European Court Rules Against Piracy Enabled Media Players

The EU Court of Justice ruled that media players that come pre-configured to stream pirated content are not legal in the European Union.  This case was started by a Dutch anti-piracy organization, which brought suit against Filmspeler.nl, a company in the Netherlands selling media players using Kodi and plug-ins which allowed quick and easy access to illegal streaming sites on the net.

Mostly running Android, these devices are often supplied with software such as the neutral Kodi platform augmented with third-party addons, each designed to receive the latest films, TV shows or live sports, with minimum input from the user.

One of perhaps hundreds of sites involved in these sales was Netherlands-based Filmspeler.nl (Movie Player), an online store that found itself targeted by Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. Filmspeler’s owners felt that its pre-configured devices were legal, arguing that their sale did not amount to a “communication to the public” as determined by the EU Copyright Directive.

The European court set out five conditions that must be met if you wish to reproduce copyright protected material:

• When the act is temporary
• When it’s transient or incidental
• When it’s an integral and essential part of a technological process
• When the sole purpose of that process is to enable a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary or a lawful use of a work or protected subject matter
• The act has no independent economic significance

None of these were applicable in the case against Filmspeler.nl, and this seemed to be an easy decision for the court.  It will have far reaching consequences across Europe, where other cases are being heard regarding this type of media player.

Since copyrighted works are obtained from streaming websites without obtaining permission from copyright holders, the above standards are not completely met and no copyright exceptions are available. Streaming copyrighted content from an illicit source can therefore be considered illegal.

The Filmspeler case will now head back to the Dutch court but this decision is likely to echo all around Europe and have a notable and immediate effect on pending cases involving ‘pirate’ boxes and illicit streaming.