SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the time-for-the-penguin-on-top-of-your-television-to-explode dept.
Kodi set-top boxes that allow football fans to stream live matches without a licence will be blocked by the UK's four biggest ISPs, after the High Court approved a piracy clampdown order.
Sky, BT, TalkTalk, and Virgin Media will all be required to block servers that stream Premier League football games.
"The new block will enable a proportionate and targeted restriction of content that would otherwise have been proliferated to unauthorised websites and IPTV devices," said the Premier League after it secured the court order from Mr Justice Arnold on Wednesday.
BT and Sky fling millions of pounds at footie matches to win exclusive rights to broadcast the games live. Earlier this week, BT Sport secured the exclusive rights to show UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League matches until 2021.
But broadcasters and the Premier League have been fretting about the rise of Kodi set-top boxes, which allow football fans to watch live streams of copyrighted material on their TVs without paying for a subscription.
The High Court granted the order to block the servers that stream the matches via the Kodi boxes under section 97a of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act.
"We will continue working with ISPs, government, and other sports content producers to protect consumers from illegitimate services that offer no recourse when services are removed, provide no parental controls and, in many instances, are provided by individuals involved in other criminal activity," the Premier League said.
Source: ArsTechnica
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:13AM (2 children)
Recently we had a discussion about several sites in the UK claiming that Kodi (open source media center software) is causing piracy, and people ended up writing them to tell them the difference between Kodi (legal) and the streams (illegal).
Apparently, whoever wrote this summary completely missed that discussion. The summary keeps talking about blocking these "Kodi boxes" (Raspberry PIs running Kodi), while the quoted parts talk about blocking the streams.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:21AM (1 child)
But "Kodi box", like "MAME cabinet", is increasingly used not to describe legal devices only made to play legal content, but are associated with search terms for "every tv show and movie" or "every video game", etc.
Kodi are doing nothing illegal, just the same as MAME are not. But people know that if they search for "Kodi Box" on eBay, it'll come pre-loaded with all the modules to stream anything anywhere, and if they search for a MAME cabinet, it'll come with a complete set of ROMs.
That's why MAME doesn't want you using their name and protected it with trademarks and licenses, and they enforce it.
Kodi doesn't do the same.
By offering the functionality, and with Kodi doing little to block use of its name or use of random third-party streams via mods, they are tarnishing their own reputation in this regard.
You and I both know that "Kodi box" doesn't mean a home streaming setup that only offers your own legally-ripped (if possible) content, the same way that streaming over Plex etc. has exactly the same kind of connotation. Sure, it does have legal purposes, but that's not how people know it, not why people buy it, and not how people use it. Not everyone, but certainly it's not even a minority.
I work in IT and I get asked about Kodi boxes all the time as they "let you watch everything". People know they are illegal, they don't care (which is the biggest issue really, not the technical means). £40 on a Fire stick or Android box and they don't have to pay for Sky TV and they know it. That's what they are using them for. (By the way, I have no dealings with providing it, and tell people as such - if they were just asking for a bare media centre, I'd set them up, but that's NOT what they are asking for)
By remaining associated and not clamping down on use of their name, Kodi are going to end up in trouble one way or another, even if just by reputation. "Can't have a Kodi box anymore, mate, the ISPs are blocking them now" is just the start of that.
That said, I really don't get the obsession with illegal content anyway. If I can buy it, reasonably, and use it on reasonable terms, I do so and do it legally. If I can't... well, then I don't. I don't suffer for that. The amount of junk on TV / cinema means I barely notice at all to be honest. But the media companies aren't helping themselves. I buy everything legitimately, and I'm just being constantly penalised. People buying £40 Kodi boxes get all the content for nothing before release, and never get stopped. It teaches people entirely the wrong lesson.
I bought Big Bang Theory online, a series at a time, until I caught up with what's showing in my country. For the latest series, despite buying it before Episode 1 aired, I now have to wait for the E4-exclusive series to air on TV before I can watch each episode that I "bought." Sorry, but what did I gain by buying that? I could have bought it a year down the road, saw it all for free on E4 at the same time as I did manage to see it, and then bought it cheaper later and "owned" it in just the same way. Lesson learned: Don't pre-buy a series, ever.
The media companies' biggest enemy is themselves. By refusing to update their business model, they are obsoleting themselves and making people who DO pay for content (i.e. me alone by the look of it!) regret having to do so and stop buying legal content while not pursuing illegal content either (so I don't even see this stuff and then get interested enough to buy it legitimately).
Personally, I still don't get why - with something like BBT for example - I can't just go to the website of the programme producers, buy it direct per episode or per-series and have done with it. Why I have to go through intermediates all sucking a percentage, imposing more restrictions, and feeding off their work, I can't fathom. I'd rather the producers/writers/actors got £1 from me direct than anything they'd get after going through all the various companies involved. Sure, for "new" discoveries, they want the exposure but really - how much dross is on TV compared to all the niche things that get cancelled?
While I'm being penalised for doing things right, I will stop doing things. That includes buying content, it seems. I won't go and do thing wrong, because I just don't do that. But it's a sad state of affairs that all this technology exists and I still can't buy certain 30-year-old TV series because of red-tape and nonsense, when they could have my money in SECONDS, and when I do play ball I get a worse deal than people that don't even try.
Honestly, I've nearly come to a complete halt on entertainment spending. I wonder how much of my £79 Amazon Prime actually gets to content creators, because that's more than enough for me, and I more than make that back just in delivery charges I would otherwise pay. Oh, and a free movie rental once or twice a year on Google Play. That's about it. No cinema, no DVDs, no rentals, free TV only and that only on rare occasions anyway. Well done, media industry, you've pretty much managed to lose your last paying customer...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @12:49PM
Totally missed the point.
The previous article had the "kodi boxes" thing that you are talking about, but this time the quotes from the article GOT IT RIGHT, while the SUMMARY got it wrong.