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Police Arrest Five Men For Selling Kodi Boxes 'Fully Loaded' With Illegal Streaming Apps (bbc.com)
Five people have been arrested in early morning raids for selling "fully loaded Kodi boxes," which are set-top boxes modified to stream subscription football matches, television channels and films for free. The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) said it believed the suspects had made roughly $250,000 selling the devices online. BBC reports: Kodi is free software built by volunteers to bring videos, music, games and photographs together in one easy-to-use application. Some shops sell legal set-top boxes and TV sticks, often called Kodi boxes, preloaded with the software. The developers behind Kodi say their software does not contain any content of its own and is designed to play legally owned media or content "freely available" on the internet. However, the software can be modified with third-party add-ons that provide access to pirated copies of films and TV series, or free access to subscription television channels. The five arrests were made in Bolton, Bootle, Cheadle, Manchester and Rhyl.
Have they looked on ebay? craigslist? everywhere? 5 arrests is less than spit in the ocean. Those boxes are too easy to make or buy. A good android box loaded with all the "bad" addons can be had for 30 bucks. I got one that does 4K and h265 video for the same price as a raspberry pi 3.
The common person on the street in the UK calls a "Kodi Box" a box that you can buy with pre-setup links and plugins to pirate streams.
It isn't related to Kodi in the same way BitTorrent isn't exclusively used for pirate content, but in the common person the two are basically 100% correlated.
I hate the entire idea of software being illegal.
I wonder if this would be illegal in the US. Code is speech, at least in the case of encryption software. Then again, the MPAA is a very powerful group. Look at their pissing content with Kim Dotcom. I have a feeling the entertainment industry would try, but (hopefully) not get very far.
Politicians paid to fight against technology they don't understand. Technically, (my understanding is) the plugins are not even illegal. It's the content they are pointing at that is technically enabling unauthorized viewing. IANAL, but I am interested in how this plays out. Could be an interesting court case, and potentially set some pretty crazy precedents. Are you watching closely?
How is this different from a browser that can go to the very same links the plugins are pointing at and get you unauthorized entertainment? Browser was paid for one way or another. By this logic, every web-browser is just as guilty, and setting grandma up with a couple of bookmarks makes me a criminal.
Kodi boxes are neat. Looks like they have finally hit critical mass.
All this does is drive the tech back into moms basement where it started. Goo Yob. Changes nothing.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
I've seen one legitimate cable subscriber, perhaps inadvertently, provide cable to multiple users at apartment complexes and trailer parks through clever splices and hidden cables. Despite the risk of being charged with theft of service, sheer economic forces drive the poorest among us to alternatives when paying for content is not an option.
tl/dr: Cheating a bit to get what would otherwise be unavailable to you will not die suddenly because a handful of violators for profit got pinched.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I think we should have police enforce patent law as well.
Patent trolls would have a field day having SWAT kick down the doors at 'Moms House of Pies" because they used 'a method to photograph a freshly made pie and distribute the picture through signage to passing traffic'
I think the problem you may be having is trying to apply US law to a UK arrest. In the US the plugins probably aren't considered illegal in and of themselves but if you actually use them to access content you don't have the rights to then THAT is illegal. AFAICT in the UK buying/selling the very plugin is illegal. So if the seller of the "KODI" box lives in the UK they are breaking UK law. Not for KODI itself but the offending plugin. In the US not so much despite what the RIAA/MPAA say.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
This is how I know you're lying:
I finally got DirecTV and it's been great ever since.
It is surprising one can still buy a knife, given it can be used in a crime. Forks are dangerous too, and one can hit hard with a spoon.
is going to get screwed eventually. Inducing law enforcement to go after people who sell readily available boxes with readily available software installed on them, is the strategy of an industry that is in denial and wilfully clueless.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
In 2016 I probably had a total of 30 minutes outage during particularly bad storms. Cable ran about the same and the pictures is way better than cable. If you're losing signal all the time something is wrong with the installation.
Kodi is just media player software. Every TV now has a build-in media player and internet access. Okay, maybe not those 'illegal' streaming plug-ins, but they all have browsers where you can access the same content. I mean, do these built-in TV media-players really expect all those .mp4 and .mkv files they play to be "legally" obtained? They know damn well the origin of most of that content is shady at best, yet they enable it.
I think there is more behind this story and it's probably more tax than copyright related. They are making hundreds of thousands in a parallel market without paying taxes. That's the real crime here.