
Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter - portofcall
https://torrentfreak.com/google-adds-kodi-to-autocomplete-piracy-filter-180328/
======
AdmiralAsshat
>Google has banned the term “Kodi” from its autocomplete feature, meaning
those who look for information on the set-top box will have to type out the
full term in order to search, as reported by TorrentFreak.

>While Kodi is a legal set-top box for streaming, it supports a myriad of
third-party add-ons that provide access to pirated media.

Kodi is not a "set-top box". Kodi is software. A set-top box might be _pre-
loaded_ with Kodi, but it is not Kodi, anymore than a phone is an "Android".
As far as I'm aware, the Kodi team doesn't even sell or officially endorse any
pre-loaded hardware set-top box.

This sort of mangling is disappointing from a tech-focused news outlet like
The Verge. It also reinforces the implicit association between Kodi and
piracy, which is the very thing that caused Google to remove Kodi from search
results in the first place.

~~~
kalcode
> This sort of mangling is disappointing from a tech-focused news outlet like
> The Verge. It also reinforces the implicit association between Kodi and
> piracy, which is the very thing that caused Google to remove Kodi from
> search results in the first place.

This sort of mangling is exactly how exaggerated misrepresented news gets
spread. Google didn't remove Kodi from their search results. You can type Kodi
and it's the first thing that pops up.

You can type home theater software and get Kodi in the search results, or open
source media player and get Kodi.

All they did is remove Kodi from being autocompleted. It still even comes up
for autosuggestion.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Right, but... imo google can fuck right off. I’m really not sure who wants
corporate interests nudging them like this.

Google is allowed to curate thisr autocomplete to remove links to 6degree
piracy topics, and even promote a candidate by removing negative results like
they did for Clinton - and I’m allowed to consider them actually-evil for
doing so.

~~~
solarkraft
Yep. Previously it seemed like they valued their search's integrity over
everything else, but they must be so comfortable with their power now that
they're not really worried anymore. It's not easy to prove either, so hard to
regulate. I wish we could forbid it and it might be something the EU may try
in the next few years, but it'd likely involve an external audit of the
holiest systems - something they would likely fight against hard.

What individual users can do in the mean time is using independent, less
corporate services: DuckDuckGo comes to mind.

It is however hard to ignore that Google really has a monopoly on _good_
search (well, decliningly so for me). Maybe we should also start to use Bing
to fuel competition.

------
eco
I feel so bad for the Kodi project. They've done amazing work over the years
and their reputation is being destroyed so quickly by people taking their open
source work, adding a bunch of piracy addons, and selling a set top box.

I have no idea what they can do to combat this. I don't see how they can
distance themselves from this any more than they have.

~~~
starsinspace
Equally sad as the existence of the terrible Kodi piracy boxes is that the
legitimate set top box/"smart TV" industry is completely ignoring it. I'm not
aware of any TV manufacturer building Kodi into their product, instead they
invent their own junk, which is usually much worse.

Does anyone know why the consumer electronics industry is ignoring Kodi?

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Because Plex actively courted the Roku's and the Amazon's of the world while
Kodi was content to just make great, free software.

To boot, Plex began as a fork of XBMC (Kodi's name at the time). Which, given
Kodi's GPLv2 license, probably puts Plex out of compliance.

~~~
slantyyz
>> Plex began as a fork of XBMC (Kodi's name at the time).

Ah, XBMC... I still have an original Xbox that I modded to specifically run
XBMC collecting dust in my spare room. It definitely has come a long way.

~~~
MayeulC
The original Xbox was way ahead of the other media centers I knew of at the
time (2004-2010,roughly): * CD/DVD player * upgradeable HDD * 1080i output
(though I mostly used RCA connectors, and I don't think you can decode 720p+
with it) * quite cheap compared to a fully fledged computer * trough XBMC,
integrated games library management, with native and emulated titles * and of
course, the plethora of add-ons and protocols Kodi supports to this day

And though it was big and heavy, it had an integrated PSU.

This was before raspberry pi was a thing, mind you. The alternatives were
expensive (~€200) hard disk enclosures that couldn't do a fourth of this. I
would have kept on using if it wasn't for its inability to cope with HD
formats, and wouldn't be surprised to learn that it helped to promote the
console quite a bit.

~~~
slantyyz
> And though it was big and heavy, it had an integrated PSU.

It was noisy as hell (from the fan) too.

------
m0ngr31
In a similar vein, Amazon refused to publish an Alexa skill I wrote to control
Kodi (basically a voice remote). They cited piracy as the only reason. When
I'd press them on why they allowed one for Plex since they are both just video
players, they would just refuse to acknowledge the question and deny me again.

It's their right to do so, but it's stupid and defies logic.

~~~
solarkraft
Should it be their right? They are becoming so prevalent that perhaps they
should be regulated like infrastructure ...

~~~
ouid
I remember when computers were programmable :(.

------
ISL
Google's mission statement: [https://www.google.com/about/our-
company/](https://www.google.com/about/our-company/)

 _“Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and
useful.”

Since the beginning, our goal has been to develop services that significantly
improve the lives of as many people as possible.

Not just for some. For everyone._

To decrement something would appear to be contrary to making it universally
accessible.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Are you just figuring out that google is actually evil?

------
Raphmedia
Quite ironic when you can use YouTube + Chromecast to watch entire episodes of
many shows and many full length movies.

You can't ban software makers for the illegal use of their software by users
when your own users and services are the same...

Why don't they remove "full episode" from YouTube's autocomplete? (We all know
the answer to that one.)

~~~
M4v3R
> You can't ban software makers for the illegal use of their software by users
> when your own users and services are the same..

The sad thing is that yes - they can, and yes - they do. And there's little we
can do to stop them from doing that, apart from raising concerns and stopping
using their service.

------
chme
In other news: "Google removes 'Chrome' from its search autocomplete in anti-
piracy effort"

~~~
parliament32
Been there, done that: [https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/google-demotes-
chrome-in...](https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/google-demotes-chrome-in-
_n_1184734)

~~~
solarkraft
Now that's brilliant. Why do I often feel like one Google doesn't know what
the other is doing?

------
TomMckenny
How is it that software makers are culpable when their product us used to
commit a crime but not gun manufactures?

Is it that copyright violation is such a "heinous" crime that special rules
apply?

~~~
alexbeloi
Unlike victims of gun crimes, the victims of copyright violation have the
money and lobbying power to effect change.

~~~
protomyth
No, unlike gun owners and manufacturers, software developers have no effective
lobbying organization and get treated liked 2nd class citizens. No one fears
angering software developers before an election.

~~~
dragonwriter
> No, unlike gun owners and manufacturers, software developers have no
> effective lobbying organization

They just haven't been clever enough to organize their own _customers_ , or
some other mass front, politically the way the gun industry has.

~~~
protomyth
I think your reversing that, as the customers are out front. That's the
mistake that keeps getting made by the NRA's opponents. The NRA is only
effective because its people over industry. Industry-lead groups need a whole
lot more funding to be effective.

Any software developer that is looking for leadership from the software
industry is going to be very disappointed. Often, the industry doesn't really
have the best instance of developers in mind.

------
bubblethink
How ironic, given that Kodi is a GSoC project.

~~~
Semaphor
Google punished Chrome before. So I wouldn't call this ironic.

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/google-demotes-
chr...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/google-demotes-chrome-in-
_n_1184734.html)

------
givinguflac
What a terrible "journalist". Didn't even do the most basic research to
understand the topic they're discussing.

------
otakucode
That is frankly one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. I have used Kodi
since it was XBMC. And MAYBE back in the day when you had to break DMCA
section 1201 to install it on an original Xbox then you could have argued
there was something questionable about it. But now it's just a general media
player that looks good on a TV.

I am sure this is a total coincidence that the ability of Chrome to cast local
files was showed off literally yesterday, and they seek and destroy the
competitor that makes Chromecasting look like a cavemans solution the
following.

------
utopcell
I feel that such anti-piracy filtering is counter-intuitive because it
promotes awareness. I had no idea what 'kodi' was until today.

~~~
cheeze
The good old Streisand effect

~~~
utopcell
indeed.

------
blackflame7000
So does that mean they should remove all android devices that play Kodi? Oh,
that hurts Google bottom line.. oh nevermind then.. let's just villanize Kodi
developers.(Who have done a hell of a job I might add since the Xbox original
with a modchip). This is grandstanding for show. Google is without a doubt the
largest contributer to piracy via their indexing of, well, everything. Android
should be worried about why their sandbox security is so terrible it allowed
Facebook to gather sexting archives rivaling only that of Snapchat.

------
x0x
Unless Google removes Wikipeda too, it really doesn't matter what they remove.

Example;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_\(software\))

All links there =) Anytime official site changes, this pages updated.

Wikipedia is your Search Engine, when Google fails.

~~~
zbuttram
They only removed it from autocomplete/suggestions, not from indexing.

------
lopmotr
Somehow "sci" still suggests "sci hub". Isn't that even more direct piracy
than Kodi?

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Google continues in its quest to be completely useless for actually finding
what you're looking for.

------
cimi_
Doing this _without any signal to users performing the search_ seems dishonest
to me.

~~~
bootlooped
How do you think they should signal users?

~~~
aluhut
> "Search results for "Kodi" have been removed because you might use it for
> illegal stuff"

~~~
bandrami
But results for "Kodi" haven't been removed. Autocompletion when you type
"kod" or "ko" has. I'm trying to think of a non-disruptive way to pop up "we
would have completed this term with 'kodi' but oh hey nevermind you went on to
type 'koala'" and I'm failing.

------
zerotolerance
At what point do filtering or targeted omissions become considered anti-
competitive practices? It is one thing for a government to issue and companies
to uphold gags because governments are not in competition.

------
chatman
Next, they will detain/arrest Kodi developers at airports.

------
bunnymancer
Alternative title: Bing expands their market, now your go-to for both porn and
piracy.

Edit: also note that it's just the autocomplete, not the actual search results

------
nvahalik
btw, searx.me is a really fantastic search engine

~~~
eco
Tried to search for "kodi" on it.
[https://i.imgur.com/Eew8wA7.png](https://i.imgur.com/Eew8wA7.png)

~~~
stagbeetle
I did too and I got "Kodi | Open Source Home Theater"

On [https://www.searx.me/](https://www.searx.me/)

------
cJ0th
The cynic in me thinks google wants you to watch illegal streams on youtube.

------
rolodato
Streisand effect, anyone? I had not heard of Kodi before this.

~~~
hxtk
For what it's worth, unfamiliarity might have something to do with the fact
Kodi has only existed under that name for a couple years.

Prior to that, it was known as XBMC ("XBox Media Center"). Under that title
it's been around since 2003.

------
overcast
kodi with a space still provides relevant search results fyi.

~~~
praneshp
I think that's expected. Typing "Ko" will not suggest "Kodi" after this
announcement.

------
dang
Url changed from [https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17176894/google-
removes-k...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17176894/google-removes-kodi-
search-autocomplete-anti-piracy), which points to this.

------
BuckRogers
Google's talking about piracy, everyone else is talking about privacy.

Google can do whatever they want to please their masters within the industry
on the piracy front. I moved to DuckDuckGo years ago. If I want to check
Google results I get them through the Startpage bang.

Google & Facebook belong in the same category of no-go, invasive privacy
offenders. Which is piracy in my book. Hopefully their next preventative
measure in that regard is to remove google.com.

------
Skunkleton
This is standard operating procedure for Google, and presumably all other
major search engines. They apply the same filtering to other "objectionable"
content and are the sole arbitrators of what fits this definition. How is this
news? Is there some other way to solve the very real problem that Google is
addressing?

~~~
greglindahl
You could always support other search engines -- but as the former CTO of
blekko, I'm not going to ever ship an autocomplete that by default returns
nasty stuff for [blacks are] or [why do blacks] or a large number of other
phrases which produce terrible, terrible autocomplete results.

~~~
Skunkleton
Yeah, that was my point. Why would google have autocomplete options that give
them a bad image? Why should anyone other than google decide what a good image
is?

~~~
greglindahl
Ah, I misunderstood your point. Yes, it's an editorial thing, and even as a
personal fan of unfiltered results, I can't bring myself to ship horrific
autocomplete suggestions.

Unfortunately the existence of an autocomplete filtering system does lead to
increased pressure to use it for more than just racism and porn.

