It’s illegal to sell streaming boxes with piracy add-ons, EU court rules
The European Union’s Court of Justice has ruled that selling set-top boxes specifically configured for easy film and TV piracy is illegal. In a ruling published today, the court sided against a man identified as Mr. Wullems, who sold multimedia players through the site Filmspeler.nl. While the underlying technology of the players might be legal, the ruling says, these boxes were configured in a way that promoted piracy — and the fact that they’re for streaming media instead of downloading it doesn’t make a difference.
Wullems’ set-top boxes offered direct links to pirated material, which constituted making a copyright-infringing “communication to the public,” according to the ruling. He had “full knowledge of the consequences of his…
