Netflix, Amazon, Movie Studios Sue Over TickBox Streaming Device (arstechnica.com) 135
Movies studios, Netflix, and Amazon have teamed up to file a lawsuit against a streaming media player called TickBox TV. The device in question runs Kodi on top of Android 6.0, and searches the internet for streams that it can make available to users without actually hosting any of the content itself. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The complaint (PDF), filed Friday, says the TickBox devices are nothing more than "tool[s] for mass infringement," which operate by grabbing pirated video streams from the Internet. The lawsuit was filed by Amazon and Netflix Studios, along with six big movie studios that make up the Motion Picture Association of America: Universal, Columbia, Disney, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros.
"What TickBox actually sells is nothing less than illegal access to Plaintiffs' copyrighted content," write the plaintiffs' lawyers. "TickBox TV uses software to link TickBox's customers to infringing content on the Internet. When those customers use TickBox TV as Defendant intends and instructs, they have nearly instantaneous access to multiple sources that stream Plaintiffs' Copyrighted Works without authorization." The device's marketing materials let users know the box is meant to replace paid-for content, with "a wink and a nod," by predicting that prospective customers who currently pay for Amazon Video, Netflix, or Hulu will find that "you no longer need those subscriptions." The lawsuit shows that Amazon and Netflix, two Internet companies that are relatively new to the entertainment business, are more than willing to join together with movie studios to go after businesses that grab their content.
"What TickBox actually sells is nothing less than illegal access to Plaintiffs' copyrighted content," write the plaintiffs' lawyers. "TickBox TV uses software to link TickBox's customers to infringing content on the Internet. When those customers use TickBox TV as Defendant intends and instructs, they have nearly instantaneous access to multiple sources that stream Plaintiffs' Copyrighted Works without authorization." The device's marketing materials let users know the box is meant to replace paid-for content, with "a wink and a nod," by predicting that prospective customers who currently pay for Amazon Video, Netflix, or Hulu will find that "you no longer need those subscriptions." The lawsuit shows that Amazon and Netflix, two Internet companies that are relatively new to the entertainment business, are more than willing to join together with movie studios to go after businesses that grab their content.
What did they think was going to happen? (Score:1)
Diluted services start making it more expensive to legally stream content and people will go back to piracy.
Netflix found the magic cost-to-benefit ratio
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The old I'm morally justified in pirating, because I don't like the price-point.
Nice.
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Well it kind of is, because if your morality is based on something like doing harm, the key question becomes "would I be willing to pay for this to begin with?"
If the answer is no, then it has no effect whether I pirate shows or not. I am not paying them any money and I am not costing them any money.
If the answer is yes, then I am stealing the value of those shows by consuming them without paying. Of course this is assuming you assign value to intellectual property, which I do.
The cheaper the service, the m
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... if your morality is based on something like doing harm, the key question becomes "would I be willing to pay for this to begin with?"
That is not the key question. Just think about it a bit—by that standard, if at any point you did not pay the maximum amount you would be willing to pay for any good then you would be "stealing" the difference. There could be no such thing as "consumer surplus". For that matter, there could be no luxury goods (such as entertainment) since every scrap of income would go toward absolute necessities—people are willing to pay whatever they must in order to live. In practice people routinely (i.e. al
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if at any point you did not pay the maximum amount you would be willing to pay for any good then you would be "stealing" the difference
No because the producer has consented to provide the good at a given price. I didn't say "how much would I be willing to pay" just "would I be willing to pay." What I meant was "Would I be willing to pay what is asked?" and omitted that because I didn't realize it would be misinterpreted.
If you would pay for content in the absence of the content being available for free via piracy, then to me that's a different situation than if you wouldn't pay for it in the absence of piracy.
people are willing to pay whatever they must in order to live
There's also competition among
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Copyright infringement is neutral; you don't gain anything, but you don't lose anything either. (The same cannot be said for copyright enforcement, which does cause actual harm
Way to deliberately ignore that copyright law has succeeded in making books/music/movies/software commercially viable, and the enormous benefits that brings to everyone in the first world.
Their problem is that their income comes from doing something that no one actually needs them to do, namely distributing information. If they charged a reasonable price for their labor, or for access to never-before-published material, there would be no problem.
I'm not seeing a practical alternative to copyright here.
It's time to abandon that failing model and go back to charging for the useful work of creating new content.
So cinemas shouldn't pay a dime to the movie-creators? It should all be done through patronage schemes?
Don't be ridiculous.
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The old I'm morally justified in pirating, because I don't like the price-point.
Nice.
Above a certain price point, sure, I would say it's morally justifiable. Actually, I think quite a few things are justifiable in the service of breaking the content industry's pushes towards where they clearly want to go in the streaming model. Consumer rights have been removed one by one by one because the content owners are legally allowed to throw technological barriers in the way, I'm not sure we have to 'play nice' by the rules when the rules have been stacked against your own interests.
The market isn'
Lawsuit, publicity, free advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd never heard of tickbox before, now the lawsuit is being reported in the media and drawing attention i expect their sales to go up.
Eventually they will lose the case and go under, but not before the owners have run off with a decent profit.
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Eventually they will lose the case and go under, but not before the owners have run off with a decent profit.
That's the point precisely, as long as a "quick buck" can be made.
if I were them, I'd sell the box without any potentially "infringing" functionality;
I'd also include any disclaimers I need to include so as to "insulate" myself;
then point buyers to a site that has code to that makes the box work as intended.
Next, profit!
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Caused by artificial limits on availability... (Score:5, Interesting)
Quit artificially limiting my access to media! Whether it's simply not making it available at all, or by forcing me to subscribe to 12 streaming services to get access to the content they are forcing the population back to piracy.
I realize that while there are some major douches out there who would pirate a movie if it cost only a dime, there are many of us who would happily pay if you stopped screwing us over.
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I realize that while there are some major douches out there who would pirate a movie if it cost only a dime, there are many of us who would happily pay if you stopped screwing us over.
It's funny how things work. I know people who have the exact same attitude toward the Big 5 publishing companies.
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Of books? The situations are not at all comparable. You don't have to subscribe to 5 different publishers' services to get books from each. You can go to their website for free, or to Amazon or B&N or Book Depository.
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Quit artificially limiting my access to media!
So true. By god, you are owed that media. It's your right as an American. Give me my content or, or give me death! I think that's how it went right?
Re:Caused by artificial limits on availability... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, pretty much. Copyright is a government-enacted, granted, and termed restriction of people's rights to ideas. You own the VHS plastic and rust that information is held on, but the data held in the rust is as "owned" by anyone as one "owns" the sound waves coming from a mouth, or anyone can own the light coming from the sun.
If movies couldn't be made without copyright, fine. I guess movies wouldn't be business model. There is no inherent right for government or society to protect a business model. When it *is* done, it's entirely up for debate how and why it's done. The default state is no idea ownership.
We're "owed" the content because ideas and data cannot inherently be "owned" at all. We decided to restrict ownership for entirely practical reasons, not reasons of inherent moral imperative. If the practicality of the reasons goes away or is reduced, it's entirely feasible to adjust the limitations. If the limitations begin to infringe on topics we consider *actual* 'moral' imperatives (like life, property, free speech, etc) to a degree that is unacceptable (subjective !) then it can enter the realm of a *detriment* to morality, but never can copyight itself enter the realm of *being* a moral imperative by itself, because it isn't that in any way.
One of the subjective measure of the feasibility is precisely how willing people are to abide by it. If most people say it's dumb and don't abide by it, then it *is* dumb because there is no other moral imperative behind it's inception. It *Is* also possible that people who say it's dumb don't think it through, or will change their minds when all TV, movies, and music goes away, but maybe it won't. Who knows.
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My God, the stupidity of this particular argument is epic.
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Then the constitution is stupid. The law was established exactly for the reason the GP specified. You don't own ideas once you've shared them. Artificial protections were put in place by force of law in order to artificially grant this protection.
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You need to read some more and not just call the constitution stupid. The people who wrote it were dealing with some shit way more serious than your panty waist-ed X-men addiction. And in the process they established intellectual property rights.
Do you know why copyrights and patents were put in place? To allow people to make a profit before the majors simply copied their ideas.
You DO own your ideas. At least for a period of time. That's what was done. But you don't own my idea. And if you can't even
Re:Caused by artificial limits on availability... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you know why copyrights and patents were put in place? To allow people to make a profit before the majors simply copied their ideas.
You DO own your ideas. At least for a period of time.
Do you understand WHY they made it so you could profit from your ideas for a limited time? To promote the progress of science and the useful arts by the release of those works into the public domain. If the end goal wasn't for the works to become public domain they wouldn't have specified that the exclusive right is for a limited time.
So yes, those works are owed to the general public after a limited time. Copyright has been extended so far that for practical purposes it never becomes public domain. It is unconstitutional, it is the wholesale theft of the public domain.
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It is true that the protections would be for a limited time. But that's not what we're talking about here, is it?
Is TickBox serving up Marx Brothers movies? Three Stooges?
C'Mon, man.
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You DO own your ideas. At least for a period of time.
https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#102 [copyright.gov]
(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
Additionally
https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106a [copyright.gov]
(a) Rights of Attribution and Integrity.-Subject to section 107 and independent of the exclusive rights provided in section 106, the author of a work of visual art-
(1) shall have the right-
(A) to claim authorship of that work, and
Claim authorship, not ownership, authorship.
A copyright holder can claim they HAD the idea, they have no right in law to claim OWNERSHIP of an idea.
Also of note
https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92appa.html [copyright.gov]
Sec. 113. (a) The Librarian of Congress (hereinafter referred to as the âoeLibrarÂianâ) shall establish and maintain in the Library of Congress a library to be known as the American Television and Radio Archives (hereinafter referred to as the âoeArchivesâ). The purpose of the Archives shall be to preserve a permanent record of the television and radio programs which are the heritage of the people of the United States and to provide access to such programs to historians and scholars without encouraging or causing copyright infringement.
There is a cost to place a work under copyright protection, it is not free.
That cost is after copyright expires, that work belongs to the people of the USA.
So many copyright holders behaved
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And it turns out they were wrong about alot of stuff. The constitution is hardly immutable nor the people that crafted it 'divine' in any way.
That's why they made it amendable. And we've changed it according to their rules.
"And in the process they established intellectual property rights."
Yes, after much debate and disagreement.
If something is adopted following debate or disagreement? Is that to say it is necessarily wrong?
It should be noted that the people arguing for it were hardly the "small guys".
Citation needed.
There's nothing whatsoever about this being the reason for copyright in the constitution. You made that up.
No, sorry, I didn't. Yes, it's true that the constitution does not spell out all of the debate and disagreement that would lead you to ignore the entire agreement, but there really are many more historical resources available to you if you'd like to learn more from this discussion,
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And it turns out they were wrong about alot of stuff. The constitution is hardly immutable nor the people that crafted it 'divine' in any way.
That's why they made it amendable. And we've changed it according to their rules.
Modification of copyright law doesn't requite a constitutional amendment either. I think the Constitution is fine. It gives Congress the power to craft copyright laws, and Congress is where the real problem lies.
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My God, the stupidity of this particular argument is epic.
If you want me to give up one of my rights -- the right to say what I want, copy what I want, all these natural rights that we used to take for granted, then you have to give me something in return. The entire purpose of copyright was to give a very limited time period of exclusivity, because that will enable more content to be created and released to the public domain. That was the entire purpose -- they felt copyright was the way to maximize the public domain. Otherwise, it's not morally justifiable to li
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I love Youtube. But to say that movie studios are competing with it is silly. (even though I might often prefer the YT content),
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As it should.
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But that's not to say there's only one class of thing.
Steven Spielberg and Cracked are not in the same league.
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It's even more silly that they're competing with YouTube, and losing!
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Yes, pretty much. Copyright is a government-enacted, granted, and termed restriction of people's rights to ideas.
Yes, pretty much like rape laws are government-enacted restrictions on people's rights to have sex with whoever they want, whenever they want. Good job, you just described every law on the book.
One of the subjective measure of the feasibility is precisely how willing people are to abide by it.
If you don't pay for your content, you're a leach. You are leaching off of everyone else that's paying for it. If other people didn't pay for it, then it wouldn't exist, and you wouldn't be able to leach it in the first place.
A great way to decide if an action is moral, or good for society. Imagine what it'd be like
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"Good job, you just described every law on the book."
No, not at al, and in fact exactly the opposite. 'Rape' would, by definition, infringe on another person's right to liberty. Rape laws define the demarcation of a conflict of rights, my right to perform actions and another's rights to be free from impinging actions (liberty). Yes, this is pretty much what laws do. However, notice that the "law" says nothing about defining the right of liberty to exist or the right of freedom to exist. These are taken to b
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Total bullshit reasoning. If everyone did what one person did, the world wouldn’t work. Take a car accident on the highway. If everyone drives past it and does nothing, that’s bad. If everyone takes out their phone and calls the police, some 911 switchboard just got overloaded (and maybe more people crash due to using their phones) when one person calling would have sufficed. If everyone stops to check if everyone is okay, then suddenly the highway gets so clogged the ambulance can’t get there. Are the people who do nothing and drive past “leeches”? I guess you could technically claim that. But they’re not hurting anyone by doing that, just like how pirating something you otherwise wouldn’t have bought also doesn’t hurt anyone.
That's a weird goofy justification for essentially "I can do this thing as long as not too many others do it, cause I'm special."
There are a whole ton of bad comparisons in there as well that I shouldn't need to get into.
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Neither do you
Sure I do. My dog is calling out people that wrap their self-serving illegal activities in a moral argument.
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Why exactly do you believe this?
Common sense.
But maybe you're right. The millions of people that are downloading GoT are doing it to better society.
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Anyway, your reply indicates that you don't actually know why you believe that
You're probably right. All I know is it bothers me when people lie to themselves.
It's interesting that the way you define a behavior as "moral" is that it necessarily makes society better (if I understand you correctly).
Do you like content? Movies, etc? I have to assume you do if you are commenting on this thread.
Then yeah, not paying for it makes society worse. If you don't pay for it it won't exist. Couldn't get much more "common" sense than that. The only reason you can pirate the content and not feel an effect directly is because there are other people that ARE paying for it... paying for YOU to consume it.
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Actually, my interest in "mainstream" content has steadily decreased over the last two decades to roughly zero.
That's nice, so you're mission is to destroy it's business model because ... you don't want other people to listen to it? Or what?
Re:Caused by artificial limits on availability... (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides that, they've had 15 years to get their shit together and release globally, yet they continue their bullshit regioning, milking it to the last drop. What do they expect? I mean, if it is a global economy and all, shouldn't consumers be able to find the cheapest media like corporations find the cheapest labor?
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My friends and I will be over later to decide how to best portion out your property.
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We will decide what non-destructively means. (most certainly in our favor)
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Why don't you shove a rusty spike into your eyeball? You are an unintelligent waste of resources, and you don't deserve to even breath, much less eat. You are a fucked-up asshole who deserves nothing but pain.
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I would start by slashing your throat and leaving you to die. Because you are a fucked-up retard who is good for literally nothing. It's practically a miracle that your parents weren't tortured to death for allowing you to grow out of infancy.
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You are talking about Disney's movies like they are a natural resource or required for life. How about this: you don't like their business model? Go away, and do something else with your time. Like I said above, content is a right. You're acting like these movies are a loaf of bread and you're starving to death.
What do they expect?
I think they expect you to either buy their content or go outside and walk your dog. Your choice.
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Re:Caused by artificial limits on availability... (Score:5, Insightful)
So true. By god, you are owed that media. It's your right as an American. Give me my content or, or give me death! I think that's how it went right?
I know you're trying to be funny/sarcastic, but you're actually correct.
Society in general benefits from access to media (books, stories, museums, etc).
Studies have shown that being exposed to more media (and therefore more characters and differing viewpoints) increases empathy and creates a society where people can get along easier and are more willing to help each other.
The point of copyright laws was to encourage people to create media for the public domain.
In exchange for that public service, they were granted a LIMITED monopoly so the creator could get a benefit.
Two hundred years ago, a 14 year copyright term seemed like enough time to distribute something using horses and boats.
In this day and age you can instantly distribute worldwide with the push of a button but the current copyright length has increased to effectively infinity.
The current copyright situation is an example of the rich few bribing politicians to rob from everyone. We are all harmed by this in hard to tell ways so that a relatively few people can become insanely wealthy.
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I think copyright was always longer than that, but in essence, you're right. It's for the original author.
I think we can all agree that over the years the terms of copyright protection has been extended too far beyond this goal. This needs a serious looking at.
But if we're to be totally honest here, we're not talking about Marx Brothers movies or Mickey Mouse shorts, are we? It's about new movies. Ones that no one would argue the copyright has expired on.
The current copyright system is exactly the same
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"I think copyright was always longer than that, but in essence, you're right. It's for the original author."
As far as the US is concerned, the original copyright law gave 14 years with a single 14-year renewal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"The point of copyright laws was to encourage people to create media for the public domain."
No. Without a financial incentive to create, there would be nothing to add to the public domain. I sense that you are arguing from a "greed is bad" perspective, or an "everything should be free for everyone" perspective, which is essentially the antithesis of a civilized society.
Do you do something important for the world? Do you work for completely altruistic reasons, rather than collecting a pay check?
It seems that
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So you would rather pay $150/month for ONE service that gets you the content you want?
Because that's the whole cable model - sell you lots of content prepackaged and people hated it. They want the ability to pick and choose their content ("a la carte"). But the flip side of it is having to pick up and join many separate services to get the content you want.
So either you want 12 services but the ability to finely pick what you want,
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It's not a choice I need to make. Of course, I can, if I so desire. Or I can decide that I really don't need to watch Star Trek: The Search for More Revenue.
It's mostly all a fucking waste of time anyway.
Re: Caused by artificial limits on availability... (Score:1)
Mostly? That's generous :P
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I didn't mention a show.
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It seems that people want one of the following:
People don't want multiple streaming services, of which only a small amount of content is consumed from each.
Re:Caused by artificial limits on availability... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I agree! Same with the RIAA, and publishers. All are trying to cling to an outdated artificial scarcity business model that just won't fly any more. No, I do not feel entitled to get content without paying for it. I am just tired of all of the crap that the MPAA/RIAA/publishers are pushing to try to hide their extreme price gouging!
There should be no reason for me to have to subscribe to more than two streaming services to have access to pretty much any movie or TV show ever made. And the whole region
Re: Caused by artificial limits on availability... (Score:2)
Daddy, will you treat me a bedtime story?
I'm sorry Julie, the copyright cartels won't allow reproduction of works they have the rights to.
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Canada (Score:3)
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Grammer ... person alert - "cut-and-dried" not dry (Score:1)
The use of past tense is important to the explanation in that 'dried' implies completion where 'dry' does not.
Re: Canada (Score:2)
As another commenter pointed out, it's a grey area as there hasn't been a definitive case through the courts yet.
I feel the companies that are advertising and selling these preloaded boxes as replacements to cable ("for free!") should be illegal as they are profiting by directly selling the device to consumers.
Streaming of the content should be legal, based on previous court cases (I can't cite them at the moment, on mobile and just heading out), where streaming was deemed "not downloading" as it does not s
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Not sure about Canada, but in the UK there's been a lot of 'clamping down' on this sort of thing (we have a media tax too, BTW). You can't actively assist in copyright infringement, and if the device is primarily used for copyright infringement, you can't sell it.
Now, if they could come up with a box that mostly shows legal streams, but has some back-door way to get to the illegal ones, then they might have a better chance. The trouble is, average-joe doesn't want such a box - they want all the illegal stuf
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Wonder if it can help me locate some Streisand (Score:2)
shows? https://www.tickboxtv.com/ [tickboxtv.com]
After looking at the unit/site (Score:2)
this seems like going after a low hanging fruit to get the results you want and set a precedent.
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I'm pretty sure some of those fart apps copied their content from me! I need to call my lawyer and sue those bastichs.
Can't stop the signal, Mal (Score:2)
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We've already been through this many times for many years. This sort of thing is hardly new. There are no novel legal arguments that may succeed.
Heads-up (Score:1)
Thanks for drawing our attention to this product in such a kind display of altruism.
It would have been even more considerate if your 'complaint' contained a 'Where to buy' section.
Best regards,
B Streisand.
Said this since cable and sat were king (Score:2)
If you don't want me to watch it or listen to it, don't make it available on the wires coming into my house. Once it's on my premises, I consider it to be fair game for decoding, cracking, spoofing, or any other means of making use of the signal you freely gave me.
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Freely? How did you get to the Freely part?
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Or 'gave', for that matter.
Tickbox (Score:4, Informative)
There is a typo on the homepage. (Turn you TV into a content filled home theatre system enjoying thousands of
It won't tell me how much the thing costs until I enter my email address, which makes me suspicious. Also I need to act fast, as the 40% discount won't last long, which just sounds like one of those late night shopping channel hucksters.
Apart from that, it looks like any one of hundreds of cheap Chinese Kodi boxes I can buy from Aliexpress or Banggood.
I actually built myself something similar for about $60 using an old Atom powered Acer box I bought second hand. It runs LibreElec and works pretty well.
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File a lawsuit? Idiots. Buy one! (Score:1)
The best way to put TickBox out of business is to buy their product, then shut down every stream they find. TickBox is doing the studio's work FOR THEM, finding infringing content with no effort from the studios at all.
Really. Only a lawyer would pursue this path. An executive with half a brain would simply starve TickBox of content.
stupid lawsuit - product not unique at all (Score:2)
There are several of these ready-made android based Kodi stream boxes out there. In fact, you can turn a Pi 3 into a kodi box in about 20 minutes. The key is finding the right plugins for kodi and those are changing all the time.
In fact, you can put Kodi and all the plugins on linux, windows, android, really any platform.
Kodi is just a multimedia juke box platform for the local machine and your LAN, the internet streaming stuff is all by plugin.
This lawsuit will widely publicize the stream box phenomenon an
Location of Contraband (Score:2)
So let me get this straight. Content providers want to sue TickBox for creating a device that roots out contraband. Seems to me that content providers would be buying a TickBox themselves so they could more easily find the infringing content and then issue take-down orders.
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How old are you?
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How does anyone *need* ways "to more easily watch the shows"? It's not like we're talking food or medicine here. It's stupid-ass sitcoms and comic book movies.
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Maybe it's a sad commentary, but a lot of people don't do anything interesting all day.
You're right. And using their free time to watch TV doesn't help.
And whining about it not being free is even more pathetic.
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Re: I would prefer (Score:1)
Prefer it to what?
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"Tom's heart ached to be free, or else to have something of interest to do to pass the dreary time. His hand wandered into his pocket and his face lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively the percussion–cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off,
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> The device in question searches the internet
So does google.
You do know that the law doesn't just cut shit off in the middle like you just did, don't you? You may think it does, but that only means about as much as your post.
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To think this might be understandable. To take the time to type it...? Hilarious.
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Do you really think that if they do lose, that there will be any new movies, er, content?
Re:Crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course there will still be new movies! There _are_ other business models upon which movie makers can profit. This clinging to copyright is sheer greed, brought to us all by the same people responsible for the theft known as "Hollywood Accounting". They've fought nearly every technological advance, and lost, and the world is a better place for it. They tried to kill the player piano, AM radio, the cassette tape, and the VCR, among others. Now, 25 years into this revolution, they're still trying to figure out how to lock down or shut down the Internet, turn the clock back to the 1980s, but only for us, not for themselves. They happily use the fruits of technology to reduce their costs, while hypocritically still trying to charge us prices based on the wishful thinking that there haven't been any advances.
Take a moment to appreciate just how much copyright costs us all. We should have digital public libraries by now, which never run out of copies, can actually stay current instead of never having anything newer than 3 years old, are totally searchable, and which do not require lots of travel to utilize. Surf to the Library of Congress website, and download anything they have, any time, and don't worry about returning it. No more late fines. The content in an entire wall of books can fit on one hard drive. All that is huge, huge savings and far better and more usability, but thanks to copyright, we can't have it.
Instead, research we financed is locked behind the paywalls of dozens of academic publishers. Those scumbags charge $30 for a 10 page article, and pass along precisely zero of that to the researchers who actually produced the content they've locked away.
Keep copyright the way it is? Maybe even strengthen it? Might as well ask that we stick with horses and never upgrade to the automobile.
Re: (Score:2)
A car isn't built with the intention of being used for crimes.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think your comparison works. When I see someone in a fancy car, I think There's someone who wants to show off how much money the have, but I don't assume they're necessarily planning on speeding.
There's also an engineering aspect here: if you want to make a car that can comfortable drive at 70mph on a motorway, you'll certainly want its maximum speed to be somewhere north of 70.
I agree that our current essentially-indefinite copyrights are a perversion of what copyright should be (and originally was