The Piracy Box Sellers and YouTube Promoters Are Killing Kodi | Hacker News Reader

The Piracy Box Sellers and YouTube Promoters Are Killing Kodi

kodi.tv

143 pointsftclausen59 comments

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.

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

This is incredible. Any other emails you remember?

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.

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

Anybody who is not a techie.

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...

I can go into a shop and buy a TV and watch TV for free, legally. Why shouldn't I assume that this other box that allows me to watch things is equally legal?

On the other side of things - why should you assume that this other box, which you can only get from a super sketchy online dealer and which gives you something for nothing that you're accustomed to having to pay for, is legit?

Because "is legit" is the default for stuff you buy out in the open. People naturally (and mostly correctly) assume that if you don't have to know a guy who knows a guy and you're not paying in unmarked bills with nonsequential serial numbers, it's legitimate.

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?

It's even worse than that. There's literally signs on my street now advertising for a local company that sells Android sticks with Kodi preloaded and a bunch of piracy channels.

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.

Wow. I had the idea this was mostly a thing you'd find in the sketchier corners of eBay, and that at least to some extent you'd have to go looking for. But that's not so, which rather cuts my argument off at the knees.

I thought the same thing initially. I started writing something about Amazon Marketplace sellers, then had a "wait a minute..." thought and tried searching for "kodi." I was quite surprised!

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.

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.

Or anybody who thinks purchase of the hardware alone entitles them to the content advertised. Who hasn't heard, "Where's Word and Excel on my new laptop?" (not 1:1 but close enough)

To be fair, buying an antenna entitles you to any broadcasts you can pick up with it. And to a lot of people, that's "TV."

I'm somewhat technical, and I find it difficult at times.

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.

Some of these "pirate boxes" have a google logo on them (chrom ebox) and it makes non-techies think that it is legit.

These boxes are advertised all over the place, Kijiji, facebook, hell there is a advertisement in my elevator for one.

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?

You mean like a Chromecast?

How is a Chromecast a valid response? It's the wireless equivalent of an HDMI cable.

You need access to a service on your phone/tablet/computer to push it to the Chromecast.

Well, a bit. You control the playback with your phone, but the Chromecast gets the video from YouTube or Hulu etc. directly. Maybe a $50 Roku stick is a more direct comparison.

In many cases, yes. But it also mirrors tabs and it's how I watch Amazon Prime video on my TV since they don't offer Chromecast support (since they sell a competing device).

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.

You'd be surprised.

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].

[0]: http://indianapolis.craigslist.org/ele/5655216394.html

I think most if not all Kodi add-ons are for streaming services. There's no p2p pool to gather IP addresses from, so infringement notices don't get spammed out like with torrents.

Certain Live TV addons such as Plexus are based on peer-to-peer BitTorrent technology, which allows for greater scalability.

Probably none since most Kodi add-ons work by direct downloading from file sharing sites, so the end user isn't sharing any content.

Generally the add-ons are for streaming websites, which are generally the target of the infringement issues here (not to say the user isn't breaking the law, they just aren't likely to get in trouble over it)

This is also the source of he issues here. The Kodi team is blamed when these illegal sites are taken down.

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?

Plex began as a fork of XBMC/Kodi.

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.

It's just the media player. It would be up to the OS and filesystem drivers to handle the decryption.

http://kodi.wiki/view/Features_and_supported_formats#Format_...

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

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.

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).

I'd recommend Plex instead. It's effectively a simpler, more polished version of KODI.

(IMO)

XBMC used to mean Xbox Media Center, and it targeted original Xbox hardware. It branched out to run on other machines and eventually dropped compatibility for original XB hardware. So it's a much older project.

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 :(

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.

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

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.

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.

>>> 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

> 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?

> 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.

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?

DVDs?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/its-still-illegal...

Not everyone pirates. I can't say for sure, but I believe Kodi has addons for legitimate streaming services. Also, some people take pride in their physical collections.

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...

> 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.

It's trivial with music, and I don't think that DMCA violations count as "piracy" as such. The biggest argument ethical argument against piracy is the theft of someone else's work. If I've paid for it, that's a solved problem, as far as I'm concerned.

And anyhow, I don't have any appropriately-licensed media playback software on my machines. If I want to play something back on something besides a dedicated hardware player, then I'm already violating the same sets of anti-circumvention laws.

What use is kodi if not watching pirated media?

I use kodi to watch my own home movies.

While I don't use Kodi, I'll download videos like the ones from WWDC so I can play them back as many times as I want without worrying about the plays counting towards my bandwidth cap. In my case, I've added them to iTunes (and Plex).

If my PS3 didn't have a Twitch app, I'd probably use Plex to stream it.

On my Apple TV, I regularly use the YouTube and Netflix apps, I occasionally use the Vimeo app all legal content. On my PS3 I have CinemaNow for those digital Ultraviolet copies of films. So, there's a lot of legal content. Granted, I'm sure a lot of illegal content is there too.

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