Shaboxx Review: Cable deregulation = legal piracy?
There is no information on the Shaboxx website indicating who owns or runs the business.
The Shaboxx website domain (“shaboxx.info”) was registered on the 15th of August 2015, however the domain registration is set to private.
As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.
The Shaboxx Product Line
Shaboxx has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market Shaboxx affiliate membership itself.
Bundled with Shaboxx affiliate membership is a Shaboxx streaming box.
Shaboxx claim their streaming box enables users to ‘watch your favorite movies, TV shows, live sporting events, etc.‘
The Shaboxx Compensation Plan
The Shaboxx compensation plan sees affiliates purchase $60 positions in four straight-line queues.
Commissions are paid as positions in the queue are filled, with positions filled via purchases made by subsequently recruited affiliates.
- Queue 1 – requires 16 positions purchased to pay position at the top of the queue $50
- Queue 2 – requires 261 positions purchased to pay position at the top of the queue $50
- Queue 3 – requires 533 positions purchased to pay position at the top of the queue $300
Upon cycling out of queue 3, an affiliate is also given two new positions in queue 1.
Joining Shaboxx
Affiliate membership with Shaboxx is tied to the purchase of a $60 position in the company’s compensation plan.
Conclusion
We see a lot of dubious marketing claims in MLM, but what stood out to me in particular with Shaboxx was the following claim from their affiliates:
Additionally, an email from Shaboxx affiliates currently doing the rounds reads:
The U.S. Government Has Deregulated The Cable Industry!!!!!!
Ask me how you can watch …HBO, Showtime, Starz, and Payper view movies FREE! Legally!
Watch movies STILL IN THEATRES at home on your own BIG SCREEN TV…FREE!
in somes cases before it hits the theatre!!!!
…..Legally…..Yes….Legally!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All your favorite shows like Empire, Scandal, Power, Game of Thrones, Y&R live or on demand.
Watch TV shows from 1939 to present on demand…FREE…FREE…FREE
Watch live TV channels ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, Foxsports, and international channels all over the world. Browse the internet or watch Youtube…Listen to music
Watch All Sports FREE!!!….PAY per view Boxing, UFC, Wrestling NFL Ticket, Pass, Redzone, ect. NBA, NHL, MBL, Soccer, Golf….whatever!!!!
Over 3200 apps…Play Thousands of Games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush on your Big Screen TV FREE…FREE…FREE!
On the possibility I’d missed the US government legalizing commercial piracy, I ran a few searches to get to the bottom of the deregulation claims.
Turns out there was some talk of deregulating cable zones to promote fiber-optic competition, but that’s about it.
Any claims that the US government deregulated the cable industry to support piracy streaming services are complete hogwash.
Shaboxx’s compensation plan is as dubious as their piracy box, which sees affiliates pay a fee and then get paid on chain-recruitment.
Retail sales are not mentioned anywhere in the Shaboxx compensation plan material, which means 100% of the commissions paid out are sourced from Shaboxx affiliates.
This is a closed-loop system and indicative of a pyramid scheme.
Shaboxx themselves refer to affiliate fees as an investment:
When you reach top of the success latter 533 steps you will receive $300. so your investment of only $60 has turned into $400 WOW!
Which additionally raises questions of a $60 in, $300 unregistered securities offering being made.
As for Shaboxx’s piracy box, similar boxes created a bit of a stir in the industry early to mid last year. The various MLM piracy box opportunities have since mostly died off, upon realization that selling commercial piracy is a pretty limited market.
Let alone a business opportunity centered around dubious claims that selling access to pirated content is somehow legal.
Love or hate the current distribution models for licensed content, the bottom line is that companies like Shaboxx market access to pirated content.
This, combined with chain-recruitment “investment” style compensation plans, is about as far from legitimate MLM as you can get.
I’ve been aware for a while now that one could legally purchase a “set top” box for viewing cable channels without having to pay the cable company rental fees.
One could not, however, use that box to charge someone to view programs on your box, nor could one set that box up in a commercial establishment and charge people to view provrams. It has strictly been sold for personal use only. Bars and clubs also must abide by cable company regulations.
Anyone selling the boxes as a business opportunity or tied to a business opportunity runs the risk of having the authorities come-a-knockin when they least expect them.
That has been my understanding.
Here we go again – Geez..
Yes, you can purchase a cable box (from the cable company with their consent) to avoid rental fees. You still need to subscribe to their service to be able to legally use that box. The Shaboxx however is not a cable box – it’s a purpose built streaming computer running some sort of XBMC/Kodi software.
The boxes themselves are not illegal – If you (the end user) use the box to access content which you don’t have the right to access, you are violating the law.
If you only access public domain content, you are fine. Accessing movies, sporting events or television shows where the content owners have not authorized the distribution of said content is also a violation.
No network, movie studio or sports sanctioning body has authorized their content to the providers accessed by these gray market devices.
Please reference the multitude of other “opportunities” reviewed by Oz for these boxes ultimate legality.
a steve [steven] west of the US appears to be the owner of shaboxx:
scamadviser.com/check-website/shaboxx.com
steve west has also uploaded videos about shaboxx on youtube offering free cable forever to users.
A better point to make is the Streaming boxes have absolutely NOTHING to do with cable TV… They don’t even intersect unless the user uses Cable Internet.
Furthermore, cable TV was deregulated back in 1996 by US Congress in TeleCommuncations Act of 1996. Seems Ms. Clark here was thoroughly lost if she thought this is somehow… new.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the .com domain. It seems to sell MLM backend software?
Finally, the “deregulation” never referred to content. Rather, it removed barrier to entry into the telecom market (but actually increased oversight, by creating three separate oversight agencies to regulate phone services, cable TV services, and information services, i.e. internet) as they are considered separate markets.
Claiming “cable deregulation means you can get any content for free” is much like Gemcoin crooks claiming California bill “created” Gemcoin… or Obama and Xi Jinping created their bogus ACCA whatever.
Whoislogy shows shaboxx.info belonging to a “Brad Pulliam” as of December 2015. Who.is shows that proxy reg was updated in January 23rd or slightly earlier.
Brad Puliam seems to have several “make money fast” type domain associated with him.
I don’t think Puliam, Clark, or West are the real owners. I think they are all affiliates, or else they are top of the heap.
Shaboxx IS legal! The streaming box IS legal! There is NOTHING illegal about selling a streaming box.
They are selling very well around the US..The Comp plan is approved by the Attorney Generals. There IS a retail site to purchase the box at (Ozedit: affiliate site removed)..
@Sonja
But you’re not just selling a streaming box. You’re selling access to piracy.
There’s nothing legal about an MLM business opportunity that markets “ZOMG FREE FREE FREE! All-you-can-eat piracy!!!”.
Only if you stream legally available content. In which case, it’s no more useful than any Roku or Chromecast… at 5X (or higher) the price.
So what do you have to say to that? (And I haven’t even gotten to the completely BOGUS advertising other affiliates put out…)
This guy “Steve West” is a scammer and I have heard that is not his real name.
He took alot of peoples money and still has not shipped the box to anyone unless you called him and paid him more money to ship it!! That was not the agreement to begin with.
And I don’t really know if anyone got a box, even if they paid him more money. Everyone I know was strung along for months with him saying they were getting everything together and would ship soon.
I bought 2 shaboxx machines in December 2015 and I STILL have not received it as of June 8, 2016.
DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THIS GUY, HE IS A CROOK.
I recently charged it back with my bank. So if you are out there still hanging on, I would immediately charge it back and tell the bank it was fraud.
They extend the amount of time you have to file when it is fraud and you never received the merchandise. They need to shut down his merchant credit card account.
I have been in Shaboxx since September 2015. I have not gotten paid but I have received two boxes.
I bought my Shaboxx from a friend she was selling three of them. I bought mine from her for well lets say alot and I only used it a few times and today I went to use it and after I hook it back up to my tv it will not do anything.
it goes to the home screen acheive it live it or whatever and then I get 2 white lines on the bottom. at first I thought oh my bateries needed replaced but then I noticed light was working on remote but just in case I replaced with new batteries and still no work. what the blank.
I called her and well we are no longer friends. she had nothing to say and I said I want my 200 plus dollars back and she said nope I invested it back into the company and wow, I was so destraught about this so now what why are these things not working?
no ones is working here in Georgia I know I only use it a few times to watch movies on and boxing a few weeks ago but now nothing.
is there something I need to do to make it work again? A VERY UPSET GRANDMOTHER IN GEORGIA.
@Robin
The piracy plugins probably need updating. You’re on your own there.
I bought one Shaboxx and hooked it up! There was a lot of content listed but I could only access a very limited amount of that content.
And then one day I tried it again and was denied any of the programming listed. It’s now disassembled and in the garage awaiting my next trip to Goodwill!
Thanks for nothing, Stephen West.