Kodi-Addon Developer Gives Up Piracy Defense Due to Lack of Funds

[Desperado]

Shani, the brains behind the popular Kodi-addon ZemTV, has asked his attorney to stop defending him. The London-based developer says he doesn't have the funds to fight the legal battle against Dish Networks in a US court. As a result, there's a high likelihood that the broadcast provider will win a default judgment.

 

Last year, American satellite and broadcast provider Dish Network targeted two well-known players in the third-party Kodi add-on ecosystem.

In a complaint filed in a federal court in Texas, add-on ZemTV and the TVAddons library were accused of copyright infringement, with both facing up to $150,000 for each offense.

 

While TVAddons operator Adam Lackman responded to the allegations last week, ZemTV’s developer ‘Shani’ decided not to reply.

Shahjahan Durrani, Shani for short, never denied that he was the driving force behind the Kodi-addons ZemTV, LiveStreamsPro, and F4MProxy. While the London-based developer had never set foot in Texas, he initially planned to put up a defense. Financially, however, this was a problem.

ZemTV’s developer launched a fundraiser last fall to crowdsource the legal battle. While he was able to raise close to £1,000, the legal costs already exceeded that the case even got fully underway.

Without the ability to pay the legal costs Shani is unable to put up a proper defense. But speaking with TorrentFreak, he explains that after the motion to dismiss was denied, he didn’t have much hope for a fair trial anyway.

“I was shocked and disappointed, not only by reading that the court dismissed my jurisdiction appeal, they did so with just one sentence. It seems unfair and doesn’t give any confidence to me that the court/judge would be fair,” Shani tells us.

 

This left the developer with two options. Find a way to fund the legal battle, money which may never be recovered, or give up the fight and face a default judgment. Shani chose the latter option.

Shani told his attorney Erin Russel to cease all activity on the case and to take no further steps on his behalf.

“I don’t have enough resources to fight this case completely with four kids that I am raising and anything more I do will be seem to be submitting to the US Courts which I am not going to do unless I have enough money to fight the case,” the developer wrote in an email to Russel.

The attorney informed the court of this decision late last week and withdrew from the case.

This means that the lawsuit is steering towards a default judgment, and indeed, Dish has already moved for an entry of default.

“To date, Durrani has not filed an answer or other responsive pleading or requested additional time to do so,” Dish’s motion reads. “Accordingly, the Clerk should enter a default against Durrani.”

Shani still hopes that Dish will not push through. The developer stresses that he never operated any of the servers that provided copyright-infringing streams, nor has he ever made money from his addons.

“I hope they would let the matter go as the addon code has been taken down for more than a year now. Plus, they already know by the return of the subpoena to the servers that none of them were handled or paid by me,” Shani says.

“This was an open source addon and no one would pay hundreds of pounds to host the servers/streams in the hope that people would donate. I actually never ever asked for any donation and never ever earned a single penny from Kodi addons.”

 

ZemTV, like many other addons, merely offered the interface that makes it possible to watch third-party streams on the Kodi platform. While that may be infringement or not, the developer notes that despite the lawsuit, these third-party streams are still online.

“The irony of all this mess is that those servers and apps are still functional and working while I am dealing with this illogical case,” Shani concludes.

If the Texas District Court enters the default, Dish will demand a judgment which likely includes thousands of dollars in damages. However, since Durrani lives in the UK and has no assets in the US, these damages may be hard to recoup.

—

Dish’s request for an entry of default is available here (pdf).

 

TorrentFreak - By Ernesto - on May 21, 2018

Kodi-Addon Developer Gives Up Piracy Defense Due to Lack of Funds

[steven36]

They want never get any money out of Shani even if they press it .

1.He dont have any money left for them to take.

2. UK laws want never allow them to collect it unless they take it  to court in the UK and win a judgment there.

3.Dish lost the war on IPTV already when millions cut the cord and most are paying for services and  not using free addons like Shani made so suing him is not going to get there business they lost back. 

 

 Adam Lackman was the one that was making money  off kodi and still  has the money to keep fighting this because he still is making money off it,  he don't even make addons hes just a Webmaster that conned  devs that done it for a hobby to post them on his website and he put them in a noob friendly installer that was malicious that some other dev made and took credit for there work that's the whole reason Adam got caught up in this he was posting Shani's addon in his repo and installer and advertising how you could get IPTV for free while raking in money from ad revenue and i even read he had a donation fund set up and was selling paid  builds with Shani's addon. The reason they came after them there was a box seller who was advertising boxes with TVA Repo in it for money and he gave the police info  against them and he only got fined one dollar and zero jail time .  The sooner this is over the better off the Kodi community will be .   

 

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kuppajava

TVAddons is/was a couple of guys (possibly one just pretending to be an "us" for the sake of gravitas...) that made a branded website that provided a repack of other people's add-ons with an easy-for-noobs installer who then pretended to have invented the concept of Kodi add-ons after doing so. Because they made it so easy to install once-safe add-ons, they were busted by the feds and most likely turned evidence while begging for assistance with their legal bills .

After that, they came back around and tried to use their name to sling malware and turn Kodi-users into a botnet but did it so poorly they were easily foiled and made fools of. Once they were thoroughly exposed, they turned to a hate-campaign  to attack anyone who pointed out their folly and made most of those subs toxic to anyone actually looking for help. When their baseless and silly attacks were criticized, they ridiculously attempted to brand anyone who rightfully condemned them as "trolls from competing groups". Even though there were some actual trolls, they were like 2-3 people mixed in with dozens of others posting valid criticism and not from any "group" as that was just another TVA lie.

Other than creating a buggy and insecure/unsafe installer that brought legal attention to Kodi and accidentally taking heat off of actual producers by pretending that TVAddons actually made the product they were shilling with their installer, they created nothing of any real worth.

If they aren't just lying yet again, and actually ARE leaving this time, nothing of any value will be lost and this will be a great opportunity to use this sub to discuss Kodi Add-ons again.

For a good example of why the people involved with TVAddons are almost universally disliked for their terrible behavior, simply read whatever garbage their failed "PR Team" of one childish man with a handful of sockpuppet accounts and a couple of hangers-on reply to this comment with...

 

 

Also they was causing trouble long before they became TVAddons

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natethomas

If you want to go really far back, they also created "xbmchub" and "xbmcandroid" causing an enormous amount of confusion among users back in the XBMC days.

 

 

 

About the box seller  and Adam

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AsphyxNYC

Oh please....The guy who got prosecuted for selling boxes paid a whopping $1 in fines and zero jail time. And they went after him because he had big honking signs advertising FREE SKY SPORTS!

And sure he did a lot to bring the Kodi platform to the forefront... Because he tried to make a profit by pre-loading his boxes with TVAddon Repo and Builds.

He got the attention he wanted and they came after him... Now Adam is trying to get the attention and he too is paying the price!

 

 

They even caused  the legal software makers Kodi.tv  to  almost get drug down with them and they try to kill the whole kodi project even though hes never made any software or and addon in his life!

 

TVAddons Court Case: Kodi says "We hope you lose"

https://www.kodifiretvstick.com/tvaddons-court-case-hope-you-lose/

 

Everyone that had anything to do with them that made addons that are not legit have got a warning from ACE and are retired  from making addons or hiding under other names. I know Adam from the internet and talked to him lots of times and the guy  is delusional  and acts like hes strung out on Coke  from all the crap he he tries to feed everyone.