Whatever happened to I Stream It All? If you are new to the streaming scene you might not have ever heard of I stream it all. It was a streaming app built purely on piracy. But because of its scope and the overall lack of concern from consumers about legality the app grew more and more popular with Roku users. Did they understand that it was not licensed? Maybe, maybe not. Now and then you would see a question on a forum or Facebook group “Is I Stream It All Legal? No it wasn’t.
It all came to a head in December of 2019 when the founders of the criminal enterprise Darryl Polo and Luis Villarino were charged with money laundering and copyright infringement in Las Vegas. The two confessed to having accessed 118,000 television episodes and nearly 11,000 movies, all without consent from the content’s copyrighted owners. That along with the distribution of them is what constitutes piracy. At the time prosecutors said that the duo provided access to more content than was available on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Vudu combined. That of course was why it was popular. What made the scheme more outrageous though is that ISIA actually charged people to access the content, which again they had no right to either distribute much less monetize.
In the process, Polo said he made over 1 million dollars. But it was all for naught. The servers were shut down and its customers, who in some cases paid for entire years in advance lost their money and access to the content leading to uproar online along with confusion from some who had convinced themselves that the service was legal even though it had content from Netflix and HBO and major broadcast services for less than pennies on the dollar.
This week we saw how it will play out. Polo received 57 months in prison for his actions. He also has to pay back the 1 million dollars he claimed to have made as a result of his participation in piracy. Does this case end piracy? No of course not. Piracy will always be a part of the digital world as it has been since people have had the ability to record content. But now you know as Paul Harvey used to say, The rest of the story. Stream on my friends.
