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?