Roku Gets Tough On Pirate Channels, Warns Users (torrentfreak.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Earlier this year Roku was harshly confronted with this new piracy crackdown when a Mexican court ordered local retailers to take its media player off the shelves. While this legal battle isn't over yet, it was clear to Roku that misuse of its platform wasn't without consequences. While Roku never permitted any infringing content, it appears that the company has recently made some adjustments to better deal with the problem, or at least clarify its stance. Pirate content generally doesn't show up in the official Roku Channel Store but is directly loaded onto the device through third-party "private" channels. A few weeks ago, Roku renamed these "private" channels to "non-certified" channels, while making it very clear that copyright infringement is not allowed. A "WARNING!" message that pops up during the installation of these third-party channels stresses that Roku has no control over the content. In addition, the company notes that these channels may be removed if it links to copyright infringing content.

"By continuing, you acknowledge you are accessing a non-certified channel that may include content that is offensive or inappropriate for some audiences," Roku's warning reads. "Moreover, if Roku determines that this channel violates copyright, contains illegal content, or otherwise violates Roku's terms and conditions, then ROKU MAY REMOVE THIS CHANNEL WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE."

Comments

Is Roku finally growing up?

[Ichijo]

I love my Rokus. I have two of them, a first generation model and a new Premiere+. The Premiere+ is pretty nice. Most video files I throw at it play natively without transcoding, unlike my iPad and Android phone (Nexus 6P).

But Roku the company has always been confused about their role in the channel space. They want to be your cable company but they don't want any part in making sure their channels are high quality (similar to Google's historical role in the Android apps space) or even if they work properly, preferring to shift the blame onto the channel's authors. In fact, I once suggested in their online forum that they could automate the checking of each channel's videostreams as a way to determine which channels should be removed from the channel store, but they temporarily banned me and then locked the thread because my suggestion was "not welcomed."

So it's nice to hear that they're taking a more active approach to ensuring customer satisfaction, but it would be nice if they had been doing it all along without government intervention.