Kodi, legit or not?
 

I don't use it, don't even have time to watch all the channels I have and rarely watch films.

I have a mate who is always going on about how he uses Kodi to get all the stuff I am paying for without paying.

He watches BT live football and last night said he watched a flim, Hacksaw Ridge.

I know that a lot of content on Kodi is kosher but some isn't, are the things he is watching likely to be from 'illegal' sources?

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

What do you define as an illegal source?

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

Preparing and selling "fully loaded" Kodi devices is a criminal offence (because wholesale copyright infringement is a criminal, rather than a civil matter). Serving unlicensed copyrighted material to systems like "fully loaded" Kodi is likewise a criminal offence.

Consuming content in this way represents at the very least, civil copyright infringement, and in some cases could be a criminal offence under the Fraud Act (obtaining services without payment - which would be the case, for example, if the system enabled you to view a channel like Sky Sports 1 without paying the subs).

Kodi itself, without the third-party addons generally known by the term "fully loaded", is simply a technical solution for easy sharing of content between devices you own. As designed and sold by its original vendor, it is not illegal.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

Thanks Chris. :tu:

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

In the news yesterday...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38906561

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

Correct hence THIS

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

I have seen all (well most) of the latest news articles, don't read the Sun though.;) in fact I send him links every time I see one. :devsmoke:

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

In short, Kodi is perfectly legal, using it to access illegal content is not so legal.

Its just the same as a web browser really, the software is legal, using it for illegal purposes is .... probably illegal.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

He is safe though.

Single server sources arent looked at. The hosts and box sources are.

Unless he's consuming content via a P2P add-on like Plexus (Which given the quality of single server content you have absolutely no reason to do) he's fine until it all blows up.

The only other reason to use P2P add-ons in Kodi are Live Sports which again is just a game of targeting the source of it or box sellers.

With mentions of fraud being thrown about above. It'll blow up eventually. Virgin and Sky won't sit on their arse when people keep switching over to consume their content free.

The grass isn't much greener either. Your typical Live TV add-ons are rubbish. The majority of Kodi users are simply using it as a wider Netflix in STB form. All the content can be linked into your web browser on the PC and watched that way.. the old fashioned way.

I don't actually own an Android box. I use Kodi via mobile and PC. Its only because Kodi can save favourites and tick off what I've watched in series that I bother with PC rather than just using a browser. That and not having to travel through Acestream links for football on foreign networks.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

As with illegal drug use, the police will only do you for possession if they trip over you. They have limited resources so they only actively go after the facilitators, hence the raids in northwest England this week which picked on the people loading Kodi plus addons to devices described as STBs (though which I think are likely to be Fire sticks).

Even so, people should be aware that since 2005 the Fraud Act has existed, explicitly to allow the police to go after people who take services without paying for them in exactly the same way as they go after people for theft of physical items. So if, for example, you are using a fully loaded Kodi implementation to access a pay-TV stream for free, and you should be paying for it, then that constitutes a criminal offence under the Fraud Act. The consequences of this are an order of magnitude more serious than the civil offence of copyright infringement, which is all you are liable for if you have a single, unlicensed copy of a blockbuster movie on your hard drive.

If they catch you, of course.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

To be honest the same applies to any connected device.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

It is legal to own a knife. A knife has many legal uses.

It is illegal however, to use that same knife in a number of other ways.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

Not 100% true, any more than 6" and you will get arrested.

This has included some chef's who have had it in a locked box in their car boot, he was done by the idiot cop who didn't have common sense.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

And the cop was repremanded and the chef compensated for wrongful arrest.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

I wonder what would happen in a situation where somebody got caught using Kodi to access illegal content when they were using someone elses internet connection?

There are plenty of places that now offer free WiFi (us included) or they could be using a neighbour's connection (with or without their permission).

Does anybody know the score in this situation?

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

It is the person downloading the content that is infringing copyright, not the owner of the internet connection. That's why all those massive speculative legal letter writing campaigns eventually came to nothing ... even if you can prove that a copy of Star Wars was downloaded by an IP address assigned to a specific BT customer, you can't prove which individual was using that connection.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

Nothing, as said before. Single server streaming is not being pursued, there's not a single case of it and until they get off this supposed P2P war bandwagon or Sky/VM kick up a fuss, nothing will happen. As far as single server streaming goes, the site itself (Host) is generally pursued, see Firstrow, Wiziwig/Myp2p

As for the general P2P side of things, exactly what Chris said above unfolds. That same answer applies on the basis if single server streaming was suddenly pursued and punished.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

It is the person uploading/redistributing copyrighted material who is persued.

Fraudulent access of PPV is another matter.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

That's because of the differing nature of the offences. Downloading a single copy of a DVD from a newsgroup is copyright infringement. The copyright owner can sue you for the price you should have paid in HMV or wherever. Basically, it's not worth their while so they don't bother. You are, however, technically at risk of being taken to the county court over what is a civil liability.

If you download the same film via BitTorrent, you are at the same time distributing material and you put yourself at risk of a far larger civil damages claim, and the possibility that they might pursue you for criminal copyright infringement (the offence which used to be commonly called video piracy and was routinely committed by people selling duplicated VHS tapes out the back of vans at the market).

In all the above cases, civil and criminal, the relevant legislation is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

If you access pay-per-view TV (or any TV channel that's behind a paywall, like Sky One) without paying for it, you are committing a criminal offence under the Fraud Act 2006, a piece of legislation designed to put the obtaining of services without paying for them, on the same legal footing as theft of physical products from a supermarket.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

Kodi addons mostly scrape websites for videos or tv channel streams and allows you to play them in the Kodi interface. It is the same as going to the website with a browser and starting a stream except without the adverts and all within the nice single Kodi interface.

The streams are usually flash for sports and tv channels and often http file lockers for movies and tv series. So for a movie the addon scrapes a site for a llist of file lockers urls with the movie on and then allows you to play as you download. Again it works the same as if you searched for the movie in a browser, followed the link to the file locker and downloaded to watch, except no permanent copy is kept, it just plays the current part of the movie from a buffer.

Kodi by itself does none of this but does allow people to code addons that perform tasks, which is what adds the functionality to watch copyrighted material.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

People streaming via a web browser, android app or through torrent streaming on the likes of Acestream will vastly outnumber those using Kodi. I'd be very surprised if people streaming with kodi make up more than a few percent, especially for sports which is what the current media attention is centred on.

Kodi doesn't do anything that the likes of Microsoft Windows, web browsers etc don't do and have done since long before Kodi existed. It strikes me as though they're just going after the little guy for the media attention as Microsoft or Google are too big.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

The thing with those other setups is that you have to know about it, or have some technical knowledge.

Pre-configured Kodi boxes make it much easier to do i.e it's literally plug and play.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

It's the ease of use that has put Kodi on the radar. They will go after the idiots selling "fully loaded" Kodi boxes or Amazon Fire sticks or whatever, just as they've always gone after video pirates. They take out the distributors who are committing criminal copyright infringement. If any of the users get caught then that's bad luck, as the police don't have the resources to actively pursue individuals.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

The difference with the android box's is people can easily plug them in to their tv and watch on the big screen. Yeah it can be done with laptops but most people don't want to do that.

Free on the big front room tv makes android + kodi the bad boy in the copyright cartels eyes.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

It's the sellers of the fully loaded boxes that have put Kodi on the radar.

Kodi is free, the add ons are free they are making money out of boxes that can circumvent copyright. The copyright cartel don't like that. In a way I agree even though I use Kodi myself.

I've installed Kodi for quite a few friends but never charged a penny. Why should I?

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

Because if you did you'd immediately become a person of interest to the law?

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

No, because I don't advertise the fact unlike the box sellers do. They have their own websites, sell on Ebay, Amazon etc. You'd be surprised at the amount of money they make.

Then again you may not.:D

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

Also seen places selling a Plex stream service ... on Facebook

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

I hope your neighbour doesn't get into any trouble because of any use of Kodi by yourself on their Sky connection; that would be highly unfair.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

He will not be punished for single server streaming. There is no active policy on this. Even so, how do you know he's not using a VPN?

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

I don't, I just hope that he's used common sense for any illegal activity to protect his neighbour.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

Seems nothing more than a tweaking of existing legislation to me and hardly any streaming uses the torrent protocol.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

Any one got MBox TV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxM8g_AlO_c

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

I use a Seguro S3 or Firestick.

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

The police have started clamping down on people who watch illegal streams.

https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2020...own-on-piracy/

Re: Kodi, legit or not?
 

Taking services without paying for them has been on the same criminal footing as theft since the Fraud Act 2006 came into effect. The problem with people using illegal relay services is that it’s normally hard to find out who they are. In this case the police have busted one, and because the idiot end users were paying the pirates for the service, there’s watertight evidence that would stand up in court to prove their guilt. Interesting though that even now, the police are just issuing warnings rather than prosecuting.