Five arrests in 'fully loaded' Kodi streaming box raids | Hacker News Reader

Five arrests in 'fully loaded' Kodi streaming box raids

bbc.com

127 pointsseycombi256 comments

It won't make a dent on piracy, in fact the use of Kodi will likely now increase as any press is good press.

Just like electricity, people will always take the path of least resistance. If I open Netflix to watch an episode of something, and they only have half of the series/season, I'm just going to use Kodi to watch it for free. Why would I order a DVD and wait for days? Or buy it and wait hours to download it? Or setup another subscription service for a monthly cost? Why do any of this when I can be watching it within seconds, cost doesn't even factor in, it's just so easy and convenient.

If Kodi/Exodus was a fully legal, licensed platform whereby I could pay monthly/per-show (at an agreeable price), I'd pay - because it's so easy to use and it has almost everything.

Until that day though, I've cancelled all streaming services (as they removed my favourite shows or only offer series/seasons I don't want) apart from Prime as I like the delivery times and cloud storage. I don't even have a TV aerial anymore as that broke, I just have 3 TVs, 3 Firesticks and a Chromecast, job done.

>Why do any of this when I can be watching it within seconds, cost doesn't even factor in, it's just so easy and convenient.

Because it is stealing. Some people still believe in paying for value.

Prime has a boat-load of movies and tv shows available for free or pay to watch on demand. I think their prices are a little high for 24hr rental (3.99$), but still it is legal. It is better to not go to jail than to feed one's entertainment lust.

> Because it is stealing.

In theft you take something from someone else, and they are then deprived of what you took. I take your loaf of bread, you have one less loaf of bread.

If I copy your movie, you still have your movie.

Now, if I (somehow) get hold of a copy of a digital file you want to sell me, you'll be less likely to be able to get me to buy it (although, studies have shown that those that copy content a lot, also tend to pay for content a lot).

So we need another word than "theft" - and that word certainly isn't "piracy" - people that violate copyright, rarely murder people or disrupt trade routes and critical infrastructure.

I'm not saying we don't need some system of compensation if we want to continue to produce art - but just as a boycott is a very passive act of resistance, so is not paying for crippled (DRM) content. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that there's a need to prove that someone watching a copy for free would be more likely to pay for that copy than go outside and play a game of catch if the content wasn't available for copying.

]This semantic tangent has been derailing these conversations on forums across the internet for years. I think it's time to put it to bed. No one is confused about this usage of the word "stealing," nor is your specific definition the only valid one. We don't need another word, "stealing" is just fine.

No. This 'semantic tangent' has very real consequences. The propaganda equating copyright infringement with robbery is bullshit, but bullshit with a purpose: getting the government to pick up the task of copyright enforcement, because it's too costly to make sense for the lobbying organizations to do it themselves.

If we accepted your handwaving, people charged with actually robbing someone's home and people charged with downloading half a season of Glee would face the same sentencing standards. That is obviously deranged.

So, no. The debate must continue, until consensus is reached and the matter fixed in law.

> If we accepted your handwaving, people charged with actually robbing someone's home and people charged with downloading half a season of Glee would face the same sentencing standards.

Can you expand on this? Seems like a non-sequitur.

You are equating making a copy with theft.

While I'm happy for you that you feel comfortable deciding that this can be put to bed, clearly many people feel differently.

I'd argue that merely the observation that many intelligent, morally sensitive people here on HN feel differently should be enough to realize that this is not a 'tangent' that can be 'put to bed'. Why would you even put it like that, knowing that there is such disagreement?

Because it's a purely semantic argument (in the literal sense of being an argument about the definition of words). There is no fundamental universal truth underlying whether it's OK to refer to piracy informally as "stealing".

If you wanted to pay for it, what does it make it?

Even though it's a copy you gained something without effort or compensating the creator. The effort of creating the thing you have a copy of is how it gains its value.

The creator has not lost anything. It is not zero sum. They haven't lost money, they haven't lost time...

This line of thinking can only be followed by selfish motivated reasoning.

Suppose I bake 100 brownies and try to sell them one morning. I sell some and as I'm packing up my booth you take one and eat it. You argue, "I was never going to pay for a brownie, I didn't want it that badly, and anyway you can't sell them tomorrow because they will be stale."

There is something deeply wrong and immoral about this way of thinking. The idea that you alone get to value someone else's work output to be zero and then take that output and claim it has no value, and that the taking causes no harm.

It is theft. But you don't want to be called a thief. So you play semantic games.

If I take your brownie that's a brownie you can no longer sell or eat, this isn't the case when you copy software. If they stole a brownie you threw in the trash would you still call them a thief?

But you didn't copy the music and then delete it. You enjoyed it. There was a gain on one side and nothing exchanged for that gain. The lack of reciprocity is the root issue.

Enjoyment was never part of the transaction anyway. I can't get a refund from a movie because I didn't like it.

But you're just quibbling over word choice instead of actually engaging with the core of the moral argument I've made.

Either you can't see the moral argument, which leads me to believe you really are unable to see that piracy is theft. Or you simply don't want to see it and then I fall back to think this is motivated ignorance.

Your whole argument is quibling over word choice, wanting to call pirates thieves even though there are distinct differences.

And yet you still won't engage with the core argument about the immorality of violating the principle of reciprocity. I get it. You think I'm wrong. You have to either make an attempt to change my mind or simply stop replying.

If you don't care to engage with the idea then I don't care to continue.

Yes I think it's wrong, I'll agree with you on that. I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as stealing though.

It is theft of service. Same as if you went in for a haircut, and didn't pay for it. You just stole the service provider's time. The only difference with copyrighted works is that the multi-million dollar price tag on it is divided up among all the people who purchase it.

The harm caused is that you are denying the copyright owner their legal monopoly rights on distributing copies, therefore devaluing their virtual asset.

> It is theft of service. Same as if you went in for a haircut, and didn't pay for it. You just stole the service provider's time.

What does matter is marginal cost of providing service. In this case it is ZERO. So no, it is not stealing. Nowhere close.

Ok, so let's break this down a bit further, and have a world without copyrights.

Say that I have an idea for a copyrightable work. It is going to take me one year to create it, working 8 hours a day. To make it simple, put a price of my time at $100,000 for that one year.

Now I could find someone to give me $100,000 as a fee for creating that work (assume that I have no other desire to make it for myself, so I would only do that if someone pays me). But now the problem is, to almost any potential customer, that work is only worth $10.00. So it doesn't get created.

Or, I could find 10,000 people to each give me $10.00 in advance to make it. Now this is in the realm of possibility. Kind of like the Kickstarter model. But now everyone either has to pay in advance, then wait a year to receive it. Or sign a legally binding contract that they owe $10.00 each once the product is delivered. This all adds friction to the system.

Can we invent some technique to remove this friction? How about, I'm willing to take a chance on the popularity of my work, and build it in advance. I really don't know how many people are interested -- it might be 10,000; maybe 5,000 or possibly 50,000. So with copyright, I can safely take that chance -- over time, if I create enough works, some may lose (not be popular enough), some may win big (and I make much more than the time I put into it). As long as it averages out, society in general is better off (assuming you think it is worthwhile for the works to exist to begin with -- I'm guessing this is true, otherwise you wouldn't be interested in obtaining it to begin with).

Now, does anyone have any other models (I mentioned the Kickstarter model already) that can equally reduce the above-mentioned friction? That is, allowing a creator to take a chance on making something in advance, and then on average extracting the fair fee for everyone who wants that service?

> Can we invent some technique to remove this friction?

Patreon?

Do you disagree only with the term stealing? Do you believe there is anything wrong with the behavior?

IP law needs to be reformed. It's deeply immoral in both general idea and implementation. Royalties should not be a thing, period. We are not in medieval England anymore, we as a society have ways of providing patronage that does not involve state violence. Apart from that there are live performances (which feed like 99% of artists).

And I don't really care about mega-production Hollywood. It can burn today if I care.

Given the laws we have today, do you believe there is anything wrong with the behavior?

People doing business on someones content - no, that's not OK.

Copying someones work for your own consumption? Nothing is wrong with such behavior. Nor with non-commercial sharing. Not until you have disposable income. Then consuming and not chipping in is meh.

Legal positivism is has it's stronger sides, but this is victimless crime.

And what about your views? :)

I think it's really important to be upfront with saying what you believe is wrong. It makes it really easy for people to dismiss an argument when all they read is "no, it is not stealing", particularly in this domain. It's too easy to roll this in with those who don't want to pay for anything, that all content should be free. You're arguing something different, which isn't clear until someone else digs down. I think you do yourself a disservice in doing so.

I don't think whether or not you have disposable income is an important discriminant. Who decides whether you have enough disposable income to justify paying for content?

I think there are a lot of issues with laws regarding intellectual property and content. Even though I disagree with them, I don't think flouting those laws is right or some sort of civil disobedience.

Same with copying someone's work for personal use or non-commercial sharing. The existing framework is the one we've got, and there are currently ways authors or content providers can make it clear that they are willing to do so: Creative Commons licenses are one example. Likewise with other patronage models, such as Patreon. In other cases, you're benefitting from their work without them receiving compensation. There's no agreed upon transaction. Whatever term is used to describe it, I don't think it's right.

If you wouldn't have otherwise purchased the content there is no loss.

Granted, you're not the parent I was referring to, but let me ask again: Do you believe there is anything wrong with the behavior?

I'm not the parent you were referring to either, but my view is that 1) yes, shamelessly 'pirating' is at the very least a moral gray area, and in my opinion on darker side of this area, and 2) calling it stealing is a gross oversimplification.

Concerning 2): many people I know who pirate, say, a particular show, would simply not watch if piracy was not available. On the other hand, once this show becomes easily available and accessible on something like Netflix, these same people happily pay for the content. It seems inaccurate and dishonest to call them 'thieves' by the conventional definition.

tl;dr: I wouldn't defend piracy in most cases (you could just not watch the show), but I think calling someone doing this a 'thief' is a morally worse because of what that words means to most of us.

So to go back to derekp7's analogy, if I wouldn't have otherwise purchased the haircut, then there's no loss to the barber?

This is a poor analogy anyways because time is money for most intents and purposes. Making a copy of a file doesn't cost anyone time or money as the work in question has already been created and the time has already been spent.

No, because the barber had to expend effort and resources on you.

If I copy all your emails and financial records have I harmed you?

Are you only harmed if I remove your access to those records?

That's yet a different issue. Watching an old episode of Seinfeld does not violate anyone's privacy.

Theft: you have a painting. I took it.

Violation of privacy: I got into your phone and looked at all your dick pics.

Warrantless search: The police got into your phone and looked at all your dick pics, possibly finding evidence of a crime.

They are different issues which can look similar at times, but are actually completely separate. Pretending like they are is just adding muck to this discussion.

There's one more separate issue.

Piracy: You have a ship. I climbed aboard, murdered some of your crew, and took control of your ship or stole some of your belongings.

English words admit to multiple, distinct definitions.

Yes, that's completely the same thing as downloading a movie illegally.

That's an invasion of privacy and violates all kinds of laws and ethical standards.

If you reproduce my song without my consent, that's a violation of a very specific law which allows me a temporary* restriction on your rights. The ethical question raised, I think, is of a very different nature.

*temporary: used to be ~20 years, now is until 70 years after I die.

I'd say that by simply copying and reading those emails and financial records you haven't done any harm. If you've used the knowledge gained from those documents to deprive someone of their finances(theft) or any such malicious action I'd say you've harmed the owner of these documents.

Disclaimer: I do not condone piracy, I just believe you've made a logical fallacy.

These arguments always comes up in these types of discussions. In reality though personal information has far less protection than commercial information. If you take nude pictures of yourself you might as well keep your credit card in frame, since that's essentially the only way someone would be sentenced for copying them later.

No. If you begin committing identity theft, Yes.

'hacker' has also changed meanings. There isn't much you can do about it. That's the nature of language.

Copyright infringement isn't theft, it's counterfeiting. It's 100X worse because instead of just stealing some physical items like a television, it's devaluing the television to the point where it can no longer be sold.

It certainly can still be sold, just look at music. The industry recaptured a lot of people through a combination of affordable DRM free purchases and easy-to-use streaming. Video is getting there, they just allowed license restrictions and greedy pricing get in the way.

It's not that people wont pay for media content, it's that they won't allow rent seeking behavior to stifle cultural innovation and enjoyment.

I view trying to silo culture to extract maximal rent as considerably worse than taking away their artificial monopoly in response.

and yet people still buy media

Thought experiment:

What if the copyrighted material was code instead of media?

Suppose company A invests $500M in writing code for a major new product. Development finishes and they begin selling the product and slowly recouping their costs. Now, company B comes along and surreptitiously hacks into company A, copying their their source code (they haven't stolen the source code, only copied it). Company B now begins selling a copycat product for far less than A wants to charge, destroying A's ability to earn back its investment. Has company B committed a crime?

Certainly company B let company A keep its source code, but by copying the source code it did not let company A keep its way of earning money.

They hacked the other company (one crime) and infringed the copyright of the other company (second crime).

But I think you've got a couple of holes in your simile. Source code is a much more powerful thing to have than the final product. I can't remember a time where a movie's entire set of footage and effects assets were leaked/stolen, and the equivalent of a movie being leaked is compiled binaries being leaked, and that happens all the time. I'd also judge selling an illegally copied thing to be a worse offense than giving away an illegally copied thing.

> Certainly company B let company A keep its source code, but by copying the source code it did not let company A keep its way of earning money.

And yet, companies still make software, movies, music. I'd be more worried if those businesses were made non-viable due to copyright infringement losses and more sympathetic if I thought something copyrighted today would exit copyright within my lifetime.

More equivalent argument: company A makes a product. Consumer A who would not pay the asking price for the product downloads the trial then sets their system clock back 10 years and uses that product for free for personal non-commercial enjoyment a few times over the course of a few years. They technically violated the license agreement but did not profit from their circumvention. They would not have otherwise paid the asking price, so a sale is not realistically lost.

Yes, copyright/patent infringement (depending on the exact details).

But there are circumstances that might mitigate how the public (and perhaps law) feels about that, eg, if company B bought a copy of the software and slightly modified it to work on a new operating sysem, then sold just the changed version.

> Some people still believe in paying for value.

But apparently not all people believe in charging for value, since a lot of shows, movies, etc. aren't available to stream.

What good is half a season of something, especially if it's the second half? I've not watches shows just because there's no way to catch up to where the current Hulu/Netflix/Whatever offering was. Sometimes I'd pirate it, but sometimes I wasn't really sold enough on the premise to bother.

I wonder what the marketing department would think of that. "Your attempts to sell me something failed so hard, I refused to bother stealing it."

Completely agree. It is frequently the media companies' unwillingness to sell to buyers on their own terms that leads to this problem. Additionally, the fact that most content is irrelevant to most buyers.

Obviously, the traditional model was designed to subsidize creating something for everyone. But, now, it has been subverted to improve margins by creating everything for everybody / lowest common denominator. On the off chance that it fits my tastes, I still have to buy the rest of the crap just to view what I want.

I'll pay for content, but I want to be able to buy what I want. Content creators have always had a tough time monetizing the content vs the mode of delivery. You pay for the theater when you go to the movies, you pay for the bandwidth when you stream, you pay for the dvd printing when you buy a DVD. It would be nice if the licensing per item were fixed, and the mode of delivery were left up to the buyer.

Yep. As Gave Newell says, "piracy is a service problem."

Honestly, I think it's more than that, I think it's an economic problem. Our economic model no longer matches reality. We used to bake the costs of production into the cost of a unit, which makes sense for physical goods. That makes no sense with digital goods. 15 years ago things like Napster were supposed to be the wake-up call for that.

Instead we chose to ignore that lesson, and now we're collectively suffering for it today.

I agree completely. I don't have cable, but I pay for SlingTV, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and CBS All Access. If a tv series isn't on one of those platforms, I will find it somewhere else. But I won't pay $30 for one tv series.

I will make the argument I always make when this comes up: it's not stealing it's depriving rights holders of potential revenue. But it's really not because the market value of the content is approaching $0. That is, if I can't watch an episode of Buffy for free, I won't pay for it. I just won't watch it. This the cost I'm willing to pay is exactly $0. Therefore they lose no revenue.

If you are uncomfortable with that mental gymnastics, here is a slightly less harsh approach. I currently pay for Netflix, HBO Now, Spotify, and Audible. So I am willing to pay $40-50/month for access to high quality commercial-free content on unlimited basis. But back when iTunes was the only option for streaming at something like $1/episode and $5/movie, I would not dream of it. So I guess the cost I am willing to pay is not quite $0 per each piece of content, but it's definitely not $20 each. I think a market adjustment is coming for content producers because I do believe lots of people have similar price points.

By the same token, when I go to say (Forbes.com), the advertisers are stealing bandwidth from me. Unless I use an adblocker, the ads use bandwidth that I pay for.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160317/09274333934/why-a...

i.e. the advertisers entire business model is lowering their costs by pushing those costs onto me.

Then after I install an adblocker, they complain that I'm the one who's stealing. No, I'm trying to read an article. If Forbes refuses to let me read articles with an adblocker in place, I'll just go somewhere else.

And that's ignoring all of the arguments around artificial monopolies, and the perverting of the copyright system through the "immortal mouse".

> Because it is stealing. Some people still believe in paying for value.

I'll care about people stealing from an oligopoly when people care about regulating natural monopolies and oligopolies to the point they behave reasonably.

It's not stealing, it's unauthorized copying. And I'm pretty sure retail end-user pirates don't go to jail.

In any case, the moral argument doesn't appear to work. People just don't care.

> In any case, the moral argument doesn't appear to work.

Why would it work? You could equally successfully try to shame people into not breathing without payment.

There's no reason to think it would work, but that doesn't stop people from shouting it every time someone discusses the reasons why people pirate.

Maybe if it were called "copying" instead of "piracy" (on the high seas).

> It is better to not go to jail than to feed one's entertainment lust.

While I agree with your post overall that ideally the end consumer shouldn't access such content illegally, the days of the end user going to jail or being fined over illicit downloads are long gone. The content companies and the governments finally woke up to the reality that going after those who profit from making the content available, rather than the end user, is the correct thing to do. As the GP said, people will naturally take the easiest path, and often downloading a TV episode from an illicit source is easier than attempting to purchase it legally (for some shows one must subscribe to as many as four streaming services to get all seasons/series).

All of that said, it really is a game of whack-a-mole the governments and content companies are playing by going after the little guys distributing the content. Just as with the war on drugs and the war on terrorism, it's a war that will never be won.

>stealing

>go to jail(for watching)

So much hyperbole. The article refers to people selling preloaded piracy boxes for profit, which is different than setting up your own.

Criminal courts are no place for regulating copyright infringement much like combating drug use. It is just as likely to worsen the problem, be more expensive than the alternative, or cause a variety of harmful externalities neutralizing the net benefit (for ex: slowing R&D).

You can argue about whether to call it stealing but it is breaking the law. It's shocking to me the way so many people, especially in the generation after me, have proudly abandoned any pretense to morals or ethics. Sure GenX has its share of amoral people, but at least they had the good taste to lie about it. I mean, that's kind of admitting that morality is important

You can consider copyright infringement wrong and simultaneously believe criminalizing it as theft is a bad idea.

For example jay-walking is wrong because it's dangerous but many people do it anyway and it's not generally villianized. So then is the solution having police patrols in the streets fining/arresting people as a deterance? Will that reduce the problem and legitimately help both pedestrians and drivers? Or will educating people on the risks, creating alternatives such as adding more crossing points, improving cars ability to detect pedestrians, etc, etc, be a better solution?

Not everything is black or white, good or bad.

I'm think simultaneously improving pedestrian facilities while making penalties on jaywalking harsh is an okay idea, especially if the goal is 100% compliance.

What if you just noticed that there are already tunnels under all the roads?

Is it then immoral to walk under the road when some people interpret that as technically jay walking even though you're not directly effecting anyone in the way that the law assumes you will?

It's a bad analogy but I'll try to play along:

The tunnels are private property, with a sign saying "Private Property - Do Not Enter", and nothing gives you the inherent right to use them.

I made no statement about whether or to what extent the law should punish this.

> You can argue about whether to call it stealing but it is breaking the law. It's shocking to me the way so many people, especially in the generation after me, have proudly abandoned any pretense to morals or ethics

You're conflating laws and morality. Wouldn't it make more sense that the people pirating movies don't see it as morally wrong, instead of people pirating movies because they are amoral?

No, I'm not. I'm making two different statements about related aspects of the same act. I'm surprised, but shouldn't be by the down votes in this thread and the disturbing responses. You guys do in fact proudly believe it is right to steal someone else's work product

When you wrote:

> It's shocking to me the way so many people, especially in the generation after me, have proudly abandoned any pretense to morals or ethics. Sure GenX has its share of amoral people, but at least they had the good taste to lie about it. I mean, that's kind of admitting that morality is important

You are either saying saying society is more immoral now (which is irrelevant and off-topic), or saying the piracy is immoral, which is debatable. But then you don't provide any points to back up your argument.

Your first sentence, that piracy is illegal, is true but also besides the point of morality. Slavery was legal for a long time and I'm pretty sure we can all agree it was not moral just because it was legal. Apparently it's illegal to have an ice cream cone in your back pocket in Alabama, does that immediately make it immoral?

You keep calling it stealing, which it is not. If you want to bring legality into the debate, piracy is legally not stealing. Loaded words like that do nothing to help a discussion.

> You guys do in fact proudly believe it is right to steal someone else's work product

And where are you getting this info? I haven't pirated anything for years and am generally against it. I certainly don't believe it's anyone's right to do so. I bet many people here feel the same way.

However at the same time, realistically, I don't believe piracy is causing as much harm as anyone makes it out to be. Anecdotally, I don't know anyone who pirates things or has pirated things that would have purchased it otherwise. They just don't view/listen to/use the thing.

Often the most successful software products are the ones with the highest piracy rates. Anti-piracy measures generally screw over the average consumer more than they screw over pirates.

I liken it to jay-walking. Is it illegal? Sure. Is it bad in some circumstances? Sure. Should we dedicate a giant task force to jaywalking, create city streets that have anti-jaywalking barriers, and lock up anyone who does it? That would do more harm than good.

> Sure GenX has its share of amoral people, but at least they had the good taste to lie about it. I mean, that's kind of admitting that morality is important.

If that's your morality then everyone after GenX surely dodged a bullet. You'd prefer someone act like a psychopath rather than admit they don't agree with your moral code.

Equating one nation's laws at one point in time to morality and ethics is just the icing on the cake. Perhaps you still think that African-American men who marry white women or use non-segregated bathrooms are immoral too?

"It's shocking to me the way so many people, especially in the generation after me, have proudly abandoned any pretense to morals or ethics."

Not moral or ethics? I don't think so. Do you mean different morals and ethics that yours, maybe?

That comment about the new generations is so old as the first generation, by the way.

Do you ever speed? Did you ever drink before legal age? Most people [citation needed] think of pirating a song or a movie as being on that level, if at all.

Huh? My dad who is 65 now was proudly buying illegal cable descramblers in the 80s and bragging to all his friends about it, who would then go on to buy descramblers of their own. Since then he's moved on to Napster, Kazaa, Moviebox, Popcorn time, and Kodi.

Ah yes, the old, "my one counterexample totally refutes your hyperbolic generalization response". I'll try to remember to include a paragraph full of statistical disclaimers the next time I contribute a generalization to an internet discussion

What's interesting in this case is that the guys who are loading some software are being prosecuted. They haven't stolen anything.

If there's a specific law they're breaking, I'd be surprised.

I'm not sure about the UK where these arrests occurred, but in the US it might fall afoul of the "making available" concept of US copyright law. In other words, the original content creator has the exclusive right to make the content available for public consumption, whether by paid or free streaming or download, and any other entity that makes the content available is in violation of copyright law. I'd be interested in the outcome of an arrest over Kodi boxes here in the States, especially if it were challenged all the way up to the Supreme Court, as the "loaded Kodi box" guys are not streaming the content themselves, only providing an easy path (and profiting).

The text refers to a current test-case giving three charges, two of selling boxes "adapted for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of effective technological measures" and one of "advertising a product to circumvent technological measures" [1].

It looks like the law stems from European Directive 2001/29/EC (2001) [2][3]. That directive isn't law in itself, it's an instruction for the EU member states to implement law to deliver that directive (in fact, the UK were initially convicted of failing to implement it by the 2002 deadline).

At a guess, the relevant law is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Section 24 [4]:

  Secondary infringement: providing means for making infringing copies.
  (1)Copyright in a work is infringed by a person who, without the licence of the copyright owner—
     (a) makes,
     (b) imports into the United Kingdom,
     (c) possesses in the course of a business, or
     (d) sells or lets for hire, or offers or exposes for sale or hire,
     an article specifically designed or adapted for making copies of that work, knowing or having reason to believe that it is to be used to make infringing copies.

[1] http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/kodi-box-cou...

[2] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A6...

[3] http://www.out-law.com/page-333

[4] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/24

But the article seems to say that the Kodi software itself doesn't allow piracy, it's just software that third parties have written add-ons to, and those third-party add-ons give access to pirated content.

If that's actually the case, then it's hard for me to see how selling the fully-loaded Kodi box is more illegal than selling a computer with an internet connection. After all, there's third party software for computers that give access to pirated content as well, right?

edit: Ah, I guess I misunderstood the article. Some people are selling boxes preloaded with Kodi, and other people are selling boxes preloaded with Kodi+the third party apps, I guess?

It probably depends somewhat on how these devices are marketed. I was in a resturaunt last year where a salesperson was showing one of these boxes to the resturaunt owners, he had it hooked up to the TV and he was accessing pirated content while claiming it was "included" in the price of the box ($499!) and "completely legal". Definitely questionable.

Yes, I think that's the key distinction. Kodi is available (for example) in the Play Store so selling a box with it pre-installed is not illegal. However, if you go the extra step and include the piracy add-ons and (potentially) a subscription IPTV service then you've overstepped the line.

What morals and ethics are you referring to exactly? I don't really know you and you assume we have the same beliefs.

Taking someone's work product under circumstances that they do not want you to is wrong. The fact that it is super easy to do and does not result in him possessing few physical goods at the end of the process does not make this an exception. The fact that they are not offering it to you at a price and level of convenience that you have decided would be just, does not make it right

You should try spending a year as a production assistant and then come back to me.

I am always fascinated by people like you. I assume you are apart of the tech industry. I would have never became apart of this industry if I thought the way you did. I got into this industry because things move faster than the low. Things are too slow. I don't give a fuck about laws if things move too slow.

Our society is doomed

I'm curious about this. If there was a public poll, my guess is that the public would be overwhelmingly against sending people to prison for copyright violation. There's some evidence to support this [0].

In fact, I think it's a fact that shows just how messed up the law is. That people can be overwhelmingly against harsh penalties for copyright violation, yet they still exists...

[0] https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-socially-acceptable-110228/

Because the general public at large is not the one suffering from copyright violation? The affected parties are the ones that should be polled; but I agree that we might not agree on who is really affected.

Clearly copyright violation has an affect on all parties involved.

But I don't understand your comment really. Law shouldn't reflect the will of a powerful minority, it should reflect what the population in general finds acceptable.

If most people find copyright violation acceptable, I can't see any argument for harsh penalties in a democracy.

>Prime has a boat-load of movies and tv shows available for free or pay to watch on demand.

...in the US.

"paying for value"

I'm sorry, where is the value FOR ME in paying for something that is constantly taken away from you, and where the inventory is always in flux? It's essentially pointless. It's like having a membership to a gym where they're always changing out the equipment, but never have enough variety to get a full workout.

I _do_ want to pay for these services, but they need to provide value.

>Some people still believe in paying for value.

I get value from the sun, but I don't cut a check to it every month. Economics shows that on any large scale, people aren't going to pay more for something equivalent to something they get for free.

It's not stealing, it's sharing. You're not depriving anyone of anything. It's not a lost sale. The TV and movie industries are making more money than they ever have, because of all the sharing.

We are in the middle of such an uncomfortable transition.

Every company has their own stupid fucking platform, which you may or may not be able to get on your device, or which may or may not support streaming to your streaming device. I am someone who wants an elegant simple solution to something like this in my house, why the fuck can't I just have one god damn app that can load ALL of my shows/movies/livetv and takes care of payment to whichever company is providing the content or gives them a way to insert ads for free content.

It is no wonder that people use Kodi.

  why the fuck can't I just have one god damn app that can load ALL of my
  shows/movies/livetv and takes care of payment to whichever company is providing the content

Which is what Apple have tried to do with the TV app [1]. Except it doesn't include Netflix. Or Amazon [2]. And I'm sure there are plenty of others. Walled gardens eh?

[1] http://www.apple.com/newsroom/2016/10/apple-unveils-new-tv-a...

[2] http://bgr.com/2016/11/17/apple-tv-universal-app/

These raids (not this one in particular) can have a real impact. I'm an unabashed pirate, but it's gotten harder and harder to find a good, safe public tracker for BitTorrent. My dad can't even figure it out anymore after the private tracker I got him an invite for shutdown.

When kickass went down, people said it's like hydra. But I can't figure out where the new heads are. I'm down to piratebay and usenet only.

Sure I could spend time figuring it all out again, but that takes time and effort. So I end up buying stuff.

They'll never stop all piracy. They just want to make sure the masses don't know how to easily pirate. It's an 80/20 situation.

I'm just going to leave this HN submission that got into the front page a little while ago here... It's not the same as a full fledged tracker, but for that YIFI movie that everybody has seen, it's nice.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13423629

There are plenty of vpn we don't keep any logs services that you can run a torrent through - at that point it doesn't matter how safe the tracker is.

It takes a little bit of time for other trackers to gain traction. Right now I think the most promising public tracker I know is idope.se, enjoy :)

zooqle

Why tracker? You can find most stuff using Google and various file sharing services.

I was having a hell of a time finding ebooks for my wife just googling for it. I had to download IRC. Total blast from the past. I learned how to do it, but it took a while.

You're falling for the "Kodi is only a piracy platform" myth. You can certainly use Kodi for viewing things you've recorded over-the-air (which is my own use case), without resorting to pirated media.

Thank you. People like to hate on Kodi but really it's the add-ons. People love open software, but they hate on the devs of kodi even though they kick and scream about these add ons (and even added a toggle to not allow add ons by default.) My web browser can be used for piracy, but you don't see people hating Mozilla. It's silly.

Not only that, but my Kodi server is basically my client portfolio and my home movie repository. I can upload home movies and just tell my parents, who live on the other side of the country, to refresh Kodi and they get to see the latest videos of their grandkids. With clients, I physically go to client locations and pitch them and I can show them previous spots that I've done, in person and on my iPad, without making them publicly available and potentially violating contracts and agreements that I have.

Or even other (scraped) content from legal sources/addons. My personal usecase is essentialy watching /r/video and my YouTube subscriptions from couch with a unified interface.

The Nasa and Esa addons are pretty nifty.

I used to pay for a hulu subscription, because even with a few ads it was really convenient. Now, there are less of the shows I want to watch, and the ads are absolutely, insultingly ridicululous. It will seriously play 10 minutes of ads in 5 minute increments for a 20 minute show. Every ad block is now 3 advertisements long, some of them require you to interact, and every show has at least 3 breaks for ads. Sometimes it'll run ads AFTER the show ends so you watch ads to see the credits, or in order to see the next episode! They have literally made streaming worse than regular TV and after this weekend I finally had enough and just installed Kodi.

> 10 minutes of ads in 5 minute increments for a 20 minute show

So just about like broadcast TV

> Sometimes it'll run ads AFTER the show ends so you watch ads to see the credits, or in order to see the next episode!

Also just like broadcast TV. The horror!!!

> They have literally made streaming worse than regular TV

Sounds more like they've just foolishly brought the worst of broadcast to the web.

I'm sure you realize Hulu has an ad-free option, right? So in order to save yourself the $2-$3 it would cost you to go ad-free on hulu you've decided to just take it instead. Why? Because you deserve to get it for free? Does Hollywood simply exist to entertain you at no cost?

That's a hell of a sense of entitlement you've got yourself there kiddo...

So now broadcast TV should be our benchmark for quality customer experiences? Yeah, "the horror," I didn't switch to streaming to get the exact same problems.

I'm a long time Hulu subscriber, and when I signed up the amount of advertising in a given program was MUCH more reasonable and there were more shows available. The quality of service has actively degraded over time since I became a customer, and their solution was to offer a more expensive option that does not actually remove ads, since plenty of shows still have them. Frankly, I feel like I am entitled to some free TV at this point, for the sheer volume of advertising Hulu has gradually warmed me into thinking is reasonable to be exposed to in a 20 minute program. It shouldn't take 40 minutes to get through an episode of Daria.

That gets to a point I left out of my original post - I really wouldn't mind spending a couple more bucks if I could still watch the shows I originally signed up for, but Hulu is now removing most of the old programming I like (Daria, Chapelle's Show, etc). Their original programming is clearly not as good as they seem to think it is and three melodramatic shows about weird psychics doesn't make up for the programming I actually want to watch, which is now literally only available on DVD or on Kodi. Hollywood doesn't exist to entertain me at no cost but there's literally nothing for me to "just pay for."

> just like broadcast TV

You've conveniently skipped the mention of ads that require interaction, which is far worse.

> $2-$3 it would cost you to go ad-free

It appears to cost $12,and apparently only removes ads on some shows... so, no.

That's a hell of a sense of superiority you've got yourself there kiddo...

I believe the "$2-$3" was intended to be the difference between the with-ads subscription ($8), and the without-ads subscription ($12).

It would be more honest to call it the "packed full of ads" subscription and the "no ads on some things, but still a few ads on anything you probably want to watch" subscription.

Good catch, thanks.

> > Sometimes it'll run ads AFTER the show ends so you watch ads to see the credits, or in order to see the next episode!

> Also just like broadcast TV. The horror!!!

Broadcast TV has a workaround - the DVR/timeshifting. Does anyone worth monetizing not use DVRs? I simply don't have the time to watch a show with ads.

My aging parents who have about 1/5 my income combined do watch without the DVR, but they also are stingy and don't need anything.

Nobody relevant watch broadcast tv with ads.

Your example of Netflix having only half a season and then having to add a second subscription service to watch the rest is a straw man.

It feels more like "I already pay for Netflix, so why do I have to pay anyone else for content Netflix doesn't have?" That's a bit like asking why you should pay for CNN and HBO. Basic cable should come with ALL the content, right?

There is a large number of TV shows and movies that is not available on any streaming service. There is also a large number that's available, but only from a very specific content provider. For example last I checked, Seinfeld was only available on I think TBS's website, with an awful Flash-based player and really intrusive commercials. Oh, and what was available was something like a set of 5 rotating episodes, not the whole thing. Another example is Conan the Destroyer (been on an Arnold kick lately) which as far as I saw could only be purchased on BluRay or DVD.

I am not saying the content providers owe anyone a streaming option. But grandparent is right about path of least resistance.

Your example actually highlights the problem with cable. There is no way to get – say, only HBO, ESPN, and no CNN.

Cable would force OP to buy 37 useless channels whose content is being subsidized by people paying for the 5 channels they actually watch.

Danish cable companies have very recently begun to offer mix your own channel packages (I assume some channels costs more) that was great for me because I called up my provider and finally got them to give me just an internet connection.

It's not actually. Just as one example there was a series I started watching on Netflix, got through the first season, started watching the second, and then it disappeared off Netflix. For various reasons a lot of series aren't being carried by Netflix anymore (it's about a 50/50 split as to whether Netflix or the content producers are to blame). In order to finish off the second season I had to either skip a bunch of episodes and come in on the tail end of the second season on Hulu (because they don't have anything but the most recent episodes of the current season), wait until the next season started airing and watch the full second season then, or else pay Amazon to purchase the streaming for the entire season (this was in addition to the cost of the prime membership already being paid for).

OP was right, streaming services are fractured and disjointed right now and nobody offers everything. Netflix has shifted primarily to their own content and increasingly only carries independent and foreign films and shows. Hulu is an ad packed disaster area on top of having a horrible streaming experience on current content designed to try to prop up the failing cable subscription model. Amazon is the best bet for most other content but is of course the most expensive of all the options since it isn't a proper subscription service like Netflix or Hulu but instead more closely emulates the Blockbuster Video model of old. None of the options is a really fully satisfying replacement for a cable TV subscription, but each is just good enough that it's still better than cable TV. In aggregate, the experience is definitely the best option, but it's still really frustrating (not to mention expensive) to constantly need to juggle between the three major services (and the dozens of smaller ones) in order to access the content you want when you want it.

Netflix has shifted primarily to their own content and increasingly only carries independent and foreign films and shows.

Yeah. They don't have everything I want to watch, but they have enough decent stuff that I find something interesting easily enough.

I am slightly cheesed when something I was watching was taken off before I finished it... I understand why they don't advertise when they'll loose the rights to a particular show, but I'd sure like some way to know how long some shows will be available.

To the movie industry, here are my demands: high quality, DRM free downloads of MKV files, with nice subtitles, multiple audio tracks, etc, that can be purchased using only open source software on the client. I won't settle for anything less. That's what the competetion offers.

>That's what the competetion offers.

To add insult to injury, the competition often delivers this experience for free or even at a loss (eg. buying the BR to rip it, re-encode it, and add subtitles)

"But the people I hired can't do that, and the people who can do it don't want to work for me".

Oh, I'll totally build it for you, movie companies. My email's in my profile.

Hey! When we (educated technologists) are talking about this, let's make sure to recognize that Kodi is just a media playing customized gnu/linux.

The problem is with piracy plugins.

Let's not besmirch Kodi, it's really a shining example of successful non-commercial open source.

I have used Kodi with software such as Sickrage to download tv shows but with Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions alongside iPlayer that covers the majority of shows we watch. The Raspberry Pi running Sickrage is now rarely used whereas the PS4 running Netflix is used most evenings. As you say, it's the path of least resistance.

> at an agreeable price

Piracy is about wanting stuff for free. Nothing more and nothing less.

iTunes has 99% of pirated content. You can start streaming damn near any movie or TV show you want with about 4 clicks. It takes less than 30 seconds. But it costs money.

Piracy isn't a convenience problem. It's a not wanting to spend money for things problem.

I've built up quite a digital collection on iTunes, all purchased more than 4 years ago when I realised my investment in content was completely locked to the iTunes platform, with no legal means to transfer the purchased content to other platforms. For some movies I paid the same price as a Blu-ray disk, for lower quality and vendor lock-in. I refuse to invest any further money into content that I am only legally allowed to access on one vendors platform, so I purchase Blu-ray versions and keep a digital backup available that can be played on vendor strategy tax unencumbered software such as Emby and Kodi. Itunes, Google Play, Amazon Movies, non of these are viable options.

>Piracy isn't a convenience problem. It's a not wanting to spend money for things problem.

Except the likes of iTunes and Steam have shown that if you provide an affordable, reliable and convenient distribution channel, people will flock to it over the napster/kazaa/torrent alternatives.

Then why do some people currently pirate and spend money on things?

Because the things they pirate cost more than they feel it's worth. So they just take a free copy instead.

But that doesn't answer my question. If "Piracy is about wanting stuff for free. Nothing more and nothing less", then why would someone who can get it for free choose not to?

Because they find the price agreeable and wish to reward the rights holder. If they found the price disagreeable then they pirated despite wishing the content holder to be rewarded.

But your still not answering the question. If your statement is true: "Piracy is about wanting stuff for free. Nothing more and nothing less" then they wouldn't pay for something if they ever had the opportunity to avoid doing so.

Nah

>Or buy it and wait hours to download it?

How it it streamable on Kodi, but takes so long to download from a legitimate source?

Personally I think the entertainment industry is approaching the pirating issue the wrong way.

They should all be looking into expanding their web tech. Serve ad's to people that want to watch your content for free, have a pay service for those that don't want ad's.

On the other hand I had sky... I paid £70 a month which is A LOT compared to netflix etc, and everytime I wanted to watch something I had to be served with 3 x 1:30' ad' sessions for a 20' episode of friends... I mean why do I even pay if you going to serve me intrusive ad's. No thank you, I prefer having netflix and amazon prime that has a lot to watch and if I want something specifically that isn't available to those 2 am gonna torrent it like a boss.

I don't understand what's so hard about putting their whole film catalog online. Let me pay a buck to download any movie your studio produced in some simple format without any crapware or subscriptions or region-locking and I will do so every time instead of pirating.

The marginal cost of offering a movie for downloading must be pretty close to 0. Why can't studios simply tap the opportunity of cheap hassle-free downloads?

Studios sign different distribution deals in different regions. These include box office release and "DVD" (web) release schedules. These regional licensing contracts are often in the range of 5-7 years.

As a result, studios cannot simply offer a film or TV series online at the same time for everybody. As the regional contracts expire and the studios restructure them, I expect to see more direct distribution via online channels.

As much as I'd like to believe that it's going to get better, in my experience it's getting worse.

Instead of consolidating and simplifying their terms, they are digging deeper and getting more complex. It's not uncommon to see a setup like:

* Show airs during primetime

* Available the next day on on-demand (not that same night)

* Expires from on-demand after 30 days

* Last 5 episodes but not the most recent episode available for purchase per-episode on something like google-play or amazon.

* Large gap between the last 5 episodes and the previous season where it's literally impossible to buy or watch an episode legally.

* second-to-most-current season available on Hulu-Plus

* All seasons previous to that available on netflix or amazon prime (not both)

And that's just in one country, not even taking into account the various restrictions and petty limitations like no HD and no ability to rewind or even pause in some cases. Not to mention the hardware you'd need to watch all of that on a regular TV. You are looking at least at a Fire-stick, Roku or chromecast, a STB from the cable company, and in some cases a PC that can HDMI over to the TV.

I suspect they value the offering higher if it's in limited supply.

Disney do this with the Disney Vault[1].

Each Disney film is available for purchase for a limited time, after which it is put "in the vault" and not made available in stores for several years until it is once again released.

However, Disney may be the exception here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault

They've made this web for themselves, by lobbying for longer and more restrictive copyright.

The most pathetic irony here, is Disney, who made a small fortune milking public domain fairy-tales and yet have fought to prevent their extremely popular figures to become part of that same public domain - even after they clearly are part of a common world-spanning culture - much like 1001 nights, or the Greek mythos.

Like, I pay $5, I get the official .torrent link legally? This is pure fiction!

Have them set up private trackers with dedicated seedboxes and add a "tip a buck for this movie" button with some a convenient payment processor. Technologically it's a weekend project for a small team and I really don't see what they lose financially.

> I really don't see what they lose financially

Uh, a lot of money?

There is no way that a torrent with a $1 tip function would make the same amount of money they make through all the distribution deals, advertising, $6 24-hour HD rentals through cable providers and Amazon, etc.

> Technologically it's a weekend project for a small team

Famous last words.

On top of top of pc86's reasoning, a lot of small payment methods like this get abused for credit card fraud. Get a list of a thousand CC numbers from somewhere shady, and test them all out on small $1 donations like this. If it succeeds, the card is valid and the owner likely won't notice anytime soon. Eventually, when they do cancel the card and order chargebacks, the company has to pay a large flat fee to refund that $1. This is also why a lot of OSS projects don't have donation options.

It's also a liability magnet. The MAFIAA already wants to nuke free-for-all pirating, but if you make money off that? Easier to find, and prosecute.

It's not hard, it's just not maximized profit. There's a lot of brain power invested in how much they can charge and how much advertising they can cram into content, finding the most profitable balance between acquiring, retaining and losing viewers.

This isn't canonically true is it; if more people consume more media at $1 per go you could make back much more than you loose by charging £25 that very few people pay for new Blu ray disks.

How sure are you that more than 25X people will pay for a 1 dollar movie? Because that sounds way high to me.

Do you know anyone would watch 25X more content if it were cheaper? I wouldn't.

And the movie industry taps this demand in other ways. They eventually sell the movie to netflix/amazon/tv station.

>Do you know anyone would watch 25X more content if it were cheaper? I wouldn't.

They don't need to watch more, just start paying for what they watch.

Until it's tried no-one can be sure either way... most people would have thought Spotify was a crazy idea until someone made it happen...

There are real costs to just trying it. People have an idea of what media is "worth." If you set the price too low, it's nearly impossible to get it up higher.

It's been hard to get people to accept iOS apps should be more than a 99 cents.

iOS AppStore revenue for US in 2016 is $28bn according to this article:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/apples-app-store-2016-revenue-t...

The whole of DVD and BluRay sales is a poultry 13bn dollars:

http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/home-entertainment-spen...

So I guess your ideas about the App Store are wrong or cheap yields loads of revenue... Hey, when selling more is essentially free sell more, right?

Just to hate on AMP a little more it took me 3-4 times longer to unampify the bloody URLs on those links.

It's also about effort per buck earned.

A single exclusive deal for a season of Game of Thrones for a specific release window with a local/regional PayTV provider brings in, say, ten million bucks. And you make this deal in a nice 3 Michelin Star restaurant.

Compare that with actually delivering 10 million streams to end users, on iPhones, iPads, Androids, AppleTVs, Chromecasts, [edited: with] payment gateways and support for technically challenged people.

Delivering 10m streams to the end user is a solved problem; just pay to transcode your video. The point is to avoid even streaming - let people download films, no drm, for a buck (maybe 2 bucks for 4k) and trust most people not to steal.

Does it make sense financially for them to divide markets and then play the broadcasters off for exclusive rights to show films on scheduled TV.

I would love to have the possibility to be able to hassle free download movies, and I would be willing to pay up to 5 bucks (for certain movies) to do so. But I don't have that option, so instead I have other ways of getting my movies.

> Personally I think the entertainment industry is approaching the pirating issue the wrong way.

I think the big problem going forward will be peoples willingness to pay. Just look at the current landscape of OTT services and people are beginning to get annoyed over paying for so many. I personally don't think the individual OTT market will keep pushing forward the way it is because at some people will get fed up with paying for so many different services. And while you can cancel at anytime, who wants to deal with remembering to sign up and cancel every time a new show comes along? Never mind the annoyance of traversing in and out of services to watch different shows or watchlists -- this by the way is where I feel TiVO got it right by combining regular recordings with online.

My hope and likely dream scenarios is we begin to see a shift away from TV distributed over COAX and proprietary boxes, and instead consumed through services like Vue / SlingTV. These platforms advance to being more than traditional delivery mechanisms by allowing integration of OTT services to be consumed like a regular channel.

The entertainment industry isn't stupid. They are doing their best to maximize revenues from their products given the current landscape of cable networks, streaming providers, on-demand, etc.

The ability to make bolder strategy choices is also hampered by the need to enter into distribution contracts with the above-mentioned providers.

If you do the math, I'd guess revenues would be higher doing what the entertainment industry currently does than what you propose. While this will lead many people into pirating, it's still likely a pretty small percentage.

Netflix did $8.8 billion in revenue last year. U.S. domestic box office receipts were around $11.3 billion and were around $30 billion globally.

In the US alone, given Netflix' current subscriber base of 49 million, it would cost each subscriber would have to pay a little over $19 per month extra just to make up for domestic box office revenues. When you factor in that Netflix needs to make some money on top of that, as well as whatever scaling is necessary, that number needs to go up even further. And then you need to makeup all the additional money that comes from rentals and distribution deals outside of Netflix. There is a reason why Netflix only gets a small portion of quality movies -- because companies can make more signing deals with companies other than Netflix.

Would most people be willing to pay over $100 per month for an all-you-can-eat movie service? I doubt it, considering that doesn't even account for all the television programming, which takes up a much larger portion of people's screen time than movies do. First-run television content earns a lot of revenue, as do live shows, particularly sports. ESPN alone costs cable companies $7 per subscriber and that's with lots of ad-supported content. Without ad support, that number would be closer to $12 and that doesn't account for the additional production costs to make up for all the additional airtime that needs filled.

I think to truly create an all-you-can-eat, comprehensive entertainment streaming service, you'd be look at several hundred dollars per month in subscription fees. And you'd still have to figure out some sort of way to incentivize content producers to continue producing the same level of content they currently do and support competition so there is a continued push towards higher quality.

Do 100% of "box office receipts" go to the production company? Or is a portion of that overhead for the theater showing the movie?

Also I think you're really missing something important, which the entertainment industry is also ignoring... "all you can eat" is not the only way to do it, there is a market for "a la carte" as well. My wife has been trying to find a way to pay to stream 3 or 4 TV channels only, she specifically does not want to pay for ESPN or other trash television we won't watch. It would be even better if we could find it without ads. Of course such a model is probably unthinkable for content producers that want to bundle their losers in with their winners in order to boost their value.

I don't think theaters make much, if anything at all, from ticket receipts. That's why concession are so overprice. Some theaters even flat-out tell you this.

I think the "a la carte" model is much more realistic than the "all you can eat" model but I don't think that model solves what the parent comment was saying. The a la carte model doesn't really work that well for movies either. I still think people would complain and go to torrents. "Why should I pay $15 a month to watch Game of Thrones when I can torrent it?" will still be a question but that's already better than things were two years ago when it was "Why do I have to pay a $70 cable subscription PLUS $15 a month to watch Game of Thrones?"

Theaters get an increasing percentage as the movie get's older. First weekend they get ~0-25%, but they also fill the seats. "after the fourth week when theatres generally can keep up to 80% or better of the ticket sales" However, the seats are mostly empty. http://www.themovieblog.com/2007/economics-of-the-movie-thea...

I would guess Hollywood get's around 80% of overall ticket sales, but it can very a lot. However, production costs can be less than advertising costs. So, the production side might get 60% of stated ticket sales and that's the percentage that Netflix would need to cover.

That said, if Netflix had every movie ever for 25$ a month they would also likely have far more customers and probably be revenue neutral for Hollywood. But, at the same time every studio would want a larger cut and the only way it would work is if there where similar rules for streaming movies as streaming songs.

>Do 100% of "box office receipts" go to the production company? Or is a portion of that overhead for the theater showing the movie?

Not 100% but a pretty high percentage given how much work the distribution & theatre companies do.

But you'd also have to account for DVD/VOD/streaming/tv rights that movies also get aside from just theatre.

> There is a reason why Netflix only gets a small portion of quality movies -- because companies can make more signing deals with companies other than Netflix.

Yet they can afford to pay Dave Chappelle $60 million for 3 episodes. I love Netflix, but it's clear they are focused on their own original content, and they do a great job at it. Every Netflix show I've watched is great. They don't have the latest and greatest movies because they choose not to buy them.

You assume that box office goes down to 0 if a movie can be downloaded easily. This is evidently not true, since most movies already can be download easily, just not legally.

Zero-day movies are nearly always CAMs or TS. They are a terrible experience.

Streaming or downloading a full 4k version would mean I'd probably never go to the theater again (and I go roughly 12 times a year).

Some people would still go for the social experience / big screen, but a lot less frequently. I bet most theatres would have to shut down.

Most movies can be downloaded easily by people who know to use computers. There are tens of millions of fully functional adult Americans who can barely operate Word, they certainly cannot start torrenting movies.

Well, they might be able to once, at which point they're going to get some ransomware or become part of a botnet.

If people aren't willing to pay $100 for an all you can eat movie service did it even cross your mind that it only means it's overpriced?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZadCj8O1-0

I guess that makes sense, if you assume Netflix would not grow widely when they have everything.

You are also assuming the rest of the entertainment complex isn't going to shrink, especially espn which is losing a lot of subscribers.

Just get Now TV. Seriously. It's loads cheaper than regular Sky, is more flexible in its packages, and has no ads.

I'd second this, up to a point - my GF has it (she changed from Sky), and it's half the price - £40 for her a month including broadband, etc. My only gripe is that it seems a bit fragmented to me when using the box - there's not a universal UI which allows you to just access all the on demand content that's available, so you have to go into BBC, C4, or the NowTV app, etc.. If it was unified (somehow, I appreciate that's not easy or probably even possible) then I think it would be really hard to beat.

I keep considering this but I don't want to add another streaming box on my living room or bedroom. I have a Fire TV precisely because of this.

Can't you get the Now TV app on your Fire TV?

Nope.

Vimeo has a great platform that I think could be expanded to big budget / Hollywood film. They already abide by what seems to me a Bandcamp-meets-Spotify model but for video. I really think getting on a service such as Vimeo is the next logical step for film to take. Although, some in the industry may not be thrilled.

I must say the BBC article does a good job of explaining what a "fully loaded Kodi box" is, keeping it accessible without confusing things.

What's different between selling one of these and selling, say a PC with Bittorrent and bookmarks to the movie section of the PirateBay pre-loaded (or whatever website people are using these days)?

Intent. These people were selling a box with the specific intent to watch pirated movies. If you were to sell a PC that "just happened" to have links on it then I imagine no one would really bother with you. If you were advertising the PC as a "watch movies for free" PC then the Federation Against Copyright Theft would try to stop you.

But you do know that you can watch movies for free if you have internet and a general purpose computer, right? Why is it wrong to say that?

"Warning, this knife can sever arteries.". Is this better?

"Warning, this machine can access copyrighted content. Buy it at your own risk."

Is this better?

You seem to be trying to argue against the law. As onion2k says, courts consider intent. They will decide if you intended for your customers to break the law, and were complicit in the breaking of the law, or not.

They will only consider real cases, not hypothetical.

> "Warning, this knife can sever arteries.". Is this better?

The courts take things in context. If it was sold by a gangster with that wording used for the purpose of informing customers that it can be used to kill people, then that's one thing. If it's used as a warning label so that adults know to keep the knife away from their children for safety, that's another. Courts are not blind; they are supposed to look at context and intent.

You seem to consider the law as some kind of mathematical function where the same input always results in the same output. This is indeed the aim, but context matters. The law doesn't ignore context, so you cannot expect to do so either.

You might find it helpful to read "What Colour are your bits?": http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

That article talks about copyright, but the point about the law seeing context, and the same nonsense conclusions when attempting to use logic but ignore context, remains the same.

Yet another non-attorney on HN attempting to parse law as if it's code. It's common to point of it barely being worth discussing anything legal.

Attorneys and courts have a wide berth with which to determine what a person's intent was. Instances where you can thumb your nose at basic jurisprudence and get off on a technicality of the text of the law is exceedingly rare.

Rules are made because people want to break them. If everyone agreed, there would be no need for rules. Don't treat those who disagree as if they were wrong. They are just the reason those rules exist, one as legitimate as the other.

See, you say one might get to "nonsense conclusions when attempting to use logic but ignore context", but you used "They will decide if you intended" without flinching. Or did you flinch?

"They will decide" I thought the intent was mine. How can my intent be decided? My intent was to kill time.

And I have read "What Colour are your bits" before. "The trouble is, human beings are not in general Colour-blind." They are. Truth is, they are. There is no "Colour sense". You can't tell if this pipe was from your grandfather, mine, or if it was 3D printed 10 minutes ago. I could lie to you, you would believe it, and be Wrong. We pretend we see Colour. We tell each other the Colour of everything all the time, because we can't see it. Just as we pretend family matters, and borders exist, and anger is something we must act upon and the sky is up and the floor is down, and fashion is a thing. We pretend these things all the time. I sometimes pretend to want to work where I am right now.

"This idea of Colour is a problem for communication between those of us who work in the world of computers, where Colour does not exist, and those of us who work in the law, where Colour exists and is important." Colour does not exist anywhere. If everyone forgot it, no one would be able to find it again. Other Colours would be created. And we would pretend to like them with the same strength.

When you buy a combat knife, are you buying a killing artifact? Are you buying a weight? A memento of culture? Army supplies?

The world functions because we agree on a lot of things. You seem to agree that Colour exists and the Combat Knife is deadly, but the Americana Knife is not, and the metal assembly is just scrap. Only by force you will convince anyone that Colour exists and it is important. So you will never be right, you will just have won. And the Federation Against Copyright Theft won, and we pretend they are right. I disagree.

Also,

> "Set-top boxes loaded with apps and add-ons allowing access to copyright infringing material are very much illegal and anyone involved in selling these boxes should not be surprised to receive a knock on the door," Kieron Sharp, director general of Fact

The box itself is illegal. An illegal computer. My computer is also illegal right now. Let's pretend this makes sense.

> How can my intent be decided?

By a court. Depending on where you live, you may end up with a jury of your peers making the decision.

The court system will make a decision and for legal purposes that decision, not the truth, is what will matter. It isn't perfect since we can't read minds. But it's the best system we have.

"and for legal purposes that decision, not the truth, is what will matter."

Thank you for your patience.

Yes, but these boxes are set up to only display media, and advertised as a way to watch copyrighted content without acquiring a subscription or license to the content.

Try advertising a butchers knife as "an excellent tool to slit the throats of <insert migrant minority here> pigs", or any less extreme but still illegal activity (like advertising nails for the purpose of puncturing the tires of your annoying neighbours car).

>Try advertising a butchers knife as "an excellent tool to slit the throats of <insert migrant minority here> pigs"

You mean like "combat knife"?

Judging by the manual for the Kershaw I bought, at least some manufacturers like to add reminders that the knife is meant to cut only letter envelopes and basically touching anything else with it will void your warranty...

Good one.

I was going to elaborate on how we should close down classes about rocket science or anything particle physics related. You know, just in case someone manages to learn how to control fission and miniaturize it into bombs.

Dangerous stuff.

Combat is not illegal, per se. If they called it a "murder knife" you might have a point.

It's not a warning that is in place. These sellers were advertising their Kodi boxes as a way to watch live football without paying or the latest movies for free. This so what attracted legal attention to their operations.

It's one thing to sell a Vanilla Kodi box with no add-ons (i.e., a general purpose device) and something a whole lot different when it's got add-ons pre-installed that stream unauthorized copyrighted content.

The authorities in Canada have been chasing down Android Box sellers at the behest of the cable companies for pretty much the same reason. Most of them come with Showbox installed and preloaded Kodi channels that are pretty shameless about where they're getting the streams from.

One of the key points in the case is the way they are advertised as having access to subscription channels for free and they're pre-loaded with the apps to do so. Most of the articles make that distinction too.

If you start selling a PC loaded with that software that's advertised as "download La La Land and 100s of other new movies for free!", it's a different ballgame as the intent is clearly there.

I do wonder how far it goes though, if you look at this listing, it's only implied that the illegal streaming services are on there, but it's pretty clear they are when you look at the customer questions:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/DROIBOX-Android-Player-Amlogic-Blue...

Not much. A person selling a PC preloaded with torrent clients and links to torrent sites, and advertising it as a way to breach copyrights, would possibly find themselves on the wrong end of this law. If anyone could be bothered to prosecute, that is.

These boxes are advertised as a method of watching live football without paying. If you advertised and sold Jodi boxes without this claim you would be left alone but the copyright infringement is used as a sales tool hence the prosecution.

Depends on the country you're dealing with, but distributing information on how to access illegal material is sometimes just as illegal as distributing the material itself.

There's also probably an element of tax evasion involved.

If you can't setup your own Kodi box, I don't know how in the world you would be sold one and actually use it. It isn't simple to setup and it is more complicated to maintain (for someone who couldn't just set one up themselves).

I think that's one of the big problems the Kodi team has with these 'fully loaded' boxes [1].

People buy them and they work for a week, and then the streams break, etc. and these people have no idea how to update them so they come on the various Kodi support forums blaming Kodi for all the problems. Meanwhile the sellers have disappeared and are selling the boxes under a new name.

[1] https://kodi.tv/the-piracy-box-sellers-and-youtube-promoters...

And it leaves a rather bad reputation. Similar to Bittorrent.

Recently an absolutely non-tech-savvy friend of mine explained to a bunch of friends how he was streaming pirated movies, TV etc. via Kodi. I was blown away that he even knew about XBMC / Kodi, the classic media center I've been using for more than a decade (though never with subpar, crappy streams).

Needless to say he only knew about it since it was advertised as enabling piracy. He most certainly didn't download it from official sources and will run into problems in no time.

I just wanted to say that I was very surprised to see Kodi reach mainstream awareness and it's a little sad that this was enabled via the infamous piracy spotlight.

Don't kid yourself. The users of Kodi have always been using it to watch their own pirated media collections. They just weren't using streaming services, so there was a higher barrier to entry. Now that it truly is a one stop shop for pirated media access, it's reached the primetime.

> Don't kid yourself. The users of Kodi have always been using it to watch their own pirated media collections.

Yes, me included. I think that's an entirely different discussion, but let me just point out that I love to buy content that I own. I do it with music all the time. Buying about 5-10 lossless digital albums is a weekly habit for me. I can't do that with movies since content creators / publishers don't allow me to buy that kind of content in a digital, DRM-free format I truly own.

- It has to be DRM-free as I want to play it with my media player of choice and possibly long after the service I bought it from may or may not be around any longer. - While I don't care for the physical medium and would prefer to play the movie in Kodi, it could be Bluray if it wasn't for the long delays between theatrical release, US Bluray release and the release in my country. I don't care for localization. I require the original audio track / language. I'm not content with the delay between US Bluray and local Bluray release while the movie is already available on torrent sites.

Bottom line: I'd gladly pay for movies if it was as easy and consumer friendly as buying music.

Same. I don't buy it, but I pay for both Spotify and Apple Music.

But I will not get the same from Netflix. I have to get Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc. just to get back to what I actually want. I am not saying Spotify has absolutely everything, but it is so close to everything I don't have to worry too much. I don't even pay for Apple music because they have different content, I only do that because it works better in my car and spotify works better with Echo.

Having used Kodi for close to 15 years (from XBMP through XBMC), it's definitely taken some tinkering, and you still run into edge cases and occasional crashes.

However the Kodi team has made an amazing job simplifying installation on numerous platforms, to the point where the most advanced thing you need to know is how to use a USB stick and 7-zip.

If these people (box sellers) ship it with a remote control, and a self-contained Kodi distro (Ubuntu), I have no problem seeing anyone using it intuitively as plug & play.

Maintaining is mostly an issue with your own library in my experience. If that part is outsourced to third party plugins there's not much to maintain. Though if that plugin breaks/is forked/whatever then you're boned.

I really feel for the Kodi team though, getting blame for piracy, numerous support requests stemming from unaffiliated third party plugins, and all for an amazing open source product they've made for free.

You'll be surprised... My uncle and auntie are using it now... they are into their 70's and don't know how to use any tech apart from a remote control.

A cousin of mine, who's a dentist in his mid 40's and hmm lets say he lacks behind on technology, found a way to set it up and gave it to them.

They use it and they don't even understand that its using the internet to stream pirated data... I told them that and they were like "no, he bought it for us from amazon, why they sell illegal stuff there, its free".

So yes I have valid proof of 2 people that don't know how to Google - Google fully using it.

A very non-technical friend of mine bought one on eBay and said it was very easy to use. Just plugged it into the TV over HDMI and it worked great.

It gave access to just about every cable channel and every film and TV show. It cost £50 - his theory was that if he had to buy a new one every month, it was still cheaper and easier to use than the alternatives.

Back in the 90's everyone knew a source for pirated analog satellite decoders and if it stopped working you went back to the guy you bought it from. Isn't this just the modern version of that?

It's a working class thing.

There's a little shop near me that sells Kodi boxes. They used to build PCs when that was a thing, now they do laptop and phone repairs. £69 for the box including installation, £20 for updates. That's a bargain compared to £70/month for Sky. Most people have a geeky nephew who'll sort it out for a bit of pocket money.

There are vendors for these things in malls in Canada even. There are Kodi addons that make it super simple, just push a button and stream movies off file lockers kind of thing.

It's pretty much dead simple and "just works" - with the exception of what happens when the services they use dies. Then you're in trouble. The quality is also often abysmal.

That's why I'd rather use the Usenet setup (Sonarr/CouchPotato/Sabnzbd/Plex/Emby) and pay $10/mo to a sketchy IPTV service, I know they at least try to maintain their streams and if you hunt around you can find decent quality.

If it's anything like the bandit cable box market of the 90's, buying one means you go back to the source if it needs to be repaired/updated.

the interface is very easy to use, from what I understand these "fully loaded" ones alreaddy have the apps installed and configured, so it would probably be easier than a roku for most people. Then they just dont do any maintenance

The interface is one of the worst I've ever seen. I still don't understand how and when and why "Videos" or "Movies" get indexed. You have to have the patience of a monk to attempt to add a media source with a remote control. "Let's see, does it want smb:// ? Should I include my username as part of the string?"

My Kodi install on my smart TV has one purpose: To play things out of a directory on my NAS. Yet I have it added roughly 7 different ways, and have no idea how or why things get cataloged. All I know is I'm too afraid to remove any of the sources because I'm not sure which one's being used.

And I'm not sure I know how to remove a source, either.

I struggled with Kodi on my jailbroken AppleTV2 and it never worked right. At least it does the basic job of playing media from my NAS, so I'm happy. No waiting for Plex to decide to index my content, no fuss, no muss. Open Kodi, play files from NAS.

>> the interface is very easy to use

If they're selling Android Kodi boxes from China (which I suspect they are, since they're widely available, preconfigured and cheap), then I would disagree. These boxes have incredibly flaky UIs.

As for Kodi itself, it's fairly usable, but I would say the process of adding non-public repos for shady add-ons might be a little overcomplicated for a non-enthusiast who just wants to watch a soccer stream.

Can someone comment on what is the business model of those who set up streaming servers for Kodi etc. ? Bandwidth is expensive , why would you pay for it just to give it away for free ?

Kodi itself is just the new name for XBMC (XBox Media Center). It's an open source media centre project, and they are in no way affiliated with any of this.

"fully loaded kodi boxes" are just set top boxes pre-loaded with kodi and a number of plugin that make it convenient to access pirate streams or download content in a style reminiscent of popcorn time. Since These guys are basically just bundling Kodi and some plugins on cheap hardware, they make a quick buck selling that. The torrents and streams are just there anyway, so it's not a cost they need to concern themselves with.

The question was: who is hosting the streams, and how do they make money?

I think there are sites that just focus on doing that for creating ad revenue. If I'm not mistaken, a lot of the Kodi plugins for sports scrape the /r/{insert-league/sport-here}streams subreddits for the stream links.

Mostly unrelated streaming websites which work on ads. Community members build addons to access videos from those sites directly on kodi.

There's are many shady streaming sites that are designed to be accessed through a web browser where they serve up ads and malware. There are also quite a few file locker services where people put streaming media, same idea. Then there are aggregators that index all this content. The Kodi plugins basically scrape both the aggregators and the file hosts and bypass all of their ads.

Aren't they torrents?

The news article mentions Premier league and other TV networks . I am guessing that these kodi boxes are being used to consume live TV content or TV shows. A day's worth of shows in high resoution could consume upwards of 4GB. Why would anyone seed that ?

I guess you only need one person to do it, and then all of the consumer Kodi boxes will also be seeding.

Does live(ish) bittorrent streaming work?

Yes, it does. Most popular bit-torrent p2p streaming solution now is Acestream. You can check it yourself.

http://arenavision.in/ http://torrent-tv.ru/channels.php

However, I doubt that 'fully loaded' Kodi boxes uses it, most likely it use simple m3u streams harvested from internets.

I didn't know acestream was p2p. I think I may have used it one or twice. Very cool.

If they're hooked into a BitTorrent client, aren't they seeding as well?

i seed about that much per hour...not using the bandwidth for anything else so no reason not to.

No--streams, I believe. (As in, video served from a web server)

"Fact said it believed the suspects had made in the region of £250,000 selling the devices online.

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."

So is this like Popcorn time, then? Did the sellers break laws? Did the developers break laws?

Kodi's developers didn't, no. The way the streaming boxes work is they add a bunch of piracy streaming plugins to a Kodi installation. It's not easy for casual users to do this though. If you download Kodi today you can't just access that stuff. You need to enable access to unknown source plugins then find the plugins (and hope they aren't doing anything nefarious), download them and install them in Kodi. It's essentially the same as Android.

Kodi does have a lot of plugins to access a wide variety of free content (nearly 400 video content plugins alone). You can see what is available here: http://addons.kodi.tv/

It's an open source media centre application - used to be called XBMC. The illegal stuff are plugins for the software. I haven't used it since it was XBMC, quite a few years ago, but I imagine you could definitely plug things like Popcorn Time into it.

Copyright holders considering DRM to promote the purchase of their work rather than the piracy of their work should really be aware that there are a lot of people who will not consume your product if it's not free. The notion that you're protecting your work is not realistic. For many the options are to consume the product any way they can, or not consume the product. The thinking that DRM will ultimately make someone purchase something they never intended to purchase in the first place is unlikely. By having the pricing reflect this "lost" revenue (which was never lost, it was always assumed) you're only punishing the people who weren't going to pirate your product anyway. You're not punishing pirates. If you make a movie rental $1 instead of $4 you're much more likely to sell the product to interested people as well as the people who would have pirated the product if it were more expensive. Stop investing in DRM. You're wasting your time and the investment to defeat DRM will always be worthwhile to your competition.

I know it's slightly off topic, but I can't help thinking that the Federation Against Copyright Theft should be going up against those big businesses that actually steal the copyrights themselves.

So like when one studio steals the copyrights from another, or from the content creator directly.

They're not really fighting against that kind of "copyright theft." They're just an industry front group, so they'd never attack their own backers.

I know that, it is just the words that make up their acronym mean something different to me. So I find it highly amusing to have them be against copy right theft but be backed by the very people that are most likely to actually steal copyrights. Kind of like coal and oil company lobbyist using Green in the title.

As it has been said before. Piracy is a service problem. Yes, you can rent stuff via amazon but the prices are too high.

I will watch several hours of television and entertainment a night, if I did this via amazon I would end up paying well over $200 a month.

If they can scale that back to something reasonable like $75 a month, I am sure that I would be more willing to pay.

IMO it is similar to pre-install a browser with bookmarks to pages listing, but not necessarily providing, such copyright infringing material. I'm not sure if this is really illegal - I guess it depends on the country you live in.

It is a little more complicated than that though. A computer or web browser is general purpose. These boxes are sold specifically for copyright violation or whatever you want to call it (pirating, theft, etc).

Maybe if Mozilla/Google offered a version of Firefox/Chrome that came pre-configured with links to a bunch of torrent sites and bundled in extensions to download torrents, unpack archives and play media it would be similar.

Kodi is also a general purpose media player in the first place. There are enough websites on the Internet that would conveniently offer you such content to click and stream (no need for torrent, unpack etc.) In general Kodi does the same thing - it streams that content over your device (again no torrent, unpacking etc.)

At the end the only real difference is the advertising of that box - meaning if I would somewhat distribute a firefox browser with the proper links and call it the watch any media for free browser I would be in trouble.

Yup and that is why selling a generic Kodi box is fine. Loads of places sell them without issue.

The issue here is that these five people have taken a normal Kodi box, modified it and then marketed it as a device designed to violate copyright.

The real issue here is how these people were advertising and selling the device. It raises interesting questions though - would they get into the same amount of trouble if they sold a generic Kodi box with instructions for the user to configure it in such a way? What if they sold it with just a link to a Google search that had such instructions? What if they provided a script you could download and it would do the configuration automatically for the user but what they sold was actually a generic (legal) Kodi box?

That's possibly how it will be presented, but I'd argue you're wrong.

The boxes are specifically marketed for copyright violation, sure. But Kodi is a general-purpose media player. It can manage your DVD tray and all that. Your home videos. Etc.

It's similar to bit-torrent in that it has plenty of legal uses (torrents are great for downloading linux distros).

In the example you're responding to, the computer could easily be marketed in the same way as these boxes, and then there would be little distinction beyond ease-of-use.

> The boxes are specifically marketed for copyright violation, sure.

Not only that, they're specifically configured for copyright violation.

Assuming these are the Android TV boxes from China, these boxes don't come with vanilla Kodi.

They come with Android apps whose specific purpose is to get copyrighted content (like Showbox), and the pre-installed Kodi comes with a pile of add-ons that do the same.

On a vanilla system, a normal user would have to go get those apps and add-ons themselves.

The Android apps (apks) are easier to find/get than the add-ons for Kodi. You need to know the locations of the repos to get some of the shadier add-ons and that involves legwork that would likely be daunting for non-enthusiasts.

>> "The boxes are specifically marketed for copyright violation, sure. But Kodi is a general-purpose media player."

They're not just marketed for it. They come setup so that you go to the TV shows section and see a list of every TV show and every episode that you can play with one click. So comparing to a computer marketed the same way doesn't make much sense. A more accurate comparison would be selling a laptop that is locked down to the Kodi software setup to stream any TV show or movie the user wants illegally. I'm 99% sure all of the features the fully-loaded boxes come with access to in the UI are illegal.

Right. I guess if I were going to tread in those waters, I would literally sell a "fully-loaded kodi box", like I would load every plugin available.

Presumably a great many of them are not related to illegal activities.

Anyway, I've never thought that making it easy to commit a crime was a crime in and of itself. Selling lockpicks is maybe a similar example.

I'm not familiar with all the details but the Pirate Bay trial seems analogous.

I'm not so sure. It feels similar, but here's the difference, as I see it:

TPB provided direct tracker downloads and/or links to trackers that were illegal files.

These guys are installing some software that is the equivalent of TPB. The software provides "links" (more or less) to illegal video streams, but providing those streams, or the data to find them, is not something these guys have done.

I think this would be more like some other examples in this thread, where maybe you provided a browser or extension that kept up-to-date torrent site bookmarks.

Yes and that is why selling a Kodi box isn't the issue.

The issue is taking that general purpose Kodi box then making and marketing it as a way to "watch free Sky TV!" and such. The issue isn't that it is a Kodi box but that it is modified and sold with the primary (one could maybe argue sole) purpose of violating copyright.

Per the article, the legal status in England isn't clear - a trial case is currently winding through the system.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com