Last week, the company known as Zuffa which owns UFC subpoenaed Ustream and Justin.tv after some of their users were caught streaming pay-per-view events illegally. Since then, an online search was performed during last night’s UFC 117 event, showing that the illegal streaming is still occurring. In the image shown on the right, which was taken at about 10:00pm ET, a search for “ufc” on Ustream revealed some channels advertising an illegal stream of the event.

According to CrunchGear, illegal streaming access for all kind of sports events, including UFC is being offering by providers like Usteam, Justin.tv and then you just go offline to actually watch the streamed event. Furthermore, illegal streaming on PSP devices is even more difficult to prevent, especially if the streaming access is being hosted in other countries, which also occurs frequently. Currently, this problem has even spread to a number of BitTorrent sites as well. Thus, illegal streaming is a growing problem with no easy solution and strategies like using subpoenas against guilty parties won’t be enough to solve it.

But CrunchGear suggests that this problem could be eliminated if sports organizations like Zuffa would lower their costs for streaming access of live events from a Web or satellite provider. However, this possible solution might only work in the United States since the nature of illegal streaming isn’t the same in every country. In fact, some places actually offer free streaming for sports. For example, you can stream events on ESPN for free in the United Kingdom.

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