A few months ago TVAddons found themselves facing a lawsuit and legal action in both the US and Canada. After that happened several Kodi addon developers called it quits and now a new round of addon developers have walked away after fresh legal action by the MPAA.
Yesterday the Kodi addon developer jsergin123 posted the following announcement. “Sorry to say but I am stopping all development of the urlresolver, metahandler, and my other addons,” he said. He went on to say “I am not responsible for Covenant and Bennu but Colossus has agreed to delete the repo too.”
That was quickly followed by UK-based developer The_Alpha announced that the anti-piracy coalition the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment visited him at home to hand-deliver a warning letter.
“This letter is addressed to you by companies of the six-major United States film studios represented by the Motion Picture Association (MPA), namely Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Disney Enterprises, Inc., Paramount Pictures Corporation, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios LLLP and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Netflix, Inc. and Amazon Studios LLC (represented by MPA via the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE)), Sky UK Limited, and The Football Association Premier League Limited,” the opening paragraph reads.
“We are writing to you concerning your development, distribution and/or involvement in the operation of certain third party Kodi add-ons under the moniker ‘The Alpha’. The infringing addons provide unlawful access to protected copyright works, including works owned by, or exclusively licensed to, the Content Companies.” The letter went on to insist that they shut down or face future legal action.
This was quickly followed by the shutdown of the Colossus repo along with Ares Wizard. According to reports they also received a warning letter or feared receiving one. The removal of Colossus takes many addons offline and prevents others from updating in the future.
This is a major blow to the 3rd party Kodi addon world. Increasingly the MPA and the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment are becoming more aggressive in their efforts to stop unofficial streams.
If you want to learn more and see copies of the letter sent to developers you can find full overage on TorrentFreak.
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