USING a Kodi Box could soon be illegal, following a fresh round of discussions from the UK’s Intellectual Property Office about how best to tackle copyright and fraud caused by these hugely-popular streaming boxes.
Following a growing number of complaints from right-holders and broadcasters, the UK’s Intellectual Property Office, or IPO, is purportedly holding a number of meetings to decide whether the law needs to be changed to tackle the popularity of Kodi boxes.
There have already been a number of arrests due to Kodi boxes in the UK.
Five people accused of selling illegally modified versions of the popular set-top boxes were taken into custody last month after a series of early morning raids.
Cases are pending, but there is clearly a focus on these boxes.
For those who do not know, Kodi is an open-source media player that’s available to install on a range of devices.
Since it first launched back in 2003, Kodi has been shaped by some 500 developers and 200 translators.
And now the open-source media player runs on a whole host of different devices. In fact, some estimates place 20 million devices in use in the UK at the moment.
In a nutshell, it turns any desktop computer, server, smartphone, tablet or set-top box into a media player able to stream files from the internet, your home network or local HDD storage. Unlike the Apple TV, Google ChromeCast or others, the Kodi media player is not restricted by licensing agreements, or a curated app store.
That means Kodi users can download a plethora of community-built apps, that might not be approved under the guidelines that govern the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and others.
Those who use the Kodi platform to access this material would be taking a serious risk.
Obviously accessing the material in this manner is illegal.
One problem viewers who use the Kodi platform face is, unlike the carefully-curated Apple App Store or Google Play Store, it might not always be clear where the content is coming from – or whether it has been legally obtained.