In two separate landmark cases involving fully loaded Kodi box sellers, both defendants were spared jail time today.
Brian Thompson and Julian Allen are two UK Kodi box sellers arrested and charged for promoting “fully loaded” Android boxes with promises of free cable and TV. After both pleading guilty to their crimes earlier this summer, they received their sentencing today.
Brian Thompson sold over 400 boxes, making 40,000 Euros. He was charged with one count of selling and one count of advertising devices “designed, produced or adapted for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of effective technological measures”. He had boxes outside his business saying “Sick of paying monthly subscriptions? Free Sky, Virgin, Box Nation, Racing UK. The estimated losses to Sky were an estimated 200,000 Euros during the period Thompson was training.
Today, Thompson was given an 18-month jail sentence, suspended for two years.
A suspended sentence is a legal term for a judge’s delaying of a defendant’s serving of a sentence after they have been found guilty, in order to allow the defendant to perform a period of probation. If the defendant does not break the law during that period, and fulfills the particular conditions of the probation, the judge usually dismisses the sentence.
Julian Allen made 135,000 Euros selling fully-loaded Kodi boxes and was arrested after Geeky Kit branches were seized in 2015. He plead guilty in July to using or acquiring criminal property. The judge noted that Allen did not play a part in organizing or delivering the live streams of the content involved.
Allen received a 21-month prison sentence, suspended for two years.
The court sentences are important because they add legal precedence to the legal grey area of Kodi and can be drawn upon in the future as necessary.
Android TV boxes with Kodi installed are NOT illegal. Third party addons enable streaming of content found on the public internet. Selling these boxes fully-loaded with the promise of circumventing cable TV is the key line that must not be crossed.
Let us know your thoughts by commenting below.
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What this man did is wrong he making money from other people work(devs) if i do a box 4 a friend or work mate i do 4 free!
Instead of pumping money into monitoring people steaming movies or downloading movies and selling.. why don’t they invest all this time and money into monitoring proper online crimes like the scum looking for child porn and so on. The world is backwards. Sky and BT are starting to block certain streaming websites clearly playing people to monitor it so why not invest that an block access to these disgusting site predators use. They need to sort their heads out Sky and BT just because they’re losing money on people streaming
Re: I personally don’t see anything wrong or any type of crime in streaming. Watching a YouTube video is streaming. Any link sent to your phone is streaming, News feeds that’s shared through facebook, instagram, etc. is streaming. So if movies or anything else for that matter are streamed online for the purpose of sharing,,, then what’s the problem? We are not the ones uploading these feeds nor the ones who created internet… Gotta love technology! Downloading is illegal but streaming is perfectly normal.
— as far as US Title 14c reads this is perfectly legal! It is the act of making the copy for profit that is technically illegal… Just a thought for the fat cats to continue choking down 😉
I personally don’t see anything wrong or any type of crime in streaming. Watching a YouTube video is streaming. Any link sent to your phone is streaming, News feeds that’s shared through facebook, instagram, etc. is streaming. So if movies or anything else for that matter are streamed online for the purpose of sharing,,, then what’s the problem? We are not the ones uploading these feeds nor the ones who created internet… Gotta love technology! Downloading is illegal but streaming is perfectly normal.
Ray Waton
Said it all. Nail on head !! Greedy corps cause this. Virgin/Sky rip off merchants.
Does having an Android box already or kodi installed on laptop cause for alarm?
The only way to stop piracy is to make it unnecessary. That means making the price of genuine legal items MUCH cheaper and paying the grossly greedy CEOs and corporates much less along with the grossy overpaid actors, TV stars and indeed sports stars all who are paid not 100s but 1000s of times what they should be whilst the rest of us struggle to live, meaning either not having any entertainment or pirating it. Guess what we pirate it through little other viable choice.
Also content must be made available at the same time worldwide else folk who understandably don’t want to wait have to turn to piracy.
Until that happens then KODI 3rd party add-ons will continue and rightfully so irrespective of corporation protective laws set by corrupt right wing Governments in bed with the 1% greedy elite fat cats.
First of all learn how to spell
How come they don’t look for peoples stea Million of $ and but them in jail how com they don’t look for drug diler and but them in jail this is so bad woo some one he make free tv
What happens to people who purchased the boxes and do they still work?
I sell boxes and will continue to sell them. I have no respect for the pigs or any type of law for that matter. I also have top notch lawyers that would bail me out of any trouble regarding copyright infringements. I already beat an insider trading case on wall street and I thrive on beating these cases in court and smiling at the Judge right after. I root for guys like this to do well.