exhibition match between Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. headlining a PPV event which reportedly sold 1,600,000 units. Soon thereafter came the formation of Triller Fight Club, which presented Paul-Askren and is currently has two more PPV events on the schedule: a June 5 show at loanDepot Part in Miami, headlined by lineal/WBA/IBF/WBO lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez in a mandatory title defense versus George Kambosos Jr.; and a July 3 event topped by Hall of Fame former six-division champion Oscar De La Hoya versus a yet-to-be-named opponent in an exhibition bout.

Much as Triller Fight Club is seeking to shake up the currently industry business model, the same approach will be taken against any form of product piracy moving forward.

"Sites (such as those named) are causing significant damage not just to Triller Fight Club but content creators overall," insists Kavanaugh. "People put a lot of hard work, time and money into creating a product for the consumer, and having it stolen and resold is terribly damaging.

"The good news is they are not protected by VPN masking or other firewalls as their activities are criminal and grand theft, so we will ultimately find them and prevail not just for us but for content creators in general.”

[gregregegg]

Fuking hell, 100 million lawsuit.... im all for busting some streamers, but please dont go too hard on my pals at CS... i often use them due to financial cheapness, but i mainly use them for fights that are simply impossible to buy in aus. So this is a warning mr Triller, if you sue CS then i will kick you in the dick.

[Ruthless-RKO]

Fuking hell, 100 million lawsuit.... im all for busting some streamers, but please dont go too hard on my pals at CS... i often use them due to financial cheapness, but i mainly use them for fights that are simply impossible to buy in aus. So this is a warning mr Triller, if you sue CS then i will kick you in the dick.

Welcome to the entertainment world Triller..

Dana says the same thing before and after every big fight, Hearn and Arum, FMJ have also been vocal about illegal streams.. Lawsuits have been filed in the past too.. I say good luck to Triller.

[joshj909]

I'm not entirely sure what Triller are going to be able to do that the UFC, Sky, HBO etc. have been unable to do here? It's like they just googled illegal Triller streams and picked all the links from the first page. These sites don't really hide what they do, so why hasn't anyone else be effective in suing them and Triller somehow will be?

Also, if your target market is teenagers who play video games and follow these guys on YouTube or tiktok or whatever, don't be surprised when a number of them use computers to avoid paying for something that they are priced out of?

[Ruthless-RKO]

Triller Offers Amnesty Through June 1st To Offenders Targeted in April 17 Piracy Lawsuit

One week after filing a nine-figure lawsuit against online piracy offenders, Triller Inc. is now offering amnesty for a limited time ahead of its next event.

A one-month clemency period has been granted by Triller to any parties who illegally streamed the April 17 Triller Fight Club Pay-Per-View event. Triller previously targeted 12 specific hosting sites and 100 unnamed parties in a massive lawsuit seeking damages in excess of $100,000,000 from more than 2,000,000 viewers alleged to have pirated the aforementioned show.

A website has been established allowing any such parties to pay the original retail price of $49.99 for the PPV event. Offenders have until June 1 to pay in full on the piracy settlement website established by Fite TV, which carried the original broadcast.

“VPN firewalls all have to comply and turn over the actual IP addresses of each person who stole the fight in discovery,” Matt St. Claire, head of piracy for Triller declared in a statement issued Monday by the video-sharing social network. “We will be able to identify each and every person, VPN or not, as each stream has a unique fingerprint embedded in the content.

“Triller will pursue the full $150,000 penalty per person per instance for anyone who doesn’t do the right thing and pay before the deadline.”

Triller launched the nine-figure lawsuit on April 23, filed with the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California. The company named FilmDaily.co, CrackStreamsLive.com and 10 other outlets in a 20-page complaint, claiming proof of each site illegally hosting the four-quadrant PPV event that aired live from Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. The show was headlined by YouTube influencer and boxing novice Jake Paul (3-0, 3KOs) who scored a 1st round knockout of Ben Askren (0-1, 0KOs), a retired 36-year-old former mixed martial artist who made his boxing debut.

The official complaint alleged that the named parties not only pirated the event without proper purchase but used their hosting sites to sell the event for profit. Triller has since named H3Podcast in the lawsuit, as the podcast owner bragged on air to stealing and illegally sharing the aforementioned event.

Triller is seeking both criminal charges and civil settlements against targeted offenders. A ruling in Triller’s favor could result in civil fines of $150,000 per illegal stream along with additional criminal charges of up to $250,000 in criminal fines and up to 5 years in jail.

“We are taking this position because it is outright theft,” notes St. Claire. “It is no different than walking into a store and stealing a video game off the shelf. In the case of the offending sites, it’s worse, because they also then resold it to many people, illegally profiting from work they do not own.”

For now, there remains the opportunity for many to avoid the trouble of hiring legal representation in a potentially losing courtroom battle.

“We encourage anyone who pirated the event to visit the site before June 1, pay their $49.99 and receive a full and complete release from Triller to avoid further action,” insists St. Claire.

Triller Fight Club returns with a similar boxing PPV event June 5, to air live from loanDepot Park in Miami. Lineal lightweight champion and unified WBA/IBF/WBO titlist Teofimo Lopez (16-0, 12KOs) faces IBF mandatory challenger George Kambosos Jr. (19-0, 10KOs) in the main event. By that point, Triller hopes to have settled its past business while laying the foundation to avoid similar instances in the future.

Those wishing to pay in full for the event can do so at https://www.fite.tv/page/041721piracysettlement/.

[Ruthless-RKO]

So basically they realised they can’t do shît.. this is just a scare tactic I’ve read to squeeze any last pennies they can for the pirated streams.

Someone put a comment:

”most VPN have strict no log policy and end to end encryption so their isn't anything to hand over besides timestamps and random #'s that represent accounts but arent linked to any”

Also the fact that Arum/Haymon/Oscar couldn't do shït about pirates, you think Triller can?

[watsupdoc87]

Hey guy has any1 used these FilmDaily.com, CrackStreamsLive.com for streaming? I've only ever really used myp2p for nearly a decade and it's not great especially the big fights. If anyone knows any good ones can you pm us cheers