https://www.tickboxtv.com/


Anybody Know if this is for real or how it works? Whats the Catch?

You must be behind, yes this is real. It is an Android TV box, there are hundreds of them on the internet everywhere. Varying in price.

I am still amazed that Hollywood has not found a way to shut down or block these servers in other countries. It's been 2+ years now all these boxes have been out. And a LOT of people are using them now.
I'm also amazed that a new law has not been written yet, to address the loop hole consumers can use to use the box. It is stealing no matter how you look at it.

Recently in the UK a man was sentenced to four years in prison, and anther awaits trial.

It's only a matter of time before we see people being charged with piracy of copyright material for using, or selling these type devices, or hacks of devices to install Kodi and the various plug ins that enable the theft.

Apparently the newest program is Exodus, but of course it works the same way.

I'm honestly surprised at the low moral values, and ethics of the people in this country. They will say anything to justify their actions....

Agreed... everyone I know has something running Kodi.

They sell these types of boxes at our county fair. I love their slick sales pitch at the fair. Then I pepper them with copyright questions. Their answers are like the ones on this website, you don't download the content so it's legal- you're not stealing anything. Good luck with that if you got sued.

I think for users it's a little more in the gray area. Some users simply don't know the law. If they get music from Pandora legally for free isn't this the same? This might be their question.

The studios will be hard pressed to win against the average consumer who buys any of these boxes. Those that are providing the content would be at risk.

One of my customers had one of these things (not same model as this) The problem was trying to find decent quality streams. 90% were absolute crap picture quality, or sound was bad. He paid around $300 for it and used it for a week before throwing it away.

Need to understand it isn't a Kodi problem. Kodi is a legit app for consolidating services (much like TiVo). Blaming Kodi would be like blaming Android - after all, it is being done on an Android platform = "must be evil".
It is the plugins you add onto Kodi, that are the problem. Those are where the 'unethical' things happen.

Easy answer:
Pandora has commercials unless you pay a subscription. There are legit video services like that too.
If you are streaming movies & TV, not paying a subscription, and not seeing commercials; then you are likely doing something unethical and possibly become illegal at some point.

I don't disagree. My point is when you the average unknowing person gets taken in by a good sales pitch and buys the unit. I think this is especially true for older people that don't really know technology. Weird thing for Pandora; I had the paid subscription for a year then let it lapse. I still get commercials on mobile but virtually none on my desktop.

I should have been more specific... everyone I know bought Fire sticks alreadyd loaded with everything they need to stream illegal content.

Jeff, gonna argue with you on this one. Think back to the days of music file sharing and Napster. The lawyers targeted people who were humble, plain folks, and made a big splash example.

Wonder why hdmi alliance hasn't done that for manufacturers that break hdcp, and also wonder why Hollywood hasn't gone after hack boxes. Seems like it would employ a bunch of lawyers...

Finally, agree with Ken. Morals and ethics of people who don't pay for what they get is indeed an issue....

Yes, I tried a hacked Amazon fire TV a couple years ago just out of curiousity (believe me, I give Hollywood plenty if money renting/buying legit material), but the user experience was crap - most times it was terrible pic quality and half the stuff you try to play has broken links- like looking through a garbage dump for bits and pieces of dry crust.

I've always wondered if these boxes are a nice way of leaving an open door to your network... All of these foreign based servers that are providing pirated content, they have NO interest at all in hacking you?

People ask us all time about Alexa spying on them or their ISP selling their interwebs history, then ask us to hook up their "black box" to their system.

I'm with you on this one. I remember when they discovered that all the "free" flashlight apps for your phone were just stealing from you all the time.

Somebody in Russia is laughing all the way to the bank with your personal info!

That was a short term phenomenon. It was the usual thing of a very new situation coming up and the only tools you have available are those you have had around for the old situation. The whole premise of copyright is that masses of individuals wouldn't or couldn't do it, that it had to (in order to make a significant impact) be done by organizations. And that meant money, facilities, employees, etc..., meaning people who were vulnerable to legal attack.

When the internet came along, suddenly individuals were now large scale copyright infringers. So they used the tools they had. But it quickly became apparent that it was a waste of time and they stopped. The odds of you getting caught meant that the example was just an expensive waste of money and time. And just proving that you did something became more and more difficult.

And, of course, the entire internet became suddenly overnight an anti-music industry machine, cranking out anti-music industry propaganda by the truck load. So any attempt by the copyright owners to protect themselves just made them the target of attacks as though they were the ones in the wrong. You still see the fallout of that. If Youtube yanks a video or its soundtrack, the comments will be full of people who are acting as though their ability to access any media they want for free is an attack on their civil rights.

It's gotten a bit better, at least in terms of more people acknowledging the damage being done. Back in the early 2000's I'd spend weeks arguing with people on online fora who would die before admitting that massive theft of copyrighted material hurts anyone, and in fact, they'd claim, the folks who download music buy more music than other people, so it's a good thing.

How exactly that latter situation could possibly result in anything but a massive increase in sales, instead of the massive drop-off that actually occurred, wasn't within their self-justifying reality bubble.

Anyhoo, ultimately, the only possibility is a supply side attack. But that is also difficult because the fluid nature of the internet allows for either commercial suppliers to move to the countries least likely to give a damn, or peer-to-peer systems that spread out the blame to thinly that legal action is very difficult. They can try to go after the folks making the enabling tools, but that's proven difficult as well. Plenty of companies, who have little or no IP industry and probably aren't particularly friends of the west, are happy to provide a base of operations for such activities.

They did push at least one DVD/Bluray ripping product back into China that I know of. And they did manage to bust the big file sharing guy in NZ, and shut down TPB. But the former was foolish enough to remain in a country with respect for IP, and the latter in a country that didn't so much but ultimately gave into peer pressure. Still though, that's a drop in the bucket. Countries like Russia and China can provide the all the technical and business infrastructure these companies need, while the damage they do to western concerns, and the money they bring in, is all good as far as a lot of folks in those countries are probably concerned.

It's a form of industrial warfare in a way, and the beauty of it is that they just get the target country's own citizens to do the crime. They can say, hey, we just make this software that has completely legitimate uses, police your own people if you have a problem.

But, I'm rambling now. It's a big subject, and it's something I think about a lot. So it's easy to go off the deep end when discussing it.