Dish Networks Looking to Make Examples of Pirate Addon Authors

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,634
Many times when we see copyright lawsuits erupt, once the pirates turn tail and run since they know they have no legs to stand on, the lawsuits "go away." That does not however seem to be the case with Dish Network looking to shut down Kodi pirate addons from Zem and TVAddons. While Dish is not aware of the identities of the person(s) behind these addons, a District Court here in Texas is granting subpoenas to Disk in order to try and find out the identities of the offenders.

To find out more, the company requested a broad range of subpoenas from the court, targeting Amazon, Github, Google, Twitter, Facebook, PayPal, and several hosting providers.

Dish is looking to get companies like Google and Twitter to roll over on information about the account holders associated with the Kodi addons. I would suggest that this case could get even more interesting and bring up a whole host of privacy questions since many of the companies were in no way associated with the actual pirating activity. However I think that PayPal, if any, will be the one forced to roll over by the courts if it comes to that.
 
paypal don't care they Probably just provide the information no questions asked
 
While they might not be directly associated they know the identity or might know the identity of the people. Lets say that today a group of people see somebody get out of my car somewhere, they don't know the person but they know me. Tomorrow they see this same person commit a crime. The police will be asking me about the person to find out who it was so that they catch them. Even if I don't know who the person is directly, maybe it was friend of a friend, I can point them toward somebody else that did know. Here these companies could have information to points to the real identity of the people.

The privacy thing is always a fine line. Just because they are online how much should they be allowed and be expected to tell law enforcement to fuck off and turn a blind eye to everything. If you own an apartment building and somebody was renting a unit and used it to do illegal things (making bombs to blow up government buildings, drug lab of some type, holding kidnapped children...) would it be considered acceptable for the land lord to be able to say that under no circumstance no matter what a court says they will not tell who they rented the room to? Which some people would argue that the landlord should be able to do that since he didn't do anything wrong and shouldn't be forced to give out information. But at what point do you start to consider things interfering with a police investigation and be an accomplice to even a small degree. If I drive somebody to go get a gun, then drive them to their ex's house where they shoot them in the head and then I drive them away. Can I claim that I didn't commit that crime so the police have no reason to talk to me or charge me with anything as I was simply driving a friend around as he did chores.
 
JackNSally said:
Can't we the consumer just get a user friendly streaming service with access to the MPAA studios libraries? At a reasonable price? And not just some for a certain period of time? No? Ok, pay them lawyers.
Click to expand...
This put movies over a 6 months old on some streaming site and leave them there forever and i bet a lot of people would pay $10-$20 a month for it. You cant stop this kind of stuff, people will always pirate but they can get with the 21 century and probably make a lot more money
 
tunatime said:
This put movies over a 6 months old on some streaming site and leave them there forever and i bet a lot of people would pay $10-$20 a month for it. You cant stop this kind of stuff, people will always pirate but they can get with the 21 century and probably make a lot more money
Click to expand...
They will never do that they will hold on to their antiquated model until they die screaming.
 
tunatime said:
This put movies over a 6 months old on some streaming site and leave them there forever and i bet a lot of people would pay $10-$20 a month for it. You cant stop this kind of stuff, people will always pirate but they can get with the 21 century and probably make a lot more money
Click to expand...

If I could get all the studios movies on 1 services, $20 would be no problem, especially with TV added. $25 without commercials. But this is with the condition of a wide variety of studios supplying their movies, for as long as the service is around. I don't mind like you said, 6 month delay after theater release. Just release it. Release old stuff. Open up the catalog, we have our wallets ready.
 
Exavior said:
While they might not be directly associated they know the identity or might know the identity of the people. Lets say that today a group of people see somebody get out of my car somewhere, they don't know the person but they know me. Tomorrow they see this same person commit a crime. The police will be asking me about the person to find out who it was so that they catch them. Even if I don't know who the person is directly, maybe it was friend of a friend, I can point them toward somebody else that did know. Here these companies could have information to points to the real identity of the people.

The privacy thing is always a fine line. Just because they are online how much should they be allowed and be expected to tell law enforcement to fuck off and turn a blind eye to everything. If you own an apartment building and somebody was renting a unit and used it to do illegal things (making bombs to blow up government buildings, drug lab of some type, holding kidnapped children...) would it be considered acceptable for the land lord to be able to say that under no circumstance no matter what a court says they will not tell who they rented the room to? Which some people would argue that the landlord should be able to do that since he didn't do anything wrong and shouldn't be forced to give out information. But at what point do you start to consider things interfering with a police investigation and be an accomplice to even a small degree. If I drive somebody to go get a gun, then drive them to their ex's house where they shoot them in the head and then I drive them away. Can I claim that I didn't commit that crime so the police have no reason to talk to me or charge me with anything as I was simply driving a friend around as he did chores.
Click to expand...

I get what you are saying, but this is by no means a criminal investigation. It is a civil lawsuit. What is disturbing to me about the issue, is that the court is giving a private entity law enforcement powers to force companies to give up identities.
 
This is different than going after content downloaders where the general rule remains that an IP address does not equal a person.

The plaintiff here (Dish) has a substantial amount of other identifying information about the creators/distributors of the Kodi add ons.

And from personal experience I can tell you that Charlie Ergen is one tough guy when his mind is set on litigation (fortunately I was representing his side).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top