This week Dish won a major court battle winning a $650,000 judgment against “Shani” the developer of the popular “ZemTV” Kodi add-on. The court ruled that ZemTV did offer access to content that Dish had exclusive rights to in the United States according to a report from Torrent Freak.
This is a landmark case in the United States as this is the first time a Kodi Add-on has been held legally liable for streaming pirated content.
“Defendant developed ZemTV and then distributed and supported it through [..TVAddons..], resulting in his unauthorized retransmission of the Protected Channels and causing injury to Plaintiff throughout the United States. Therefore, Defendant is liable for direct copyright infringement,” Judge Gilmore writes.
“Defendant engaged in these illegal activities for more than 16 months, despite having received Plaintiff‘s notices of infringement from his service providers and Tvaddons.”
Several other Kodi add-ons have recently shut down and several sellers of so-called “Kodi Boxes” devices pre-loaded with Kodi add-ons to give access to pirated content have also been sued. This all comes as content creators have recently turned their sites on streaming of pirated content. Now that content creators have some wins in court look for them to continue their crackdown against pirate streams.
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