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October 2018
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Mexico Reverses Ban On Selling Roku Hardware After Absurd Piracy Ruling

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So just about a year ago the Mexican court system decided to ban all Roku streaming hardware from being sold in Mexico. The ban was the result of legal action taken by Mexican cable company Cablevision, which accused Roku of facilitating piracy. How? While Roku devices are more locked down than many of the more open home media PC solutions (also the target of endless pearl clutching and hyperventilation by the entertainment industry), users can install certain unofficial, third-party "private" channels that provide access to pirated live streams of cable content.While Roku went out of its way to try and lock down their hardware, some users paid hackers a few bucks to crack open and modify the devices anyway, letting them access the dubious third-party channels in question. While this obviously wasn't Roku's fault, Cablevision believed Roku should be punished for the behavior of the company's customers, and declared it was doing Mexican consumers a public service:

"Cablevision cannot allow the content that it licenses from domestic and foreign companies to be illegally used, Cablevision spokeswoman Maria Eugenia Zurita told Reuters via email. We would also like Roku Inc to better supervise the use of its software so that it's not used inappropriately."
Roku quickly appealed, and while a federal judge initially overturned the ban, a subsequent ruling restored it, so the ban has been in place for the better part of the year, costing Roku a notable sum. Roku subsequently jumped through all manner of hoops in a bid to please the courts, including building a new internal team specifically dedicated to cracking down on piracy, posting notable warnings to users who decide to install unofficial channels, and renaming the channels from "private" to "non-certified" in a bid to make it even more obvious Roku wasn't sanctioning the behavior of its users.Fast forward to this week, and the 11th Collegiate Court in Mexico City has ruled to again overturn the ban, opening the door to Mexican consumers being able to, you know, buy whatever hardware they like and use the devices as they see fit.
"The Court reportedly acknowledged Roku's efforts to keep pirated content away from its platform, an opinion also shared by Cablevision. However, should pirate channels appear on Roku in the future, Cablevision warned that it would take further legal action to have those sources blocked via the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property and other local authorities."
Again, consumers are just using a computer to access content online, and what that content is really shouldn't really be seen as Roku's responsibility. The irony here is that Roku has spent a lot of time kissing up to entrenched cable operators here in the States, helping them scuttle efforts to make traditional cable boxes more open. Of course much like the cable industry, the more locked down Roku makes its products, the more likely consumers are to flock to products that actually let them do what they want, which obviously doesn't necessarily include piracy.The same hysteria surrounding Roku has been doubly-applied to programs like Kodi, which (in much the same way that Roku is just a computer) is just software that (with the help of plugins) can be used to access copyrighted content... and a laundry list of other things. This nannyish approach to what hardware and software can be used and how is an unproductive and expensive game of Whac-a-Mole, which is why we've pretty consistently argued that embracing openness and innovation tends to be a notably more productive and profitable solution.

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posted at: 12:52am on 24-Oct-2018
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El-P: We Make Our Music Available For Free And Trust Our Fans To Support Us, And We Always Will

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In the pantheon of massively talented musical acts that also get and embrace the power of the internet, of using free music to make money, and of emergent business models, the folks behind Run The Jewels stand particularly tall. The duo, Killer Mike and El-P, have managed to make themselves household names through a combination of freely available music, a positive and often humorous level of interaction with their fans, and the kind of forthright public statements that create a bond with those that follow them. It's all so perfectly well done that you would think Run The Jewels was following some kind of a script, but it is pleasantly obvious that these are just really good guys who happen to also make fantastic music. They also occasionally, and far too infrequently, write blog posts, including for Techdirt.The most recent version of all of this started with a Twitter user complaining to El-P that he or she typically listens to RTJ on Spotify and had no idea where to get their albums. Another Twitter account piped up confirming that, like the rest of the RTJ catalog, the albums were available for free download on the group's website. That same Twitter account mentioned that he also bought the albums through iTunes purely out of a desire to support RTJ. This, of course, happens quite frequently, which is virtually ignored by the "Piracy is killing music, argghghgh!" crowd.What doesn't happen as frequently is what came next from El-P.

And we always will. That's how you know when a philosophy has moved beyond a tryout of a gimmick and into a more dogmatic adoption of a business philosophy. And there can no longer be any doubt that behaving this way is simply good business. However, I'll be damned if all of this doesn't come off far more genuine than had it come out of a boardroom of suits looking to maximize profits. The truth is that El-P is just a really, really good dude. This is the impression one gets seeing interactions like this. And it fosters a bond with the community of fans of RTJ.

There are many more replies like that. And why not? Why wouldn't a musical act being human and awesome to its fans not foster a closer bond and desire to support that act? That seems like common sense to me, even as it eludes far too much of the music industry.

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