A UK anti-piracy groups is warning people in Gedling borough who user illegal Kodi add-ons to stream pirate content that they could face action from authorities in the near future
Kieron Sharp, who is chief executive of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), said authorities could soon target ordinary Kodi users, and not just sellers and developers.
“We’ll be looking at, at some point, the end user. The reason for end users to come into this is that they are committing criminal offences,” FACT’s chief executive Kieron Sharp told the Independent.
While people who stream pirated content are generally hard to track, since they don’t broadcast their IP-address to the public, FACT says that customer data could be obtained directly from sellers of fully-loaded Kodi boxes.
Sharp added: “When we’re working with the police against a company that’s selling IPTV boxes or illicit streaming devices on a large scale, they have records of who they’ve sold them to.”
While Kodi itself is perfectly legal, many people use it in conjunction with third party add-ons that offer pirated content.
FACT has already taken action against sellers of Kodi devices pre-loaded with these add-ons and they’re keeping a keen eye on developers of illicit add-ons too.
Sharp said: “We have a number of cases coming before the courts in terms of those people who have been providing, selling and distributing illicit streaming devices.
“It’s something for the very near future, when we’ll consider whether we go any further than that, in terms of customers.”
In April, the EU Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that anyone who uses a media player to stream copyrighted content is breaking the law. Previously, it was only illegal to actually download the content.
The ECJ also ruled that the sale of media players deliberately pre-loaded with links to copyrighted content is illegal, a verdict that opened the doors for the prosecution of Kodi box sellers.
