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Massive Legal Bills Force TVAddons’ Adam Lackman Towards Bankruptcy


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After being targeted by massive legal action in 2017, TVAddons founder Adam Lackman is still hoping to put up a fight against several major Canadian media companies. The huge costs incurred so far are proving crippling and with bankruptcy always just round the corner, defeat by default is rarely far away. It's a scenario that's all too familiar to Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

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TVAddons was once the go-to place for the vast majority of Kodi addons, regardless of who authored them or how they were ultimately used.

Visitors to the platform today, which is still doing relatively well, find a much more sober operation, with listed addons carefully vetted, to weed out any that might help end-users breach copyright law.

This current mode of business is the result of two punishing lawsuits, one filed against founder Adam Lackman in the US by DISH Networks and the other in Canada. While the former was settled in 2018, the latter – filed by media giants Bell Canada, TVA, Videotron, and Rogers – is very much alive.

Progression in the lawsuit appears glacial with an end nowhere in sight. This week Lackman informed TorrentFreak that the companies don’t appear to be in a mood to settle as DISH had done before them. As a result, every legal twist and turn contributes to the mountain of debt Lackman says he’s struggling beneath.

At several points since the case began, Lackman has turned to TVAddons users and other supporters to help raise funds. He believes it’s worth putting up a fight but the Canadian is clearly facing an uphill battle.

Unable to bankroll him any further, his original legal team quit, leaving him with two separate bills of CAD$83,991 and CAD$38,989 to settle before he can move on.

“I was lucky enough to find my original lawyers, however their firms couldn’t handle devoting the time needed unless they were to be paid in full within a timely manner. They couldn’t afford to ignore other business while defending my case on credit,” he explains.

In his latest fundraising effort, launched this week, he’s seeking a total of CAD$171,981 – an amount which includes close to CAD$50,000 to cover some of the plaintiffs’ legal fees, previously awarded to them by the court.

If Lackman raises the full amount anytime soon, he will only break even, leaving him to raise additional funds to continue the fight. Even then, it appears that future battles will have to take place supported by a relatively tight budget.

“As of now I am acting in my own defense, with the help of some legal experts in the background,” he told us recently. “I am looking for new potential representation, but regardless the current debt is not one that I can comfortably carry.

“By defending myself, I hope to avoid incurring too much additional debt. I’m obviously not capable of doing all the paperwork on my own, so I’m getting help with that. I’m hoping that the court recognizes this and protects my right to a fair trial in the process.”

Given the scale of the debt and Lackman’s apparent inability to pay, he says the specter of bankruptcy is never far away. He seems keen to avoid that, not least since his adversaries would achieve an immediate victory.

“I could easily go into bankruptcy right now, but then the plaintiffs would win by default. I feel the fight is too important, and my defense is too strong, to give up now,” he says.

However complicated and expensive the case has become, Lackman believes that he has the law on his side. While TVAddons indexed code that could scrape external sources for content, he insists that the site never hosted or directly linked to any infringing material.

But more importantly, Lackman says, the companies suing him and/or their affiliates never sent the platform a takedown notice before taking action, something he describes as a “prerequisite to their claim being eligible for damages.”

While that assertion may yet prove correct, having that definitively determined by a court of law is proving a supremely costly endeavor. Lackman is working under the assumption that the plaintiffs are trying to break him financially, a theory supported by Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

“To this day the copyright cartels are still suing people for anything they dislike,” he wrote on Twitter this week, commenting on the TVAddons case.

“It’s a mob using bullying methods, trying to force people into bankruptcy so they can’t defend themselves and thus the cartel wins on financial walkover.”

Whether that doomsday scenario will play out in Lackman’s case seems wholely dependent on whether people donate to his latest and future fundraisers. At the time of writing, he’s just $2,471 closer to his $171,981 goal.

 

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On 9/20/2019 at 7:05 PM, TheEmpathicEar said:

Also, another victory for the MAFIAA! 😐

He was sued by Dish,Bell Canada, TVA, Videotron, and Rogers.  The scene has existed all these years from keeping there identities  a secret . People like him are the reason they made ACE from the start he thrived on exposure via social media ,  blogs , YouTube ,forums and addon portals . He sold his illegal addons to the whole world that the kodi community made for him .He turned a hobby that Kodi.tv  invented into multi  million dollar piracy scam ,even his addons  even were full of spam  , had botnets that ddoss websites in some of them before . He got paid from ads ,promoting vpns and donations . He turned piracy into something  that always been on shady websites and apps  to something box sellers used to rip off  the masses that had no business to be pirating  to begin with on the promise they would provide you with free TV for buying there boxes .  Many of there victims never knew what they was doing was illegal or ever researched that addons are free and a stock android box is all you need and  after a few months  there fully loaded boxes would stop working, A box seller that got busted ratted him out and got off the hook. 

 

Once Adam got busted the media industry filliped  him he rated out people who helped him get rich because  when he black listed the addons from his portal they made a new one , soon after ACE after came after them , this keep on happening tell all the portals were gone ,Now making Addons  is back to were it started just a hobby all the super repos are gone .He dont deserve nothing he made money from a scam and him telling on people this is just karma coming back on him.

 

MAFIAA didn't really win anything they still plenty of Kodi addons out there . Sad thing is Adam is using TF  to post his side of the story to all pirates or any one  who reads there site in order to get donations . If you donate to him all the money is going to  Anti Piracy  .Hes already paid dish a bunch  of money . he want ever raise $171,981 dollars but they are people dumb enough  to donate to him because they don't  really know who he is, just like most pirates on TF are BitTorrent users and don't know nothing about Kodi or was they around him on the internet like the kodi community was . He deserve everything  that happens to him.

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