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

Easier?

[GameboyRMH]

It's an easier way to access pirated content than visiting The Pirate Bay and downloading torrent files.

Have you seen how much of a PITA is it to keep those damn Kodi plugins updated to whatever the good working plugins are this month from whatever repo they're hiding on this week? I disagree.

Re:Easier?

[dk20]

you have any idea what you are talking about?

this is the legal def. of theft:

Theft, in law, a general term covering a variety of specific types of stealing, including the crimes of larceny, robbery, and burglary. Theft is defined as the physical removal of an object that is capable of being stolen without the consent of the owner and with the intention of depriving the owner of it permanently.

people llike you can push your "theft" agenda all you want. it is copyright information, not theft.

what about theft from the public domain? you know, they get a copyright, decide 70 years isnt long enough and petitiion to make it even longer?

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?

[Obfuscant]

But they make it really clear in the letter that it's really the piracy angle that is the actual concern.

I read the letter. It's the fraudulent use of FCC logo and claim of certification that is the issue. Let's recap:

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

Paragraph 2 deals with fraudulent FCC logo and failure to certify the device.

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

Paragraph 4 talks about removing devices that are intended to facilitate intellectual property theft.

Paragraph 5 deals with "unlawful devices", which is because these are not certified and have false FCC logos.

Paragraph 6 deals with fraudulent FCC logo and failure to certify the device.

Paragraph 7 thanks both companies first for "upholding the Commission's equipment authorization process" and then for fighting IP theft, and then fighting consumer fraud. Two of the three "thanks" are for FCC certification fraud.

It would seem that the failure to certify the devices and use of the FCC logo fraudulently is the majority, if not the vast majority, of what the letter is about. To claim that the "actual concern" is IP theft ignores the "elephant in the letter". As the letter puts it, it is "outside the jurisdiction of the Commission" to take any action based on piracy, but they certainly have jurisdiction and sufficient cause to order the withdrawal of sale of such equipment based on FCC and other federal regulations, whether or not piracy is involved in any way. In fact, if either eBay or Amazon are actually participants in the sale they could be fined for those sales.

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.

Another unjustified stab at Kodi

[Anonymous Coward]

Have journalists always been weaponized idiots?

Re:Another unjustified stab at Kodi

[atrex]

Have journalists always been weaponized idiots?

The parent is absolutely right. Kodi does not allow and has never supported copyright infringement, and they have at times vehemently gone after people that sell boxes with Kodi preinstalled with Third Party plug-ins that allow for such. Like many open source projects though, their time and resources are limited.

Paid for FCC flailing around.

[WolfgangVL]

Like bit-torrent, the cat is out of the bag. No amount of flailing or FUD is going to make it go away. These devices are too easy to setup. Media prices and availability are convoluted and over priced, and laws so one sided that nobody respects them.

Over and over I see copyright terms extended for no good reason. Theft of the public domain for YEARS is what led directly to where we are today. FCC can maybe try to regulate the sale of preconfigured boxes, but this software runs on so many different devices, and is so easy to setup that there is really nothing they can do about it. For the most part, it's open source, and community developed, so there is no company they can sue into oblivion. No end-game.

It's funny, In my lifetime, I can remember the same flailing over VHS, Napster, TeVo, torrents, streaming, digital downloads... the list goes on and on. The tech never goes away. Sometimes there is a company to go after, sometimes they even lose, but aside from somebody losing ill-gotten profit, and a company closing its doors, the tech never goes away.

The lawyers get paid, content keeps moving, and tech slowly evolves around whatever roadblocks and DRM is put into place. Copyright is extended, more ways to pirate are developed and the cycle continues.

Even when they come up with a format or standard to stop the direct ripping and sharing of content, it ALWAYS fails. The floodgates open.

Can't stop the signal.

Re:While your at it

[supremebob]

Nah... those guys can't afford FCC lobbyists like the media companies and telcos can.