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posted by Fnord666 on Monday January 15 2018, @12:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the low-hanging-fruit dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 15 2018, @04:05PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 15 2018, @04:05PM (#622587) Journal

    Copyright deserves only contempt

    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.

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @06:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @06:40PM (#622659)

    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".