What kind of person thinks buying some cheap chinese set top box off eBay lets them watch stuff for free legally?
For example, there's a new licensed/authorized streaming television service that was recently launched by Southern Fibernet.
Compare their webpage- https://southernfibernet.com/index.php/television
to one that operates without any licenses- http://rapidiptv.net/
If I encountered both of those webpages without context, it wouldn't be immediately obvious to me that one of the services is "legit" and one isn't.. They're both online streaming companies, and both offer similar services.
Can you blame folks for thinking that if it's being advertised all over the place and sold in local stores, it MUST be legal?
Keep in mind that recognizing an online seller as "sketchy" requires a great deal of technical skill all by itself. To the average Joe, there's not much difference between eBay and Amazon. Hell, I just searched for "kodi" on Amazon and turned up a ton of stuff there advertising free movies and TV shows. Amazon! You want to tell me that the average person should see something sold on Amazon with Prime shipping that says you can use it to stream movies and TV for free, and understand that this is not legal?
Are normal people supposed to expect companies that advertise out in the open like that to not be legitimate? And I mean... they sort of are, they can deliver what they're advertising, they'll come to your house and set it all up and even give you support. Most consumers wouldn't know (or likely even care much about) the difference.
It never even occurred to them that it was piracy. When they thought of "pirating" or "theft", a glossy site that their friends told them about, and that asked nothing of them wasn't it.
My ex-girlfriend's mother sent me a link to some small little device for sale on Craigslist a while back and asked what I thought about it. I forget now exactly what it was, but it was basically something like a Chromecast but that streamed TV shows, movies, etc., off of the Internet and displayed it on your TV screen. I think it was $100 and she was going to buy one -- it was advertised with bullet points such as a "lifetime subscription" and that you could now cancel your Netflix, et al., subscriptions.
It was only after I described how they really worked that she decided not to buy one.
ETA: It was something similar to this item [0].
You need access to a service on your phone/tablet/computer to push it to the Chromecast.
So instead, I just cast the tab fullscreen from my laptop or desktop. That sort of thing doesn't really work well enough for full motion video on a mobile device but a "regular" computer handles it about 99% as well as a native Chromecast app.
Beats screwing around with cables at least.