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Comment by morganvachon | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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?

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.

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.

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