Judge says Atlanta company aids movie piracy

A U.S. District Court Judge has mostly sided with Hollywood studios in ruling that an Atlanta-based streaming media platform allows consumers to commit piracy.

Judge Michael Fitzgerald issued a preliminary injunction against TickBox TV, which sells a device that Hollywood says allows consumers to view pirated movies and TV shows for free.

"There is sufficient evidence that the device can be and is used to access infringing content, and there is sufficient evidence of TickBox's fault — primarily in the form of its advertisements and customer-support efforts," Fitzgerald said.

TickBox, on its website, https://www.tickboxtv.com, that consumers who are “frustrated with overpriced cable bills” can use its device to view “thousands of hours of the best entertainment available on the web and any app in the Google play store.”

In a lawsuit filed in October in federal court in Los Angeles, Universal City Studios, Columbia Pictures, Disney Enterprises, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Amazon Content Services and Netflix charged that Atlanta-based TickBox is infringing on their content.

TickBox uses Kodi, a legal, open-source software, that can be modified with apps and add-ons from third party developers. Some of those modifications allow people to stream online content to their TV screens, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The Judge declined to shut down TickBox, and the Times says TickBox Chief Executive Jeffrey Goldstein said in a declaration filed in December that TickBox “had altered its advertising and modified its user interface with software updates to remove the offending links.” TickBox's user interface now presents users with authorized streaming services such as WatchESPN and A&E, Goldstein said.

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