Kodi News: Users of Illegal Kodi Add-ons Could Soon Face Prosecution

[grimm]

While chasing after sellers of pirate Kodi boxes and add-on developers, UK anti-piracy group FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) could also begin exposing illegal add-ons users for Kodi in "the very near future."

"What we've been looking at in conjunction with many of our clients and members are the different levels of crime being committed," Kieron Sharp, FACT's chief executive, told the Independent.

"And then we'll also 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," Kieron Sharp, FACT's chief executive, told the Independent.

However, it is still not clear as to how the group plans to catch illegal users since they don't publicize their IP address. But Sharp said sellers of the so-called fully loaded Kodi boxes could hold the answer.

Kodi itself is legal, but it has been exploited and used as third-party add-ons to access illegal streams for sports events, films, and TV shows. These devices promise pirate content at no cost, and many of these boxes are "fully loaded," meaning they contain pre-installed plug-ins ready for social media use.
"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," Sharp said.

Previously, it was only illegal to download copyrighted contents. But in April, the EU Court of Justice ruled that people who use a media player to stream pirated files are breaking the law.

The Digital Economy Act has also became a law earlier this year, raising the maximum sentence for copyright infringement cases between two to 10 years. However, the maximum punishment is only applicable to people who commit serious copyright violations like distributing content.