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Hollywood's International War on Kodi Plugins And Video-Streaming Boxes (eff.org)
An anonymous reader quotes the EFF:
In the past few years, the sale of pre-configured Kodi boxes, and the availability of a range of plugins providing access to streaming media, has seen the software's popularity balloon -- and made it the latest target of Hollywood's copyright enforcement juggernaut. We've seen this in the appearance of streaming media boxes as an enforcement priority in the U.S. Trade Representative's Special 301 Report, in proposals for new legislation targeting the sale of "illicit" media boxes, and in lawsuits that have been brought on both sides of the Atlantic to address the "problem" that media boxes running Kodi, like any Web browser, can be used to access media streams that were not authorized by the copyright holder...
The difficulty facing the titans of TV is that since neither those who sell Kodi boxes, nor those who write or host add-ons for the software, are engaging in any unauthorized copying by doing so, cases targeting these parties have to rely on other legal theories. So far several legal theories have been used; one in Europe against sellers of Kodi boxes, one in Canada against the owner of the popular Kodi add-on repository TVAddons, and two in the United States against TVAddons and a plugin developer... These lawsuits by big TV incumbents seem to have a few goals: to expand the scope of secondary copyright infringement yet again, to force major Kodi add-on distributors off of the Internet, and to smear and discourage open source, freely configurable media players by focusing on the few bad actors in that ecosystem.
The EFF details the specific lawsuits in each region, and concludes that their courts "should reject these expansions of copyright liability, and TV networks should not target neutral platforms and technologies for abusive lawsuits."
The difficulty facing the titans of TV is that since neither those who sell Kodi boxes, nor those who write or host add-ons for the software, are engaging in any unauthorized copying by doing so, cases targeting these parties have to rely on other legal theories. So far several legal theories have been used; one in Europe against sellers of Kodi boxes, one in Canada against the owner of the popular Kodi add-on repository TVAddons, and two in the United States against TVAddons and a plugin developer... These lawsuits by big TV incumbents seem to have a few goals: to expand the scope of secondary copyright infringement yet again, to force major Kodi add-on distributors off of the Internet, and to smear and discourage open source, freely configurable media players by focusing on the few bad actors in that ecosystem.
The EFF details the specific lawsuits in each region, and concludes that their courts "should reject these expansions of copyright liability, and TV networks should not target neutral platforms and technologies for abusive lawsuits."
> There's nothing wrong with watching a movie via torrent, if you have a license to watch that movie otherwise, eg having bought a DVD. There's nothing wrong with watching your local TV station's stream.
Morally, Yes; Legally, No.
Let them ban preloaded Kodi boxes... I don't really care.
Smarter folk just use a Raspberry Pi with OpenElec/Kodi and their choice of add-ons anyway.
The fewer store-bought preloaded Kodi boxes there are, the quicker my streams will start :-)
It has been 20 years since pirates started making media files available practically on demand, yet the Music And Film Industry Associations still - don't - get - it: They still insist on any form of market segmentation that they can think of. They still carve out regions. They still want "exclusive" content. Do they understand the word? Exclusive means it excludes people from consuming the product. You can still not enter the title of a movie you want to see and just watch it. First you have to figure out which service has it in their library, then you have to become a customer of that service, then they let you watch it, if your player works with that service. The pirates don't deliver for free: People buy the boxes with the illegal plugins installed. But the pirates have the better product. It. Just. Works. Hollywood on the other hand? Twenty years and they still don't deliver.
You got modded down because you are full of shit.
I can pirating and that's not going to influence anyone so piracy still exists.
Your solution is pointless, it expects people to actually follow a good example when you know that's not how modern anything works.
Also, you expect the whole world to follow USA law. That's just bonkers.
Property is theft. Culture belongs to the whole of humanity. The only reason money exists is because it is fun to earn and buy things. So when it isn't it's all fair game.
Back when pirates ruled the seas, pirates delivered a better product too. Pirates are cool. That's why you have Pirates of the Caribbean and not Her Majesty's Ships of the Caribbean.
Well the pirates were privateers.
Weren't they though?
I support creators of content, but not middlemen who geofence it, region-block it, or herd it into bundles that require me to subscribe to a ludicrous number of different streaming services. For that reason I Kodi when I find I can't rent a single view of content because of one of these mechanisms.
> There's a simple solution to make this problem go away completely. Stop pirating stuff
These are the same people that sue you for developing tools to use the physical media we BOUGHT from them.
"Not pirating" really isn't going to help.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.