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Amazon Sues Pirate Streaming Boxes, but Sells ‘Piracy’ Tutorials?


steven36

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Amazon and other members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment have declared 'war' on pirate streaming devices and addons. While legal threats are issued left and right, the Amazon store is ironically still stocked up with books that explain to newcomers how to install some of the same addons Amazon is fighting.

 

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Last summer saw the birth of a new anti-piracy initiative, which has already made quite a few headlines.

 

A coalition of the major Hollywood studios, Amazon, Netflix and several other media properties teamed up, launching the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE).

 

Their ultimate goal is to beat piracy, with pirate streaming boxes as the main target.

 

In the months that followed, several third-party Kodi-addon developers received threatening letters in the mail and on top of that ACE filed lawsuits against three vendors of alleged pirate streaming boxes.

 

Their show of force hasn’t gone unnoticed. It triggered some developers and sellers to lay low or move out of the game entirely. At the same time, fully-loaded pirate boxes are now harder to find at ACE member Amazon, which has removed tens of thousands of listings.

 

These boxes, which ship with a built-in media player as well as pirate addons, were not always hard to find though.

 

In fact, Dragon Box, which is now being sued by Amazon and the others, was previously sold on Amazon. This is perhaps what prompted the company to argue as a defense that it had “Amazon’s implied authorization to promote and sell the device.”

 

Clearly, these Dragon Boxes have now been stripped from Amazon’s inventory, but it’s still not hard to find several alleged piracy inducing items there today.

 

For starters, there are still hundreds if not thousands of cheap media players for sale. While these may be perfectly legal, reviews of Amazon members show, sometimes with screenshots, how these can be easily set up to run pirate addons.

 

Arguably, without 24/7 moderation this is hard to avoid. After all, people may also buy a PC on Amazon and recommend people to bookmark The Pirate Bay. Perhaps we’re nitpicking.

 

What may be more problematic for Amazon is the widespread availability of “Kodi tutorials.” While Kodi is perfectly legal, some of these books go into detail on how to add “pirate” addons. The same tools Amazon is suing Tickbox, Set TV, and Dragon Box over.

 

“Do you want to install Area 51 IPTV or Set TV on your Kodi and Amazon Fire TV Stick or Fire TV?” one guide mentions, referencing Set TV specifically. “Do you want to install Supremacy, Dogs Bollock, Covenant, Genesis Reborn and Neptune Rising?” it adds.

 

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Another book offers help on “How To Install Kodi And The Latest Downloads On Any Firestick” mentioning the addon Exodus, among others. Exodus was famously highlighted as a “pirate” addon by the MPA.

 

And then there are books discussing how to install a wide range of addons with a “pirate” reputation, including Covenant which is specifically highlighted in the ACE lawsuits as a bad actor.

 

None of these addons have been declared illegal in court, as far as we know, and writing about it isn’t illegal by definition. But, it is clear that Amazon itself sees these as pirate tools.

 

This leads to the awkward situation where, on the one hand, Amazon is suing vendors who sell devices that ship with the Covenant addon, while they sell books that show people how to set this up themselves.

 

We won’t make any judgments on whether these books or addons encourage infringement in any way, that’s not up to us. But for Amazon it’s not a good look, to say the least, especially since part of the profits for these titles go into its own pockets.

 

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earthfather

KODI's TOS state you can't distribute their software with any addons installed. "legal" or otherwise. Amazon has dropped their quality standards to make a buck. They are allowing almost anyone to sell anything anymore. They are allowing people to sell couple page pamplets as full books. Knockoff electronics have made it into Amazon. After my current Prime expires, I'm gone. They do no care about their customers or suppliers as long as they are making money.

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5 hours ago, earthfather said:

KODI's TOS state you can't distribute their software with any addons installed. "legal" or otherwise. Amazon has dropped their quality standards to make a buck. They are allowing almost anyone to sell anything anymore. They are allowing people to sell couple page pamplets as full books. Knockoff electronics have made it into Amazon. After my current Prime expires, I'm gone. They do no care about their customers or suppliers as long as they are making money.

At one time this was so but now they sue Box sellers , Tutorials only tell  the end user how to load kodi  with addons and it would take a idiot to buy them when the Internet blogs  , Social Networks and YouTube are full of free ones but they all are monetizing off kodi by receiving ad revenue even Google is guilty of it  because they own Youtube were you can watch them on  and  Google hangouts were they make them on.

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Amazon is like Ebay, where buyer beware is the first thing you ought to consider before buying anything.  I have received so much trash from Amazon, i.e. open boxes, used products, etc that I no longer buy anything electronic from them.  Same goes for Ebay.  My niece even ordered a toy for her son last christmas and when he opened it someone had taken the toy and inserted a 99 cent bag of platic blocks and then returned it to Amazon.  They didn't check it and put it back on the shelf and sold it to her.  Amazon's reputation sucks.

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2 hours ago, straycat19 said:

Amazon is like Ebay, where buyer beware is the first thing you ought to consider before buying anything.  I have received so much trash from Amazon, i.e. open boxes, used products, etc that I no longer buy anything electronic from them.  Same goes for Ebay.  My niece even ordered a toy for her son last christmas and when he opened it someone had taken the toy and inserted a 99 cent bag of platic blocks and then returned it to Amazon.  They didn't check it and put it back on the shelf and sold it to her.  Amazon's reputation sucks.

That's because you was dumb enough to buy it , I been buying stuff Amazon for years and i never got anything bad we have Amazon Prime . I use to buy and sell on Ebay and i never got anything bad from there ether . I use to package for online shops like Amazon and they most likely they gave you're niece the wrong order by mistake .Around Christmas they rush everyone because they have a million orders  to pack in boxes and sometimes  someone will put the wrong thing in  you're box .  Amazon can't check it because  they use distribution warehouses  were have everything they sell  were have contracts with them,  all they can do is complain to  the distribution center but that still want stop mistakes from happening . Once it's  its boxed up as fast as possible it's shipped to you from some warehouse.   Nothing you say has nothing too do with why they allow certain things to be sold on there website they can just cancel the orders with who they getting it  from.

 

All Amazon is a bunch of warehouses all over the place that take orders from Businesses  like the place i use to work for they  don't know if someone messes up tell after it's sent back. they make some stuff  but if it don't have Amazon wrote on it they just shipped it for someone else .

https://fitsmallbusiness.com/order-fulfillment-services/

https://blog.taxjar.com/amazon-sort-centers-locations/

 

Amazon is great if you live along ways from the city you can order just about anything and have it the next day. But I have ordered stuff off there that came direct from Europe and China and had to sign for it so it never was distributed in USA it was packaged over there.

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