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Comcast Starts Issuing Copyright Infringement Notices to Kodi Users

Comcast-e1396980588440Do you have Comcast Xfinity and use Kodi unofficial add-ons to stream movies and TV shows? Well you may soon see a copyright infringement alert pop up or receive an email warning you to stop. We have received word from readers that they are getting copyright infringement notifications but only use Kodi to stream content.

Note this is not Comcast monitoring your usage. The content owners monitor and record your IP address. From there they use an agreement they have with Comcast to request that a copyright notice is sent to the offending Comcast Internet customer.

Many of Kodi’s unofficial add-ons use peer-to-peer streaming that does not hide your IP as you are both downloading the file you are streaming and sharing it with other users who want to watch the same show as you watch the show. Often users of these 3rd party unofficial add-ons are unaware they re-sharing the file in a similar way to how Bittorrent works.

In the case of the report above the Comcast subscriber was using a 3rd party unofficial Kodi add-on on a Fire TV Stick.

Until now there haven’t been any reports of Kodi users being hit with lawsuits or copyright claims that are so popular with bittorrent users. Yet it is possible to track users of peer-to-peer streaming services similarly to how bittorrent users are tracked.

Claims from content owners can take a month or longer to reach the end users. Lawsuits can take much longer, so the question is are we at the start of a new copyright lawsuit war? One where people streaming content will be the target not people who are using traditional bittorrent clients?

Have you received a copyright notice for streaming content? Please let us know by comment or email. You can email us on our Contact Us page.

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