Legality of various content?

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1

Hello, all…

I’ve been using a Roku for quite some time, now, and own three boxes; I plan to get a streaming stick soon, for travel purposes, as well. I’ve recently decided to take a stab at developing a channel, and thought I’d start with one of my favorite genres of film - horror. Unfortunately, after having scoured the internet for public domain content, I’ve come up against what is probably quite a familiar problem to most of you; I’ve run out of “legal” content for my channel (which at the moment is a private channel).

Having said that, I was wondering whether you all have any tips for me, regarding the issue of procuring good content. Is it legal to post videos that are not in the public domain, or for which you do not own the rights, as long as you aren’t charging money to view them? Would I have to keep my channel private, if I wanted to host something like John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ without having procured the rights to do so, or would I be able to take the channel public, as long as it remains free to view?

Any help you all can give me would be greatly appreciated. I’m sure there has been quite a bit of discussion of this particular topic, and probably a few related topics as well on this forum, but so far I’ve been unable to find an exact answer to my questions, and thought I’d ask the veterans of Roku development for some help and insight.

Best wishes to you all, and thank you in advance for your assistance!

NFI

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I’ve been pouring over other posts that dance around this issue, and the general consensus I’m getting is that it is NOT legal to stream content publicly, without proper permission and licensing to do so from the copyright owner of said content, regardless of whether you are charging a fee to access the content. So that question no longer needs answering, but I am still curious as to whether it is alright to stream content to a private channel, which only you yourself would have access to - so that you could watch only your favorite films, etc. on the channel, without having to navigate endless menus on popular paid channels, such as Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.

If you own a copy of the media you’re streaming, that should cover you for your own private streaming, correct? Also, I would like to hear from anyone who has developed any sort of relationships with copyright holders for major films, etc. What were your terms, and how did you go about securing the rights to stream the copyrighted media? Were there fees associated, and if so, how much (ballpark) money are we talking about? Any advice on securing rights to stream films on a FREE public channel, without going broke in the process, would be MUCH appreciated!

Thanks again for your help!

NFI

3

Any advice on securing rights to stream films on a FREE public channel, without going broke in the process, would be MUCH appreciated!

If this was feasible, it would have been done already. Most all content owners want to have a constant stream of revenue from their properties. It would be a lot easier for you to get a few friends together and spend time writing, producing original content that you own the rights to. Once you have done that, think about giving it out to the world, for free, on the internet. Would you be able to do that?

4

Considering the potential for ad-based income, I wouldn’t mind posting original content online at no charge to viewers. The only reason I’d even seek ad revenue is to recoup expenses on the project. These big companies have already paid off their expenses ten or twenty-fold, but I get that it’s a business, not a charity. Unfortunately, while I’m reasonably creative, I’m not the type to produce content for viewing by the masses - it’s just not really in my wheelhouse. That being said, I’m not looking to get everything (or even anything) for free - but I’ve seen a few people post things about “having a good working relationship” with various copyright holders, which I’m imagining means that they’ve worked something out with someone, where they’re not paying an absurd amount of money to stream their content.

If I could just gather some information from a few people who’ve pulled this “working relationship” off, I’d at least know what I was up against, in terms of a cost analysis, where I would be able to determine if it would ever be feasible to run a free channel of my own. I’ve seen some pretty questionable-quality channels in the public channel store, and I sincerely doubt that they’ve paid much (if anything) for the content they’re streaming. A couple of these channels are free, and a couple are paid subscriptions.

There must be some way to at least get a reasonable rate on streaming rights from a few different copyright holders - especially since I’m not looking to make money off of their intellectual property. Anyone had any experience with this? I was curious to begin with, but it’s really intriguing me now…

5

“NightFallInc” wrote:
but I am still curious as to whether it is alright to stream content to a private channel, which only you yourself would have access to
Your best bet, in this case, would be to just sideload the channel on any box that wants it. Publishing a channel like this, even privately, is technically in violation of the Roku developer agreement that you agreed to when you created your developer account. So, while you could do it, and probably get away with it, if it was truly limited to just yourself, you’d be walking a thin line.
“NightFallInc” wrote:
There must be some way to at least get a reasonable rate on streaming rights from a few different copyright holders - especially since I’m not looking to make money off of their intellectual property. Anyone had any experience with this? I was curious to begin with, but it’s really intriguing me now…
I don’t know the answer to this, and I’m no lawyer, but I feel pretty confident in saying that whether you plan to make money off of it or not, has little to no bearing on whether a copyright holder would give you permission to stream it. The content you’re looking to stream wasn’t produced so that anyone and everyone could stream it free of charge, so there’s no reason to believe that charging you a small fee to allow you to do that is likely in any scenario. The only way you’ll be able to procure content like that is if you’re willing to pay for it… a lot more than the $19.99 you may have paid for the DVD.

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^ sound advice.With the side loading option you keep everything “in house” so to speak – the moment you publish a channel (even a private channel) you have crossed the line from “tinkerer” to “pirate” in the eyes of the law.Back in my TVRO ( big satellite dish) days piracy was rampant.From a legal standpoint if content providers didn’t want one to get these signals they would have to keep them out of that persons yard.Where the infractions took place is the buying/selling of devices or posting plans on how to build a device to decrypt those signals.Same is true with Roku – if the law doesn’t want me to watch content xx keep it off the web – what I do in my home is my business – but put up a website to destribute said content or develop a channel to scrape it (even if the channel is 100% free to the user) and you are a pirate.Any developer on this forum will tell you how incredible Roku is – if it is on the web you can get it on a Roku

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“NightFallInc” wrote:
Considering the potential for ad-based income, I wouldn’t mind posting original content online at no charge to viewers. The only reason I’d even seek ad revenue is to recoup expenses on the project.

There is a difference between “wouldn’t mind doing it” to actually doing it. And ad revenue doesn’t mean your work is absolutely free to watch. What you want to stream has value, so they deserve to be paid for their valuable content you want to watch and you are screwing them over by breaking the law. There really isn’t any gray area. Universal, Warner Brothers, Paramount, ABC, all these entities have spent the money, the time, the research, employing people to create something of unique value, and they want to profit as much as possible from that product. Everyone involved has put in years of work into this product, and by you giving it away you are depriving them of their reward, telling them that you consider their product to be worthless. It’s not just about recouping the investment cost - it’s about funding the ‘next’ product they want to produce.
When you solve nuclear fusion, AIDS, all forms of cancer, heart disease, or simply spend years making a stupid tv show, and give it away absolutely free no strings attached for eternity to the world for free, then you can come back here and discuss this for an exemption based on your own enormous uncommon ‘good will’ for the human race - until then you’re nothing more than a pathetic childish thief who doesn’t understand basic social concepts on property protection.

btw - if you are thinking of putting such a channel into the channel store (private or sideloaded or otherwise), as soon as anyone finds out about it besides yourself, you are still breaking the DMCA even if you own the original copies of blurays/dvds or whatever you are streaming. I’m just curious - where do you draw the line in your world? Sideloading for your own personal use is probably safe to do - as ‘nobody will ever know’.

8

… and the feds are so peeved at pirates right now they’ll gladly prosecute you - at the drop of a bloody, brain encrusted, horror movie prop hat.

There’s a difference between you and pro-pirates. Pro-pirates are nameless, locationless, clandestine operators that spend their lives living under rocks avoiding prison. They are the providers of the illegal content - like the slimy dogs selling crack to your 10 year old under the monkey bars. When the feds catch one of these guys, they have a big party and it’s promotions all around.

You, on the other hand, built a Roku channel to carry out your illegal operations, so it’s like having a billboard in your yard with a giant, flashing, neon lit arrow pointing right at your house. Barney Fife could find you after a jug of Triple X Busthead and a doobie the size of a mare’s leg. Easy pickins.

If streaming ‘privately, for personal use’ is your goal (not one person reading this thread believes that for a minute - btw) why go to the trouble of building a Roku channel? The Plex server is FREE. You can burn those DVDs and BluRays of that god awful content to your hard drive and stream it to your TV in living, bloody color ALL DAY LONG with the fear of prison completely gone from the equation. Invite your friends, charge admission, nobody cares. I’m not sure, but with Plex Pass, you might even get away with ‘cloud storage’ and be able to access your junky content remotely.

As knuck says - the minute your stuff hits the internet you advance to Pro-Pirate status and are subject to the dividends Pro-Pirates enjoy - none of them all that good.

Let’s say you avoid prison, fines etc… as soon as somebody turns you in for piracy - figure 10 or 15 minutes - you’ll get a take down notice ('cause, yes, they know exactly who you are and where to contact you) and you’ll be right back to the public domain content that looks like 14.5 yards of Hades. Why put yourself and all you hold dear through that?

If you think you have a chance at becoming rich exploiting exploiter movies - think again. I’d have to take off my shoes and socks off to count the failed Niche Horror channels that are already streaming that sort of content. You and your buds may live for it - but hardly anyone else does. As soon as you start injecting advertising into it for personal gain you’ll instantly lose 98% of the already microscopic viewer base you had. Cryptic TV comes to mind and their ONLY redeeming quality is the vintage ads they display, not for profit, but for nostalgia’s sake.

And we haven’t even started talking about the cost of hosting this illegal content… unless you want to stream 240p (unwatchable) content, you’re going to have to find a hosting service with big pipes to the internet - and won’t mind hosting illegal, pirated content… good luck with that.

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Hi distrut; you have answered to this poster with the wisest words, and i’d hope that Everybody here and in other forums to join in to this related topic of writing /sharing ilea-gal copy-write content in these Hidden Roku Private Chan;but despite of your wise words it’s not what is happening as we speak right now, there are these hidden private Chan on Roku that keep changing name every time the Roku personnel shuts one down but in the next hour there will be same Chan piracy with other name and charging 25 dollars a month for exact same content providers supply for 100 dollars or more,and as far i know I’ve been investigating this on the web and it’s always the same name that changes name by the minute and the main hidden responsible private Chan is Wowtv that later came up with Yawtv or later Matchtv Mag 250tv and so on,so no use to cut one private hidden pirate Chan but give any user the free ability to write a pirate hidden Chan one hour later,it seems they have a web on the web site, and later on they use this scheme by just using E-mail and these pirate forums with the PM ability to communicate with each other selling these Roku private hidden Chan codes, so after they pay the 25 dollars then they receive the code by e-mail and start to watch the best channels that legal providers have,and all this under the umbrella of Roku.

Check out this text last post on Satfix forum today;

******* i just read they changed the wow TV private channel again…pm me if you need it******

So as you see they continue to sell these private hidden Chan on Roku and soon providers that pay huge amounts of money for the Copy-write owners of content soon will go out of business, since these good intentions on part of Roku on letting users to write there copywriter own Chan indiscriminately,these pirates took good advantage,and since then provider cord cutters have been on thousand,which on the long run put in jeopardy the producing of good content at a reasonable price.

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“NightFallInc” wrote:
There must be some way to at least get a reasonable rate on streaming rights from a few different copyright holders - especially since I’m not looking to make money off of their intellectual property. Anyone had any experience with this? I was curious to begin with, but it’s really intriguing me now…

Just drop into your local film school, or follow indie filmmakers on twitter. There are thousands of them…nay, hundreds of thousands of them. All want to get their work viewed, and ideally make some money on them. A good chunk of those kids go in for the horror genre. So there you go. Sign some lightweight contracts to stream their work in your channel, run ads ever 15 minutes or so, and create a subscription tier with no ads, take whatever cut will keep your servers running and pay the kids something for showing their work.

Otherwise, you an find copyright owners and license holder agencies and license content directly from them, it probably isn’t that hard to track them down.

  • Joel
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Thanks to Joel for giving a reasonable answer to my question. As for some of the rest of you, I’m not sure what you misunderstood when you read my original posts, or what kind of shit you think I’m trying to pull, but there were a few insults thrown around, and to the thrower, I say “you can go fuck yourself”. What I HAVE DONE is create a private channel that at the moment has exactly three films on it - all of which are one-hundred-percent in the public domain, and therefor completely and totally legal to play on ANY channel I please.

I was simply asking what one would need to do in order to possibly stream some more recent films, and for some reason, people took that as an indication that I want to pirate movies. I said quite clearly in my second post that I wasn’t looking to get any content for free - just for a reasonable price. The reason I bring this up, although many of you seem to believe that procuring content without shelling out thousands upon thousands of dollars is like finding and fucking a unicorn (impossible) is because I have SEEN with my own two eyes, MULTIPLE channels over the last three-plus years which have pretty impressive content, but are free (or require a one-time fee, or a tiny monthly subscription fee of, say $1.99) and in many cases, look like a ten-year-old put them together - at least in terms of graphic design…

As for the ads issue, someone asked me if I would give away content that I had created for free. I said even if you don’t charge anyone who views your channel a subscription fee, you can still bring in some revenue through ads. I did not mean AT ALL that I want to have ads on a channel, or that I’m looking to “get rich” by hosting a Roku channel. I’ve stated on multiple occasions that I am not interested in having a pay-to-subscribe channel, but a completely free-to-view channel, also being ad-free. The only reason ads were brought up in the first place was in answer to a hypothetical question that is null-and-void, because I am not a content creator.

There seems to be a lot of oddly negative, even aggressive attitude toward the horror genre, by the way, which is something I don’t get at all. I love horror films. Not all of them - a lot of them are garbage. There are a lot more, however, which are amazing pieces of film making, but I’m not here to argue taste in movies.

As for the idea of side-loading a channel… I hadn’t gotten into that at all, and in all honesty have no idea how that works, unless it has something to do with using a USB drive - any actual help, rather than ridicule or insulting asshattery would be very appreciated, in regard to the practice of side-loading channels, and an explanation as to how it differs from creating a private channel.

There was one more issue (actually, there are probably quite a few, but I’m so taken aback at some of these hostile answers I’ve received, that I can’t remember fully what was said in its entirety - I may have to get back to you on the rest, if I find I’ve failed to respond to something here) which I’d like to address: The comment that was made about “no one believing” that I’d like to have a private channel to host content that only I would watch…

First of all, let me say that having such a channel is not now, and has never been my intention. I was strictly asking about the legalities of it, compared with attempting to make a channel public, because the idea occurred to me during the discussion we had last night. As for whether you believe me or not, that point is irrelevant, because I had no intention of creating such a channel for any purpose - whether for my own personal use, or for thirty party guests in my home - I was just trying to grasp the nuances of legality in connection with various types of Roku channels, etc. because as I’ve stated before, I’m NEW to developing, and have no idea what the hell I’m doing. I’ve never claimed, even once, to know what I’m doing, and came here asking for help, advice, and basic information - even if it’s anecdotal in nature. I’ll also say once again that I’m not trying to make money off of a Roku channel, because I think that some members of this fine forum may have a reading comprehension deficiency.

Lastly, I’m also (being new to this) unaware of the intricacies (if there are any) of the Plex server and/or Plex pass, and would welcome information on both - although I will look into it on my own in the meantime. I do know how to use a search engine, I just thought some of you may have actual real-world experience in the field that would be better than reading a basic description online somewhere.

Anyway - some of you were helpful, some of you were inexplicably rude - but I guess that’s the nature of the internet. Thanks for your help to those of you who decided to act like rational adults, and provide a stranger with helpful information and feedback.

NFI

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I got what you were saying and i dont know why all the bad feedback! simple question and one i am actually asking myself… what steps can i take to legally get some better content to my channels? i have also seen channels that are free and have some decent content..older but decent content..how did they do it? how did they get a price that was affordable for the regular Joe?

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Read the warning on any DVD. It’s pretty clear that you were given the right to watch it on your machine in your home. That’s it that’s all.