NowTV and ROKU - Any good?

[steve50]

No..streaming or watching the content is not breaking the law and its doesn't infinge copyright laws because copyrighted information is stored only temporarily on the user’s computer, and temporary copies are exempt from copyright laws.
plus its not illegal to download or own software that enables streaming..
but
it is illegal to sell a product or ad on's that enable streaming...

I stand corrected.

 

[Roadhump]

No..streaming or watching the content is not breaking the law and its doesn't infinge copyright laws because copyrighted information is stored only temporarily on the user’s computer, and temporary copies are exempt from copyright laws.
plus its not illegal to download or own software that enables streaming..
but
it is illegal to sell a product or ad on's that enable streaming...

That is also my interpretation of what the article in the link provided by @steve50 says.

I bought a Kodi box from eBay and ending up dumping it, it was very poor quality. I now have an Amazon Fire box which is excellent, and although it is supposed to be possible to install Kodi onto that, I haven't done so. I have, however, installed Kodi on my desktop PC, and it works well.

Another way of streaming TV content is to just go online, it is easy but a lot of the websites seem to be loaded with adware, and Internet security software often blocks them because they are full of malware. Others get closed down following court orders, but are usually replaced by new ones.

It seems to follow that if streaming is legal because nothing is downloaded and no copies are made, and nothing distributed, streaming via your PC, laptop, mobile phone must also be legal. A lot of the streams originate from non-EU countries anyway, but the confusing part for me is that some provide streams of channels that subscription channels in the EU, such as Sky, I would have thought it illegal to watch them free of charge via a stream, but perhaps not if streaming is not an illegal activity.

 

[Roadhump]

[QUOTE 4542227, member: 45"]I don't think I'm talking about the act of streaming. I'm questioning the legality of circumnavigating the charging process to watch content which should be paid for.

Is it legal to, for example, circumnavigate Sky Box Office to watch one of their films from their source without paying for it?[/QUOTE]

Perhaps it is illegal, after a little Googling I found this:

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/a_to_c/communications_offences/#an04

That didn't seem to cover it, but it also mention Section 11 of the Fraud Act 2006, which seems a bit of a better fit:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/11

The Fraud Act offence would seem to fit a service in the form of a TV broadcast of a film or sports event, provided by Sky for example, but even then I am not sure if logging into a website that is freely available on the internet would be obtaining a service dishonestly, but I am not a lawyer and can only surmise. If the same event is available via a source that shows a foreign channel's broadcast and that channel isn't available via TV broadcast in this country, i.e. their TV service is not available here, surely that can't be illegal. So many people stream, I can't see how it will ever be stopped unless the websites are blocked at source.

 

[Starchivore]

I've got the Roku stick. I'm pretty pleased with it., works very well and gives me access to Youtube and netflic and Iplayer and 4oD and whatnot. It's fairly reliable and a decent price.

edit: bit late here it seems