
The Piracy Box Sellers and YouTube Promoters Are Killing Kodi - ftclausen
http://kodi.tv/the-piracy-box-sellers-and-youtube-promoters-are-killing-kodi/
======
preinheimer
I used to work for eDonkey doing support, many years ago. There was a fair
number of people selling "eDonkey PRO", "eDonkey Premium" or similar, so the
problem is familiar. They'd pay them, then email us with problems, and demand
refunds if they were unhappy.

One particularly memorable email was something along the lines of "Cease this
chicanery at once! You must refund my monies...". I've worked chicanery into
conversations ever since.

~~~
bllguo
>"Cease this chicanery at once! You must refund my monies..."

This is incredible. Any other emails you remember?

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patcheudor
Beyond the impact to the Kodi project, I wonder how many people are contacted
by their ISP over copyright infringement notifications who have no idea why
they are being contacted. Amongst the flaws with the current take-down model,
this is perhaps the biggest and one which may become quite the problem. I'm
waiting for the day someone releases a WebTorrent ad with the explicit goal to
overwhelm copyright enforcement. Ten years ago, if you were pirating content
you likely knew. These days it's very possible to be engaged in pirating
without ever knowing.

~~~
cocotino
What kind of person thinks buying some cheap chinese set top box off eBay lets
them watch stuff for free legally?

~~~
adrianN
Anybody who is not a techie.

~~~
ivanhoe
not really, people just willingly choose not to care about it... it's the same
as with any other pirated goods, of course you know it couldn't possibly be
the original, but it's easier to play dumb about it and hope it's a good
deal...

~~~
adrusi
There are large swathes of the population who have no idea what technology is.
They see "box that you plug in to your TV to watch free movies" as a
_technological_ improvement, as in, some kind of breakthrough enabled the free
delivery of movies. They're not likely to think about the economics of it
unless it's pointed out to them. There's probably a decent number of people
who bought this and had no idea it was illegal.

~~~
Aelinsaar
I can offer anecdote in support of this... a lot of anecdote. My mother's
friends discovered that an HDMI cable and their various tablets could let them
stream with these "Cool sites with all of this free stuff!".

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.

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sergiotapia
What is Kodi?

Kodi® (formerly known as XBMC™) is an award-winning free and open source (GPL)
software media center for playing videos, music, pictures, games, and more.
Kodi runs on Linux, OS X, Windows, iOS, and Android, featuring a 10-foot user
interface for use with televisions and remote controls.

\---

Seems like a Plex replacement?

~~~
sandworm101
One question: Can it play standard media files stored on encrypted USB drives?
(ie ext4 or any similar format)

I'd kill for a media player that could. I think such drives are the one place
I'm not fully encrypted.

~~~
Nullabillity
It runs on top of your regular OS (usually Linux for dedicated players), so
yes.

~~~
sandworm101
So if it is running linux then it should be able to mount ext4 drives ... so
long as there is some sort of interface to accept keyboard input. And, of
course, no ridiculous retransmission or caching of said keyboard inputs.

This comes up sometimes in my day job where on occasion I want to play
something on a USB drive (to a projector/scree) but hesitate to save it
unencrypted. ATM I often carry two laptops to accomplish this, but would much
rather travel with one laptop and one tiny media player.

~~~
Nullabillity
Yup. You can run it either standalone (perhaps with an automounting script in
the background, that uses a hardcoded key?) or inside your regular desktop
environment (in which case that probably has a solution for mounting the
drive).

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exDM69
I recently ran into this issue when searching for an android app to watch some
live sports broadcast from a well known (but dodgy) pirate streaming service.

I found dozens of forum posts and blog entries advertising untrustworthy
packages of Kodi bundled with 3rd party binary plugins.

I know not to get involved with them but there are plenty of people who can't
resist the allure of free pirate content and fall into these scam malware
apps.

I feel bad for the Kodi guys :(

~~~
ultramancool
They're (mostly) not scam malware apps. But actual sources of pirated content,
which sometimes have bugs or go offline due to legal issues or network issues.
The Kodi devs just don't want to be taking flak for crappy plugins and pirate
streaming services.

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bluedino
So they aren't killing the plug-ins, they're just not allowing advertising
using the Kodi name.

~~~
benbristow
Makes sense. The plug-ins are probably the main reason anyone uses Kodi.
Certainly one of the reasons I do personally.

It's a good move to move the name 'Kodi' away from piracy though as it's now a
household name just like Napster was.

~~~
michaelbuddy
Kodi is a really good media player for your local home network. It's easier to
access those files than VLC. PLayback is more reliable than say Plex apps. I
dont' really use any of the apps, but spin up kodi to play files on my
network. You can use it to play slideshows of photos too. I wish I used it
more, depended on it because it's so good.

------
sandworm101
>>> If you see somebody selling a box that’s “fully loaded” or comes with the
phrase “Free movies and TV with Kodi,” please, ask them to stop. And let us
know.

This reminds me of when Lady GaGa called on her fans to report piracy of her
album. Copyright law isn't simple. Those fans who submitted false takedowns
thinking they had permission to do so were not helpful. Trademark law is even
more complex. If I were Kodi's legal team I would not ask anyone to enforce my
trademark. Reporting to Kodi is one thing, but "ask them to stop" will result
in false trademark infringement notices by people with no association with
Kodi. You cannot split legal hairs when asking the public for favors. They
will take your words and run with them.

~~~
oddevan
Do note that Kodi said to "ask them to stop." Not "tell the police and YouTube
and get them shut down." That's where the "And let us know" comes in: Kodi
will then presumably write up official C&D letters and all that.

But if someone I follow on Tumblr links to one of these pirate boxes, I'm
going to message them about the shadiness of the whole thing. Not report their
blog or anything major like that, just message them. I think that's all Kodi
is asking us to do.

~~~
sandworm101
And my point was that one shouldn't split such hairs in public statements.
Kodi knows that some people will take this as permission to file complaints.
If those complaints hits legitimate distributors, Kodi might have to backtack,
as did Lady GaGa.

------
ja27
Local Facebook virtual yard sale groups are flooded with ads for these.

~~~
mrbill
Heck, I bought one of the $28 quad-core S905-based Android media player boxes
off Amazon just to see how bad it could be - and it's got Kodi latest
installed with a bunch of these dodgy plugins.

Otherwise, it's pretty amazing for $28, and the plugins can be removed and
Kodi reinstalled from the App Store... We use it here at work to put Pandora
up on the big TV in our work area / conference room.

------
legulere
> Over the past few years it’s become clear that many users have been watching
> pirated content using unofficial and unsupported add-ons that frequently
> break, and they are installing add-on repositories whose trustworthiness is
> questionable, leaving themselves open to numerous security exploits

Sounds like Kodi lacks proper plugin sandboxing.

> So while we don’t love this use of Kodi

What use is kodi if not watching pirated media?

~~~
khedoros
> What use is kodi if not watching pirated media?

Watching non-pirated media, presumably. A lot of people use it as a front-end
to their media libraries.

~~~
tantalor
I had always assumed those media libraries were 99% pirated and maybe 1% free
or public domain. Where exactly are you getting DRM-free, fully licensed,
legitimately purchased content?

~~~
jandrese
Depends how pedantic you're being, but ripping DVDs for personal use doesn't
count as "piracy" in my book.

Since this involves removing the encryption, it is technically a DMCA
violation, but I'd like to see someone bring you to court over it. I'd love
for it to go to the Supreme Court and for them to find the DMCA overreached
when it effectively eliminated time shifting, media shifting, etc...

~~~
chojeen
> Depends how pedantic you're being, but ripping DVDs for personal use doesn't
> count as "piracy" in my book.

Exactly this. I got tired of lugging around my gigantic DVD collection and
having them scratch or break with time. I've since ripped all of them, and
Kodi makes for a fantastic frontend for my HTPC.

