Triller have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court of Central California seeking to fight back against massive piracy for their April 17 Fight Club pay-per-view event, seeking $100 million in damages.
The event was headlined by Jake Paul’s win over Ben Askren, and was a major success, clocking in north of a million legitimate buys by reports.
“It’s shocking to think a theft so grand can be done so blatantly and brazenly and with no remorse. 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,” Triller’s Ryan Kavanaugh said in a statement.
“There were more than two million illegal streams, akin to hundreds of millions of dollars. Sites, mostly using Google’s YouTube, are causing significant damage not just to Triller Fight Club but content creators overall.
“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.”
This is, of course, a battle industry people have been fighting ever since the internet really got cooking in the mid-to-late 90s, from file sharing of music, movies, etc. to illegal live event streams for all sports and major events. All in all, it’s been a losing battle to date, but it’s obvious why companies do what they can to fight it.