FCC Asks Amazon and eBay To Stop Selling Fake Pay TV Boxes (techcrunch.com)

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and eBay CEO Devin Wenig asking their companies to help remove the listings for fake pay TV boxes from their respective websites. From a report: These boxes often falsely bear the FCC logo, the letter informed, and are used to perpetuate "intellectual property theft and consumer fraud." With the rise in cord cutting, a number of consumers have found it's just as easy to use an app like Kodi on a cheap streaming media device to gain access to content â" like TV shows and movies -- that they would otherwise miss out on by dropping their pay TV subscription. As an added perk, various software add-ons enable consumers to stream movies still in the theaters, too. It's an easier way to access pirated content than visiting The Pirate Bay and downloading torrent files.

Comments

they should also quit selling

[FudRucker]

non compliant cellphones too, require nothing less than GSM with 4g LTE, just do a search of some of those rugged cellphones with extra long battery life and you will find a boatload of old cellphones with obsolete specs/tech that wont even work with the system we have now

Fire TV as well?

[Nicholas Schumacher]

I wonder if the FCC wants Amazon to stop selling the Fire TV devices as well - given that they are also capable of running Kodi...

Re:Fire TV as well?

[aardvarkjoe]

Paragraph 1 deals with fraudulent FCC logo and failure to certify the device.

From paragraph 1: "Although sufficiently disturbing on its own, these devices are particularly problematic as they are perpetrating intellectual property theft and consumer fraud." He makes it clear that they are specifically targeting devices enabling piracy.

Paragraph 3 deals with fraudulent FCC logo and failure to certify the device.

From paragraph 3: "nine set top box distributors were referred to the FCC in October for enabling the unlawful streaming of copyrighted material, seven of which displayed the FCC logo, although there was no record of such compliance."

Anyone can read the letter and come to their own conclusions, of course, but it seems obvious to me that the reason why they're going after these particular devices is due to piracy, not primarily because of a lack of FCC authorization.