Selling Media Players With Pirate Add-ons is Illegal

Selling Media Players With Pirate Add-ons is Illegal, Says Top EU Adviser


Selling media players with pirate add-ons violates EU law, according to a recommendation from Advocate General Campos Sánchez-Bordona. He issued the advice in a landmark case over the legality of pre-loaded XBMC/Kodi devices, which are widely sold across Europe. Whether users of these players also liable depends on whether they know that the content is infringing.

moviesOnline streaming continues to gain in popularity, both from authorized and pirate sources.

Particularly popular are Kodi-powered applications or set-top boxes. While Kodi itself is a neutral platform, there are lots of add-ons available that turn it into a pirate’s heaven.

In Europe, the European Court of Justice is currently handling a landmark case that should provide more clarity on the legality of set-top boxes that are sold with “links” to infringing content.

The issue was raised in a case between Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN and the Filmspeler.nl store, which sells “piracy configured” media players. While these devices don’t ‘host’ any infringing content, they ship with add-ons that make it very easy to watch infringing content.

The Dutch District Court referred the case to the EU Court of Justice, and today Advocate General (AG) Campos Sánchez-Bordona issued his recommendation to the Court.

Filmspeler previously argued that there is no communication to the public or crucial intervention from their side, since these pirate add-ons are already publicly available. The AG, however, rejected those arguments.

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source: torrentfreak