Over the last few days Torrentfreak.com announced that Dish Network has filed a lawsuit against Zem TV and TVaddons.ag for copyright infringment, you can view the docmentation here. This accusses them of direct infringment of various tv channels in the addons. The legal suit states the following
COMPLAINT
Plaintiff DISH Network L.L.C. (“DISH”) brings this suit against Defendant Doe 1 d/b/a
ZemTV and Does 2-4 individually and together d/b/a/ www.tvaddons.ag, www.tvaddons.org, and
www.streamingboxes.com, and states as follows:
Nature of the Action
1. DISH brings this suit for copyright infringement to stop the ZemTV service’s
unlawful retransmissions of television channels exclusively licensed to DISH throughout The United States. The ZemTV service is retransmitting these channels over the Internet to end-users
that download the ZemTV add-on for the Kodi media player, which is available for download at
the websites www.tvaddons.ag and www.tvaddons.org. Defendants profit from this scheme by
encouraging ZemTV add-on users to make donations through Amazon or using PayPal at the site
www.streamingboxes.com. DISH has not authorized Defendants to retransmit these channels or
received any compensation from Defendants.
ZemTV like other add-ons that allow you to stream live tv channels from various places. TV Addons.ag is the repo source which provides us all the different add-ons. Keep in mind that Kodi itself is an open source media center application that allows people to use their own content. But due to the popularity of TVaddons.ag and making it easy for anyone to load Kodi with TONS of great sources for movies, tv shows, and more has made Kodi the “piracy king”.
Dish Network claims that they have sent numerous requests for cease and desist take down requests to TVaddons.ag in the past. According to the post from Torrentfreak.com,
“This is the first we’ve heard of this lawsuit. No one ever sent us any type of takedown or DMCA notice or even tried to contact us prior, they could have easily done so through our contact page or site emails,” TVAddons informs us.
TVAddons says that the ZemTV add-on was already removed prior to the lawsuit due to a technical issue, and it won’t return.
“The Zem addon was actually removed from our add-on library and community tools weeks ago due to a completely unrelated technical issue. I have already spoken to the developer, and he has since deleted the Zem addon entirely,” the TVAddons representative says.
Dish Network wants to hold ZemTV accountable for direct copyright infringement, demanding $150,000 per infringement in damages. Since this has came out a lot of third party developers have quit their add ons and some for good. One of our favorites One242415 pretty much said he is done for good. Here is a list of the add ons in Kodi that have stopped working since this announcement.
So what does this mean for all of us that use Kodi and these add-ons?
First of all, we have to see how this all plays out. As of now, it will affect tons of users especially people like ourselves that have a build. Builds are created to make it easier for everyone to use TVaddons.ag’s add-ons without having to maintain the sources etc. For everyone else, it means your favorite add-ons will no longer work. Add-ons in the past have come and gone and yes there will be more but depending on how far this lawsuit goes that can change.
What do we think will be the final outcome?
Tvaddons does NOT make these addons for profit. Their system is set up for donations. Tvaddons does not host the content themselves. That is not illegal. Not sure if Dish Network can try and see if they can get Tvaddons for any other infringements but we will have to wait and see.
As for the end users, you can
1. Wait for it to see how it all will play out and see if the add-ons will return.
2. Protect yourself with a VPN in case your ISP does report things. You can purchase a paid VPN IPVansish, here is a link to it, if you do purchase it we’d appreciate it. We get a very small kickback but it is more about everyone’s safety online. Get IPVanish here.
3. Sign up for Real-Debrid to get better link options in case your add-on links are not coming up. Check out our video here on how to install Real-Debrid.
We will keep you posted on this topic as it progresses.
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