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He broke the law. Not just that, he broke the law and spit in the face of powerful people holding lots of money. Not just that, but he did it publically, SELLIN

by Asooka 9y ago

He broke the law. Not just that, he broke the law and spit in the face of powerful people holding lots of money. Not just that, but he did it publically, SELLING HIS ILLEGAL PRODUCTS. What happened to him is terrifying and way disproportionate of his crime, which amounted to a few dollars of lost profits by companies that continue to post record profits even in the face of widespread piracy. However, the lesson you should take from this is that if you should 1) not piss off people with lots of money while breaking the law, and 2) if you do, try to make yourself hard to find. People commit much worse crimes like rape and murder, and get away with it without being found, you should be able to figure out how to give people an app anonymously. Of course, that is unless you want to make a political statement via civil disobediance, but I have the feeling that person wasn't after that.

khedoros1 9y ago
> He broke the law. Which law? > Not just that, but he did it publically, SELLING HIS ILLEGAL PRODUCTS. What was he selling? The site looks like a free listing of other people's plugins for Kodi, hosted on other sites (github and the official Kodi add-ons repo, for the 5 add-ons that I looked at). It looks like he's got ads up, and links to zips containing XMLs written by 3rd parties, that presumably provide the metadata to eventually reach some streamed audio/video/whatever. Calling it "selling his illegal products" is more than a stretch. > 1) not piss off people with lots of money while breaking the law Might as well drop "while breaking the law". Things won't end well if you piss of people with a lot of money legally either.
- Asooka 9y ago
  He's profiting from piracy. Recently the EU ruled that linking to pirate content transitively makes you a pirate, and similarly in the US aiding piracy is illegal. I assume that Canada has similar laws. So not only was he engaged in illegal activity - providing information on how to access pirate content, he was actively profiting from it. What happened to him is absolutely the expected outcome of his activity.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    > Recently the EU ruled that linking to pirate content transitively makes you a pirate, and similarly in the US aiding piracy is illegal. How about links to links to pirated content? How many levels of indirection would it take to not be "linking to pirate content"? I assume that he must've received some kind of take-down notices (the site claims claim they haven't, but sure, we'll assume that they're just lying), but wouldn't it make as much or more sense for those notices to go to the account-holders on github where a lot of the repositories storing the actual connection data are? With the information given, my opinion is that the connection is too indirect for the level of response. The site itself seems full of mostly-legal content (the same free channels that show up on my Roku, for example). It seems like overkill to me.

by Asooka 9y ago

khedoros1 9y ago

> He broke the law. Which law? > Not just that, but he did it publically, SELLING HIS ILLEGAL PRODUCTS. What was he selling? The site looks like a free listing of other people's plugins for Kodi, hosted on other sites (github and the official Kodi add-ons repo, for the 5 add-ons that I looked at). It looks like he's got ads up, and links to zips containing XMLs written by 3rd parties, that presumably provide the metadata to eventually reach some streamed audio/video/whatever. Calling it "selling his illegal products" is more than a stretch. > 1) not piss off people with lots of money while breaking the law Might as well drop "while breaking the law". Things won't end well if you piss of people with a lot of money legally either.

Asooka 9y ago
He's profiting from piracy. Recently the EU ruled that linking to pirate content transitively makes you a pirate, and similarly in the US aiding piracy is illegal. I assume that Canada has similar laws. So not only was he engaged in illegal activity - providing information on how to access pirate content, he was actively profiting from it. What happened to him is absolutely the expected outcome of his activity.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  > Recently the EU ruled that linking to pirate content transitively makes you a pirate, and similarly in the US aiding piracy is illegal. How about links to links to pirated content? How many levels of indirection would it take to not be "linking to pirate content"? I assume that he must've received some kind of take-down notices (the site claims claim they haven't, but sure, we'll assume that they're just lying), but wouldn't it make as much or more sense for those notices to go to the account-holders on github where a lot of the repositories storing the actual connection data are? With the information given, my opinion is that the connection is too indirect for the level of response. The site itself seems full of mostly-legal content (the same free channels that show up on my Roku, for example). It seems like overkill to me.