My daughter told me her dad wants to jailbreak her firestick so she can watch all the new movies that are out. Does anyone know anything about this? It sounds illegal to me.
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| From what I've been told, and I'm not an expert, it's a legal gray area. Watching the content isn't illegal, it's the owning and sharing part that's problematic. There's plenty of eBay stores where people sell jailbreaked (sp?) Firesticks. Instructions are not hard to find online. |
Thanks, I was worried it was something illegal. |
| My ex-husband is a hacker, so we've owned lots of things that had been jailbroken by him. It's easy if you know what you are doing. It also violates the warranty and insurance. He isn't allowed to do it on my kids' phones because they are on our contract. He can joyfully hack into anything else that his heart desires. |
| How is that not illegal? |
| Of course it’s illegal. There’s nothing gray about it. |
| Husband wants to do this to one of ours. What exactly is the benefit? What do you get that you normally wouldn't? |
It depends on how you watch the pirated content. If is clearly illegal to download and save copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder. In the 90s, the music industry demonstrated that while they could pursue individuals for these types of violations it was so unproductive and poorly received, they gave up. They did, however, have better luck going after individuals and companies who were distributing the content. We have come a long way from the peer-to-peer sharing of the 90s. Streaming presents a whole new batch of copyright issues. Copyright holders have repeatedly failed to prove that the buffering of the videos that occurs while streaming constitutes a copy that is protected by copyright law. Additionally, their attempts to argue that showing the video in your home counts as a public performance have also failed. Providing a video stream of copyrighted material is illegal. Watching it is likely not illegal and if anything a gray area. |
the act of jailbreak is legal https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/10/28/2015-27212/exemption-to-prohibition-on-circumvention-of-copyright-protection-systems-for-access-control#h-17 the watching of the videos probably isn't |