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Netflix, Amazon and Hollywood Sue Kodi-Powered Dragon Box Over Piracy
Several major Hollywood studios, Amazon, and Netflix have filed a lawsuit against Dragon Media Inc, branding it a supplier of pirate streaming devices. The companies accuse Dragon of using the Kodi media player in combination with pirate addons to facilitate mass copyright infringement via its Dragon Box device. [...] In recent months these boxes have become the prime target for copyright enforcers, including the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy partnership between Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and more than two dozen other companies.
After suing Tickbox last year a group of key ACE members have now filed a similar lawsuit against Dragon Media Inc, which sells the popular Dragon Box. The complaint, filed at a California federal court, also lists the company's owner Paul Christoforo and reseller Jeff Williams among the defendants.
According to ACE, these type of devices are nothing more than pirate tools, allowing buyers to stream copyright infringing content. That also applies to Dragon Box, they inform the court. "Defendants market and sell 'Dragon Box,' a computer hardware device that Defendants urge their customers to use as a tool for the mass infringement of the copyrighted motion pictures and television shows," the complaint, picked up by HWR, reads.
Also at Ars Technica.
Rights Holders Launch Landmark Case Against 'Pirate' Android Box Sellers
Rightsholders will tread new ground today when they attempt a private prosecution of 'pirate' Android box sellers in Singapore. In what many believe is a legal gray area, SingTel, Starhub, Fox Networks Group and Premier League will seek a win in order to suppress further sales in the region. [...] Today will see these rights holders attempt to launch a pioneering private prosecution against set-top box distributor Synnex Trading and its client and wholesale goods retailer, An-Nahl. It's reported that the rights holders have also named Synnex Trading director Jia Xiaofen and An-Nahl director Abdul Nagib as defendants in their private criminal case.
[...] The importance of the case cannot be understated. While StarHub and other broadcasters have successfully prosecuted cases where people unlawfully decrypted broadcast signals, the provision of unlicensed streams isn't specifically tackled by Singapore's legislation. It's now a major source of piracy in the region, as it is elsewhere around the globe.
Related: Middlesbrough Trader Prosecuted for Selling Streaming Boxes Preloaded With Kodi
Five Arrests in 'Fully Loaded' Kodi Streaming Box Raids
MPAA Chief Focuses Attention on the Kodi Platform
Kodi Panic in the UK and Popularity in North America
Kodi Add-on Library "TVAddons" Disappears After Lawsuit
Hollywood Strikes Back Against Illegal Streaming Kodi Add-Ons
Kodi Returns to its Roots With an Xbox One Release
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @02:51PM (25 children)
We need a way to protect the people making this equipment. Copyright deserves only contempt, and we need a technical means to defeat it once and for all. At least software can be distributed in an anonymous fashion. We need the same for hardware so that nobody can stop it. Then we can watch the tyrants cry in their soup!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @03:30PM (8 children)
I think that the making of the devices are safe, its all in how they are marketing that is burning them.
Ford makes trucks that can be used to carry drugs and have no issue. If they started marketing "you can hold x kilos of pot", the DEA would be on them in a heartbeat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @03:42PM (4 children)
If they started marketing "you can hold x kilos of pot", the DEA would be on them in a heartbeat.
If Ford did that, maybe, but if their customers make the promotion, you can't jump on Ford's bones for it. This is what the government is trying to do. Either way, the issue is the ability to keep things up when government/corp wants to take them down. We outnumber them by billions. We should be able to defeat them. We can at the very least stop serving them. That alone will get them to back off. If they try to starve us, then we need to become a bit more "active". The power is ours to forfeit and squander on superficial bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @09:12PM (3 children)
I've been feeling a similar sentiment for a while now.
I'm in the USA, and often I think to myself that if every single person who doesn't vote were to vote this year but instead vote either Libertarian or Green, we'd have a revolution on our hands.
Most people don't vote not because their precinct looks like one of those sob stories about 10 hour lines we hear every other November. Most people don't vote note because they can't fit it into their schedule or because they literally are scheduled to work somewhere the entire time the polls are open.
Most people don't vote for one very simple reason: the R and D teams are completely out of touch. Most people are simply fed up with both parties. Most non-voters I know gave up a long time ago when they realized that "3rd" parties could never "win." They've been trained their entire lives that the choices are D, R, or abstain. Now that there are enough disaffected voters that they could finally organize as a bloc and really shake things up, they don't. Caged animal's cage door is open now, and caged animal is too used to being in the cage.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday January 15 2018, @11:07PM (2 children)
The problem is that you need more than mass disaffection to make a change, you also need some organization, perhaps not in the hierarchical sense but certainly in the 'rally round the standard' sense, there has to be some sort of focal point to bring people together and motivate them to work together and compromise themselves. Virtually everyone can sense by now that the system is broken - but that does NOT mean there's anything like uniformity about how to fix it.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:05AM (1 child)
Another problem is that while people may agree that both R and D are not worth their vote, they cannot agree on what is worth their vote.
Some say "Vote Greens", others find them too distasteful. When the mainstream parties are abandoned, people usually go to extremes (left or right wing), which further divides their power.
If all who abstained would unite under one party/goal, then yes, they could be a political force to be reckoned with, but the fact they cannot agree on a direction prevents such unity, and by extension, much political power.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:24AM
Yes. Polarisation has been increasing steadily for years, and it's one of the key things that's kept e.g. the antiwar movement from being effective. When it was Clinton in office we were mostly libertarians/paleoconservatives and generally a little to the right. Under Bush suddenly the left rediscovers their distaste for war - but they don't want to join us. They organize rallies where we're not allowed to speak and spend 80% of the mic time ranting about period stains and 'social justice.' If you remember the old term 'big tent' it seems what they want is the smallest tent possible.
Now that Trump is in I was really hoping they would again remember that the left is supposed to be antiwar, but no such luck. The Democrats have completely abandoned that legacy and are now trying to make the Republicans look insufficiently hawkish in comparison instead.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @04:35PM (2 children)
I could claim the problem is with how they are making money by selling pirate devices. Would they simply give the devices away for free then there could be no argument that they were profiting from copyright infringement.
Yet the real problem is entirely with the buyers who are the kinds of people who value a thing solely by the price of the thing. They will refuse to use free pirate devices because they argue that the devices must not be any good if the devices are free.
I know these things because I have tried unsuccessfully to give away pirate devices for free to people who would not take them unless I charged money for the devices. Since I was unwilling to charge anything, I gave up on helping people, because people are hopeless idiots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @06:02PM (1 child)
"Piracy" is illegal regardless if its for profit or not.
they just need to change their marketing tactics and tell the 'industry' to go to hell.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday January 15 2018, @08:39PM
If the same number of machines were being produced and used, but it was all cottage-industry with no central profit-seeker raking in the cash, then enforcement would be impossible and the rent seekers would have to find another racket.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @03:50PM (13 children)
Why shouldn't artists be paid for their work? Are you somehow entitled to it, free of charge? Please explain your argument.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 15 2018, @04:08PM (3 children)
Don't even try that bullshit line. Virtually all copyrights today are held by corporations. Those corporations have no problem with starving artists. They will cheat and swindle any way possible to avoid paying out royalties.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:35AM (2 children)
Thieving corporations and copyright _are not the same thing_. I argued that people should get paid for their work. We seem to agree there. Copyright is not inherently bad if it helps someone get their fair compensation.
If you steal content because you think the corporation is a thieving bag of shit, you are not changing anything. Find some other content that treats its artists fairly and _support them financially_ by buying their product.
Unfortunately I think too many people get on their copyright high horse as an excuse to pirate content and still feel good about themselves. It's fucking hypocrisy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:30AM
He can do both. Not paying A does not prevent him from paying B. In fact, not paying A may be the reason that he has money to pay B.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:44AM
True, you argued that artists should be paid for their work. And, in fact, most artists ARE "paid for their work" according to contracts signed by them, and by the recording studios. They may be paid very well, while they ride the popularity charts, or they may be paid very poorly. It's AFTER they fall off of the top forty (or whichever) charts that the industry begins to really screw them. In many cases, it is because of the artist's naivete. They didn't really understand the contract, so the contract promises NOTHING. In many other cases, the studios are flat out ripping the artists off. The artists is entitled to royalties, but gets none. (There are magic formulas used to minimize those royalties, IF the artist is actually paid anything at all.)
But the real issue is - you used that argument, when the recording industries use the very same argument. In reality, the argument is used to "justify" the industry's aggressive pursuit of "pirates" - be they some kid downloading a half dozen songs, or a professional quality recording studio stamping out a million copies each week. Or, streaming services. In point of fact, the argument is used as dishonestly as it can possibly be used by the industry. So, you need not be surprised if you are taken to task for using the argument at it's face value. Sorry - if you really meant it exactly as it reads, then I have an answer to that as well.
Historically, artists of any kind were only paid if, and when, they pleased their audiences. Or, if they had a patron who was pleased by their work. There was no "right" to be paid. Kids sing, play-act, write stories, and perform all the other arts there are, for fun. Young adults often continue this play, if they aren't employed 'round the clock just surviving. No one pays these people at all for their play. A lot of adults continue this play as a hobby, or pastime, into their old age. Few, if any, are ever compensated. All of that has been true from the dawn of time, right on up through today.
Exceptional entertainers often get paid for their work. That has been just as true, from the dawn of time. It was probably true even before mankind really became sapient - the great apes can be observed playing and entertaining each other.
But, always, the entertainer's pay has been at the discretion of the audience. That pay might range from, "I liked your singing, why don't you take my apple for lunch" to a patron who provides for all the entertainer's needs. The audience is NOT obligated to pay - never has been, until recently, when working men and women have significant amounts of time to waste.
Bottom line - if an artist is exceptional, people WANT to give him/her something. And, uhhhh, the recording studios don't exactly define "exeptional". Further, "exceptional" changes with time. There is simply no good reason for government and/or megacorps to act as some kind of intermediary, to determine that an artist should, or should not, be paid.
Let the customer decide what the music is worth.
Like almost everyone else who has enjoyed live entertainment, I have tipped bands and singers. A (very) few of those tips have been substantial enough to buy a decent meal for the entire band. (By "decent" I mean something classier than McDonald's or Taco Bell.) I was never obligated to hand over twenty or fifty bucks for listening to a few songs - I decided to do that all on my own. Other people do the same.
If a "starving artist" is actually starving, then he needs to decide that entertainment just isn't his thing. Find another line of work, or apply for welfare, or just die quietly in some city alley. No person on earth is obligated to support some guy who thinks that he is the next Paul McCartney - but can't carry a tune in a bucket.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @04:16PM (2 children)
(Score: 2, Disagree) by tibman on Monday January 15 2018, @05:38PM (1 child)
You're saying every product you can buy in a store is usually used to make people's lives more difficult. Don't be crazy.
You say that copyright for books was fine back on the original printing press. So you are somewhat okay with a creator exercising control of their creations. But then you say copyrighting a program is "harming society as a whole both materially and spiritually" because it is used rather than read and enjoyed. The consumption of the thing isn't the point of copyright. It's the copying! To make this more fun, if you are okay with copyright protecting books then what about ebooks? The exact same amount of work went into writing the paperbook and ebook. Only the distribution model is different.
OT:
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 15 2018, @08:35PM
No, I don't think that he said that at all. What I saw, when I read his post, was that people who own "intellectual property" want unwarranted control over their products, and hence, the customer, after they have bought the product.
Consider the Windows operating system(s). You have several different "levels" of the Windows operating system. Home, student, professional, server, and more. So, the home user, and the student are probably looking for the cheapest version of Windows they can get. The professional wants something better, and server is server - you pay a premium for those options enabled in server versions.
But, let's do a full stop right there. "Options enabled in server" means exactly what it says. One of my pet peeves, early in the days of Windows, was that ONLY ONE PERSON CAN LOG INTO WINDOWS PROFESSIONAL AT A TIME. When the wife was sitting in front of the computer, and I logged in remotely to do something, THE SYSTEM LOCKED HER SCREEN! Of course, she whined, moaned, and logged right back in, which then locked my account. Uhhh, why is that? Well, it's not a lack of ability - it is Windows policy. If you want multiple active logins, you must purchase one version or another of Windows Server.
Linux? There really isn't any "server version". Take any version of Linux, and however many people have accounts on the machine can all log in at the same time. Doesn't matter if they have a dumb terminal, or they're logging in from the internet, they can all log in at the same time. (Of course, if you have limited resources - memory, CPU, disk access, things are going to slow down, but the system won't limit the number of active logged in accounts.)
And, look at the pricing for those server installations. The cheapest are several times the cost of Windows Pro.
THAT is the kind of thing that GP was addressing. The "owners" of "Intellectual Property" want to control you, and how you use their products. The only "legal" way to gain access to all the abilities within their systems, is to submit to extortion. Pay, and pay, and keep on paying.
That crap is reprehensible - or worse.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @04:25PM (5 children)
did you just now find out about the internet? noone is talking about not paying an artist for his/her/pronoun's work. what we are against is the digital slave trade whereby someone who thinks himself my master attempts to use technical means to take away my rights over what i buy. a musician can play a concert and get paid for it. an artist can be commissioned to make a piece of art. what these slavetrading music labels and other usurers want to do is use law to say once you buy something you can't share it, make a back up, etc. video companies could do paid live streams like concerts. they could get paid and then all the poor people could watch the copies later. that's not good enough for these scumbags though. they want to keep the rights locked away for ever and sit on their fat greasy asses selling copies for eternity. maybe they need to be set on fire and see how that grease pops and spits?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by bob_super on Monday January 15 2018, @06:51PM (4 children)
Cute tirade, but it's not the 50s anymore.
It now takes almost no investment to take one song/movie/stream and literally broadcast it to the whole world, within seconds of it being first made public.
If they don't keep stamping out the most obvious and egregious cases of instant free redistribution, how do you propose that the millions of people working in the entertainment industry will get paid?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Arik on Monday January 15 2018, @08:12PM
Most of them would have to (shock, horror) get a job I suspect.
Not the worst thing that could happen.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by vux984 on Monday January 15 2018, @08:32PM
" how do you propose that the millions of people working in the entertainment industry will get paid?"
Same way I do. They tell me what they want. I tell them how much it will cost. They pay me. I do it.
This is basically the kickstarter model. Or the Patreon model. Its also very common in software; and its how lots of in-house utilities, tools and websites are made. Payment up front. If the final result sucks, so be it, you got paid, and the customers will likely not pay as much or at all for your next project. If the final result is good, great, you can ask for more money for your next idea and probably get it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:53AM
Arranging live performances for the artists?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:31AM
I'm pretty alright with them not getting paid, actually. There is no god-mandated reason for an entertainment industry to exist. Either they can exist in the reality of current technology or they cannot.
In the times of the Library of Alexandria the concept of restricting the copying and dissemination of knowledge and ideas was ludicrous. Demanding control of an idea, once it has left your head, is quite honestly the ramblings of a crazy person. Copyright probably should not exist. I'll compromise though and agree to the same terms as patents. More than reasonable.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 15 2018, @04:05PM (1 child)
I share your contempt, not for copyright, but for the corrupt bastards who have corrupted copyright into it's present form.
Personally, I think copyright was a "good thing", up until Disney got involved in extending terms, and Sonny Boner was elected to help ramrod that crap through.
More, I believe that far more people would be willing to obey copyright laws, if they were fair, reasonable, and rational. We can quibble forever about what "reasonable" means - some of us think that 7 years is right, others opt for 15 years, and you can find a myriad of opinions on the subject if you care to ask people. Almost no one in my generation believes that life plus 50 years (or 70, or 120, or whatever the corporations demand next) is reasonable. There are relatively few books, movies, or songs that have made more money a century after the authors death, than it made during his life. Movies, especially, make most of their money in the first year. If they don't make anyone rich in that first year, then no one is ever going to get rich showing the damned thing.
I believe, all we really need do, is roll the laws back to about 1955, give or take a couple years. But, ANYTHING less than fifty years would be better than the mess we have now.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @06:40PM
And in addition to insane copyright term lengths it's almost impossible to figure out when something does finally get into the public domain.
Just look at this fucking mess https://copyright.cornell.edu/publicdomain [cornell.edu]
The only way to get out of this guagmire is to require for copyright to be given the work permanently stamped with "Will enter the public domain in the year XXXX".