Among the major media companies which participates in the lawsuit filled against TickBox TV in a California federal court on October 13, you may note: Universal, Columbia, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., Amazon and Netflix.
All have joined forces in order to make the case in court against TickBox TV which is a company that sells Android based media center boxes bundled with google play app store and Kodi media player.
So far, so good. It isn’t illegal to sell those bundled together – in other words, there’s nothing wrong in selling Kodi. However the problem arises, according to the suing media companies, after the purchase has been made as “TickBox TV uses software to link TickBox’s customers to infringing content on the Internet”. A claim that may be peculiarly reinforced by an unexpected source – TickBox’s own official website.
Proclaiming they have “no apps installed that would infringe on any company’s copyright” at the bottom of their page, TickBox also boldly states the following, at the very top of their front page:
TickBox offers instant access to practically any major media stream you want for almost no cost
The question is; if it’s all legal, how can TickBox afford to offer “Any Movie, TV Show, or Sporting Events” for the mere price of purchasing their device?
Apparently, according to the lawsuit, TickBox urge and instructs customers to install Kodi plugins that enable access to “thousands of live TV channels for free”.
The mechanism by which TickBox encourage its customers to install infringing software is detailed in the lawsuit itself, which you can read the copy of here.
Basically, it says that an ‘instructional video’ urges customers “to use the ‘Select Your Theme’ button on the start-up menu” which downloads addons that enable users access to “unauthorized streams of motion pictures and television shows”.
So at the bottom line, TickBox doesn’t lie when they say their box doesn’t come with apps that may infringe company’s copyright, but on the other hand, in order for TickBox to supply their stated offerings the customer apparently must install such apps or plugins.
The above case is joining a wave of Kodi related anti-piracy court cases filled this year, such as the TVAddons lawsuit among others, apparently motivated by a new UK law that’s been passed at the beginning of the year.
