UFC's Crackdown on PPV Piracy - Why Suing Individuals Who Pirates Shows is Such a Bad Idea

The UFC is apparently making efforts to crackdown on websites pirating their pay per view shows.  For a cutting edge sport, this seems like a really backwards move to horde more wealth in their already fat wallets. UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta testified for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee earlier this month during a referendum on internet piracy of sporting events, stating that "the piracy of live sporting events is illegal, it kills jobs, and it threatens the expansion of U.S. based companies, the UFC is potentially losing millions of dollars a year from piracy."

Their solution? They want to SUE individuals who are pirating their live events.

Hmm... this reeks of how the record labels are trying to prevent the pirating of music. How are they doing with that anyway?

I argue that this is a horrible move by the UFC. For one, the UFC is built on their great relations with their fans. Dana White has a really close relationship with the fans through Twitter and gives out free tickets regularly. What other sporting league does that? To sue individuals who pirate UFC events will be counter productive in building relations with fans.

The same guys who are putting up the fights are the same guys who are passionate about the sport. While some are doing it for individual gain, most are true fans who just want to make the sport of MMA easily accessible to everyone. 

That brings me to my second point of building an international fan base. It's no secret that the UFC wants to take over the world, and they're slowly building their empire by holding events in the UK and in Europe (well, Germany). How do you think people got interested in the sport and the UFC brand in the first place? It certainly wasn't through buying a live PPV event, seeing how the time difference would make it difficult to catch any North American based shows. The internet is the only way that allows fans in the UK and Europe to stay in touch with the sport and the brand, and to cut us off would be detrimental to their efforts in expanding here. Boxing is still a much bigger sport in the UK than MMA, and I reckon that the UFC *needs* the internet to get more people interested.

I say the UFC should work with these people instead of going after them. There must be a creative solution somewhere that can make MMA easily accessible on the internet without burning the bridge between the league and the fans. After all, without those so called pirates, I wouldn't be a fan of the sport.

United State of Pop 2009 - The Official Song of 2009

Happy New Year! 2009 certainly has brought me a lot of happiness and excitement, I hope it was good to you as well.

If there was one song to sum up the year, which would it be? DJEarWorm has made it easy for you to decide by mashing up the top 25 songs of 2009 (according to Billboard) into one bite sized track. You might not like all the songs in the mash up, but you're certain to have heard them all before. United State of Pop 2009 samples Black Eyed Peas heavily, but unfortunately that really is the case of pop music in 2009.  

The remix is absolutely brilliant, and it took DJEarWorm about a month to complete. You can actually feel the year pass you by once more as you listen to the song.



For more brilliant mash ups, visit DJEarWorm's website.

The Hovis Commercial Is Better Than Their Bread

This commercial for Hovis Bread has been out for quite some time, but I've recently rediscovered it. I absolutely love the commercial, which might possibly be my favourite commercial of all time. The advert follows a young boy's journey to bring home a loaf of bread, but it also takes you through some of Britain's defining moments in history. The poor boy has to take his loaf of bread through wars and protests, making this the most dangerous bread delivery of all time.

Personally, I would have left the loaf at one of the wars. Doesn't even taste that great.

Dana White Twitter Account Suspended? That sucks.

[Nov 10, 09:45 Update:  If you have an RSS feed of Dana White's Twitter account, you'll still be able to get his tweets. Weird. Watch this space for updates if you can't access his tweets and want to know where he's giving away free UFC 105 tickets.]

[Nov 10, 16:31 Update: Dana is giving away 25 tickets in London and 25 tickets in Manchester. "I will give away 25 in london and 25 in manchester. So I only want people from london who are going to make the trip to MEN for sure." "Stay tuned!" Nuts. This is a far cray from the 3000+ tickets he gave away for UFC 104.]

[Nov 10, 17:05 Update:  I can't stick around to update the tweets any more, but I did find an alternative way of viewing Dana White's Twitter. If you managed to get tickets through my updates, let me know!... and save me a ticket?]

Dana White's popular Twitter account has been suspended. Dana's last tweet on DanaWhiteUFC was sent on 17:56 GMT, with him announcing that he's "taking off!" to London.

The outspoken UFC president has also promised to give away free tickets to this weekend's UFC 105 in Manchester while he's in town. But instead of finding the Dana's latest tweets, visitors are greeted this image instead:



Dana White's Twitter has been down as early as 20:00. Somebody ought to tell him, but I can only reach him through Twitter and he can't check for tweets while his account is suspended. Anybody have his email address?

Dana has been using Twitter really effectively as a marketing tool, and this really sucks for him that his account is down. More so for me, because this was going to be the only way I would be able to see the UFC and Randy Couture fight live. Can some body keep me posted on when his account gets back up? Cheers!

What does a 112 year old man and a 11 year old girl have in common?

Shocking headlines, that's what.

First a 112 year old Somalian man marries a 17 year old girl. Days later, an 11 year old Bulgarian girl gives birth to a baby on her WEDDING DAY.

What?

This 11 year old girl got knocked up by a 19 year old kid, and I guess they were trying to do the "right thing" by getting married before the baby was born. When she arrived in the hospital, she was still wearing her wedding dress.

The 19 year old is now facing jail time for having sex with a minor. I'd like meet the minister who conducted the ceremony and thought that marrying an 11 year old girl to a 19 year old boy was perfectly acceptable.

From Yahoo:

Eleven-year-old girl gives birth in Bulgaria

A Bulgarian schoolgirl, aged 11, has given birth to a baby girl on her wedding day.

Eleven-year-old girl gives birth in Bulgaria

Kordeza Zhelyazkova reportedly went into labour during her marriage to the child's father, 19-year-old Jeliazko Dimitrov.

It is reported the bride-to-be was still wearing her wedding dress when she arrived at hospital and gave birth to a healthy 5.5lb baby daughter, Violeta.

Zhelyazkova, thought to be the world's youngest mother, told the News of the World that she would not play with toys anymore as she has "a new toy now".

Her husband now faces up to six years in jail for having sex with a minor.

Every 112 year old Somali man's dream... is to marry a 17 year old?

Random office banter this morning led to a rather amusing news bit about a 112 year old Somali man who married a 17 year old girl.

Seventeen years old. This guy is almost 100 years older than his wife. That's mind boggling.

The best bit for me was reading his quote in an article on The Guardian's website.

"Today God helped me realise my dream," he said.

It's the same quote that you'll find when a baseball player wins the World Series, a fighter wins a championship, or even when a celebrity wins the latest edition of Masterchef. I wonder when he started to dream of marrying a 17 year old girl. Maybe he was having a full life crisis?

From The Guardian:

Somali man aged 112 marries girl of 17

• David Smith in Johannesburg
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 October 2009 19.05 GMT

He is old enough to be her great-great-grandfather. But Ahmed Muhamed Dhore, a Somalian who claims he is 112 years old, said he had realised a "dream" by marrying a 17-year-old bride.

Dhore – who says he was born in 1897, the year that Queen Victoria celebrated her diamond jubilee – already has 13 children by five wives, but said he would like more with his newest, Safiya Abdulle.

Hundreds of people attended the extraordinary ceremony this week in Guriceel, in the region of Galguduud. "Today God helped me realise my dream," Dore said. He and his new wife, who is almost a century his junior, are from the same village in Somalia, he said, adding that he had waited for her to grow up to propose. He says his children and two other wives agreed to the marriage, as did Abdulle's parents.

"I didn't force her, but used my experience to convince her of my love, and then we agreed to marry," the groom said. The bride's family said she was "happy with her new husband". Somali adolescent girls are often married off to older men.

Dhore has 114 children and grandchildren. His oldest son is 80 and three of his wives have died. This was his first marriage for three quarters of a century.

Didn't I see this in Saw 3?

A quick thinking doctor in Melbourne, Australia, saved a young boy's life by using a household drill to make a hole in his skull. I wonder if he's a fan of Saw 3? (Ok, it wasn't a drill in Saw 3, but the idea was similar)

Taken from Canoe.ca:

MELBOURNE, Australia - A doctor in rural Australia used a household drill to bore a hole into the skull of a boy with a severe head injury, saving his life.

Nicholas Rossi fell off his bike on Friday in Maryborough, hitting his head on the pavement, his family told The Australian newspaper in a story published Wednesday.

By the time Rossi got to the hospital, he was slipping in and out of consciousness.

The doctor on duty, Rob Carson, quickly recognized the 13-year-old was experiencing potentially fatal bleeding on the brain and knew he had only minutes to drill a hole through the boy's skull to relieve the pressure.

But the small hospital was not equipped with neurological drills - so Carson grabbed a household drill from the maintenance room.

A Melbourne neurosurgeon talked Carson through the procedure by telling him where to aim the drill and how deep to go and soon, a blood clot fell out, relieving the pressure on the boy's brain.

"Dr. Carson came over to us and said, 'I am going to have to drill into (Nicholas) to relieve the pressure on the brain - we've got one shot at this and one shot only,"' said the boy's father, Michael Rossi.

Rossi was airlifted to a larger hospital in Melbourne and released Tuesday - his 13th birthday.
Carson was modest about his feat.

"It is not a personal achievement, it is just a part of the job and I had a very good team of people helping me," he told the newspaper.

Michael Rossi was more effusive.

"He saved our son's life," he said.