FCC Wants Ebay, Amazon To Crack Down On Kodi-Based Pirate TV Boxes
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180530/09354739940/fcc-wants-ebay-amazon-to-crack-down-kodi-based-pirate-tv-boxes.shtml
For years now, tinkerers everywhere have built custom-made PCs that use the open-source Kodi platform. Highly flexible and customizable, this hardware can often work notably better than the locked-down TV hardware (especially traditional cable boxes) that are the norm. But the hardware can also be used to streamline access to copyright content. And in more recent years, outfits like Dragonbox or SetTV have taken things further by selling users tailor-made hardware that provides easy access to live copyrighted content.
Not too surprisingly, video producers and broadcasters haven't much liked this. And in recent months, Amazon and Netflix have joined forces with Hollywood to try and sue many of these operations out of existence. Last week they got a little help from FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly, who fired off a letter to both Amazon and Ebay demanding they do more to combat the listing of these devices on their respective websites. O'Rielly was quick to acknowledge that the FCC's authority over copyright is negligible, so he focused instead on these companies' unauthorized use of the FCC logo: