Kodi Ban Switches Off Expat Access To Home TV

Internet providers are switching off online channels for expats who like to watch English Premier League football and their favourite UK TV shows.

For years, expats have connected to prime TV content for free through proxy servers or virtual private networks (VPN).

The connections are an effort to disguise the location and internet addresses of users.

Programme producers have turned up the heat against pirate football, movies and TV by applying to the courts to crack down on servers broadcasting their content for free.

The European Court of Justice has declared download add-ons that distribute pirated content through apps like Kodi are illegal.

Illegal soccer channels blocked

In Britain, the Premier League has won a court order forcing major internet service providers to block servers illegally streaming matches.

The big six ISPs have to obey the order – EE, Plusnet, Sky, BT, TalkTalk and Virgin.

A similar order was used to block 5,000 illegal streaming channels online at the end of the last football season.

“This blocking order is a game-changer in our efforts to tackle the supply and use of illicit streams of our content,” Premier League director of legal services, Kevin Plumb, said. “It will allow us to quickly and effectively block and disrupt the illegal broadcast of Premier League football via any means, including so called ‘pre-loaded Kodi boxes’.”

The pirates are urging their users to switch to a VPN to hide their identity online.

Dubious backgrounds

But do they really work?

Yes and no. Although a VPN will encrypt data between a user and a server by providing a spoof IP address, the VPN is an extra middleman collecting information about customers and their browsing histories.

Many VPNs have dubious backgrounds, accused of selling browsing histories, installing malware on home computers and selling customer bandwidth to throttle download speeds.

Free VPN should be avoided as they must make money to survive but would seem to have no visible means of support, which increases the suspicion that they are on the darker side of the web.

For now, the pirates can still stream their wares, but their supply routes are gradually closing and cutting off users.