Originally Posted by
bassethound
On Wednesday April 26, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) appears to have hammered another nail in the platform's coffin, effectively banning the sale of 'fully loaded' Kodi boxes by way of a lengthy ruling.
In a detailed statement (H/T TorrentFreak), the ECJ deemed that copyright law, "must be interpreted as covering the sale of a multimedia player, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, on which there are pre-installed add-ons, available on the internet, containing hyperlinks to websites — that are freely accessible to the public — on which copyright-protected works have been made available to the public without the consent of the right holders."
In plain English, that means that Android TV boxes shipping with with both Kodi and pre-installed third-party add-ons that provide easy acccess to pirated content fall foul of the law.
Furthermore, it adds that previous exceptions to EU copyright law covering "acts of temporary reproduction, on a multimedia player" fails to "satisfy the conditions set out in those provisions."
This is a key point, as it means that the fact streaming doesn't result in the creation of physical copies of rights protected content is no longer a legitimate defense against charges of copyright infringement.