The Dish Network lawsuit filed in court against TVAddons and ZemTV now lists the names of each operator in amended court documents.
The Dish Network lawsuit filed in a Texas court now lists the names of the TVAddons and ZemTV operators. This news follows our last update, where a Texas courted granted subpoenas to Dish Network, allowing them to request information about the defendants through Amazon, Github, Google, Twitter, Facebook and Paypal. It is unclear which service provided the information.
Now, the Texas court documents allege that Shahjahan Durrani is the developer ‘Shani_08’, who created the ZemTV addon. The addon allegedly streamed infringing broadcasts of Dish Network Content. The owner and operator of TVAddons is now listed as Adam Lackman, which should not be a surprise to anyone who’s followed the world of Kodi over the last few months.
The court documents allege that Durrani infringed Dish’s copyrights by making the streams available and Lackman subsequently profited from this and failed to take action in response.
Both Durrani and Lackman face copyright infringement charges which carry a punishment of up to $150,000 for each defense.
The complaint says, “Lackman had the legal right and actual ability to supervise and control this infringing activity because Lackman made the ZemTV add-on, which is necessary to access the ZemTV service, available for download on his website. Lackman refused to take any action to stop the infringement of DISH’s exclusive rights in the programs transmitted through the ZemTV service.”
In response, TVAddons refuted the allegations, saying that TVAddons is a platform for user-generated content and cites the DMCA’s safe harbor as a defense. “TVAddons is not a piracy site, it’s a platform for developers of open source add-ons for the Kodi media center. As a community platform filled with user-generated content, we have always acted in accordance with the law and swiftly complied whenever we received a DMCA takedown notice.”
Now that both defendants have been named, the case will move forward. This may lead to more discovery on the part of Dish to find proof that their claims are true, while Durrani and Lackman will prove their innocence.
If you would like to donate to the court fund for TVAddons, click here.
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