Is Kodi legal? Fresh crackdown sees UK streamers threatened with 10 years in prison

[speedygonzalez]

Indeed, as of May 3 2017, the maximum prison sentence for illegally streaming copyrighted media has soared from two years to 10, after the UK government passed the controversial Digital Economy Act into law.

Many are sceptical that end users will feel the full force of the law in this regard, but at this stage, we wouldn't care to risk it – the EU is now also among the growing list of influential Kodi critics.

If you had read the Digital Economy Act, you would have found that the relevant crime/penalty is specifically for "communicating the work to the public", not the "end users".

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.

If you read the recent ECJ case/ruling, you will find that it is associated with the sales of fully loaded Kodi boxes, specifically advertised for circumventing paying for copyright media. As such, unlike the previous PRCA v NLA case, the recent ECJ ruling is obiter, certainly it would be under UK law (and Brexit would have come and gone by the time any new case today ends up in the UK Supreme Court).

Because of that, I think the 2013 UK Supreme Court ruling*, which was confirmed by the ECJ, remains the relevant applicable law for streaming by end users, at the moment. As the Law Lords then indicated, streaming copyright material at home is like reading a pirated copy of a book, or viewing a fake painting - neither has ever been unlawful. It has always been the copying, or engagement in distribution to the public, in particular making financial gains from it at the expense of the copyright holder, that is unlawful.

Yeah a guy nearby me got jailed for 2 years around chrimbo for viewing illegal content on Kodi/Fire TV. His ISP reported him.........

For the above reasons, it is therefore inconceivable that any UK court would have found any person guilty, since 2013, of viewing copyright material on Kodi/Fire TV. Perhaps the guy was jailed because the "illegal content" was censored material.

* https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/do...2-judgment.pdf and http://curia.europa.eu/juris/documen...C&docid=153302