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Fri, 27 Sep 2019

Canadian ISPs Continue Quest To Bankrupt TVAddons, Site That Hosted Tons Of Legal Kodi Addons
Furnished content.


A few years back we wrote about how various Canadian telcos had appeared to completely lose their minds over TVAddons, a Canadian site that hosted various software add-ons for Kodi (open source home theater software that was originally the Xbox Media Center or XBMC). Now, it is true that there's a thriving market in pirated content via Kodi boxes and the like, but TVAddons was just a site that hosted all sorts of add-ons, and most of them had nothing at all to do with infringing content. As we mentioned in our original article, out of over 1,500 add-ons, only 22 were found to involve infringing content. To put this in perspective, think of the VCR/Betamax in the early years, when Jack Valenti was insisting that it would be the "Boston Strangler" to the movie industry. Back then, a ton of the content being passed around on those tapes would likely be considered infringing -- in part because that was before the industry learned to embrace home video (which quickly became a huge moneymaker for Hollywood). But that was found legal because, as the Supreme Court noted, there were "substantial non-infringing uses" of the technology. It seems pretty damn clear that there are "substantial non-infringing uses" of Kodi add-ons as well, and especially of a platform like TVAddons, that was there just to host those add-ons -- and not to host any infringing content directly.However, as we noted in that original piece, it seemed quite clear that the Canadian telcos were so hellbent on destroying TVAddons and its founder, Adam Lackman, that it didn't seem to care about any of this. They got a special "Anton Piller" order in Canada that allowed their own private investigators to search his home and take his stuff. While this was going on, Lackman called his lawyer, and the lawyers for the telcos literally ordered him to hang up and not talk to his lawyer. As we noted, this wasn't the police -- this was private companies ransacking a guy's house, because some people might possibly use some software that was hosted on his open platform for possibly infringing uses.Years later, it's perhaps not surprising that these Canadian telcos -- namely Bell Canada, Rogers, Videotron and TVA -- appear to have no interest in letting this case end. They remain hellbent on destroying Lackman and the site. While Lackman initially won the first round of the case, in which a court noted that the Anton Piller order was clearly unlawful, he lost on appeal, and was told he needs to pay the legal fees of the giant telcos, even though no actual trial has taken place (all of this is on preliminary issues)Lackman has now been left in the unenviable position of having to set up a GoFundMe just to try to raise enough to pay for the giant telcos legal fees, let alone continue the actual legal fight. The whole setup is ridiculous: giant companies (who never even sent a takedown notice to TV Addons) get to do a private raid, take all of his stuff (which was later recognized as against the law), block him from talking to his lawyer, and then bankrupt him through an ongoing legal process.This kind of story, of course, is not unique. We've seen it play out in many different ways over the years, but it's particularly galling to see how it's playing out here.

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