Amazon Pulls Kodi Media Player From App Store Over Piracy Claims 122
An anonymous reader writes with news that the Kodi media player (formerly XBMC) has had its app pulled from the Amazon app store after Amazon decided that it facilitates piracy. Amazon said, "Any facilitation of piracy or illegal downloads is not allowed in our program," and directed the development team not to resubmit the app. The team was surprised to hear this, since Kodi itself does not download or link to any infringing content. It does support addons, and some users have created addons to support pirated content, but the Kodi developers are fighting that behavior. XBMC Foundation board member Nathan Betzen said it's absurd that "Amazon won’t let us into their appstore, but they have no problem selling the boxes that are pushing the reason they won’t let us into their app store."
Pronoun Game Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
"selling the boxes that are pushing the reason they won’t let us into their app store"
What does that even mean?
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It makes no sense to me either.
Re:Pronoun Game Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like an issue with anti competitive behavior
Re:Pronoun Game Anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Pronoun Game Anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue is not people customising their own install of Kodi. The issue is custom *hardware* set-top boxes being sold on eBay or Marketplace or whatever, which are explicitly advertised to run Kodi (which is preinstalled) and have the capability of pirating content easily (thanks to the not advertised custom addons).
People think it's Kodi "vanilla" which allows the pirating since they don't realise it's thanks to the custom addons, so the reputation of Kodi suffers.
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Most Kodi video addons permit downloading a stream instead of just watching it. In many countries this is completely legal, for the purpose of format or time shifting. Obviously, the USA is not one of them, and Amazon is primarily a USA-based company.
Amazon is selling set-top boxes with Kodi preinstalled. Just search Amazon for 'Kodi', you will get a load of 'em. The first such result I get is "Matricom G-Box Q Quad/Octo Core XBMC/Kodi Android TV Box" which points out in the description that "Tons of free s
Re:Pronoun Game Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Pirating" meaning "watching TV". Or recording it.
We used to call it a VCR. We could record anything we wanted. And we weren't "pirates", a term that used to mean SELLING copyrighted content, usually in physical form. Which is still done at dealer tables in conventions all over the US, and no one is trying to take those people to prison.
I could repeat my points of the last, oh, sixteen years warning of definition drift and the removal of the right to record something happening on a screen in front of you. But, the liars won and now watching and recording TV is illegal unless the "owners" control your TV and, well, everything else connected to it. Encrypted BIOSes, HDCP, all the crap that has taken over what once was just watching TV and turned it into a worldwide ubercrime, a Prohibition III nightmare that is never going to end.
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I just bought one of those boxes for my wife. The Minix Neo X8. Lovely little thingy. It came pre-installed with all standard addons for normal TV and movies but I didn't have to pay extra. It was provided as a service, free of charge, by the vendor. So yes, people do expect those addons to be there apparently, because the vendors don't do it just because they can. Anyone not pre-installing them is liable to get the box returned as "not working".
I love that little box btw. I actually started watching TV aga
Re:Pronoun Game Anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
they worded it badly but pretty much they are complaining that amazon is selling the fire TV and other media sticks, while banning KODI, which without addons is not any different.
Seems like an issue with anti competitive behavior
Why does the foundation find this "absurd"? Just sounds like business as usual for content/platform lock-in and large companies using their control over a marketplace to remove competition.
Kinda reminds me of how Apple removes apps that "duplicate functionality built into iOS" and then at the same time "adopts" features of the best third-party utilities in new iOS versions.
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Sure can. [apple.com]. Been on the App Store since June of 2012.
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It's not really Chrome. It's a Chrome shell for Webkit.
Apple still does not allow third-party HTML renders.
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It's not really Chrome. It's a Chrome shell for Webkit.
You realize how silly this sounds right? From 2008 until they forked WebKit in 2013, that was exactly what Chrome was. It was a shell around WebKit.
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BZZZZT try again. Chrome used (and still uses) its own JS engine, distinct from the built-in JS support in WebKit. Apple didn't let them do that on iOS; they had to use the JS engine that runs in the WebKit that is used in the webview widget, no exceptions. Until a recent iOS version (8, I believe), that WebKit build didn't even use JIT-compiled JavaScript, so it was always a lot slower than Safari.
The JS engine (including both its performance and its behavior) is a hugely important part of a modern browser
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If you want to play Red Herring, whatever.
What's your excuse for Firefox?
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Chrome doesn't use the Chrome engine, and Firefox doesn't use Gecko.
So you can use their names, but that's about it.
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Amazon allows Plex, even features Plex, and I don't know anybody who doesn't use it for piracy. Plex is basically a forked version of XBMC that you pay money for to get extra features (namely, an auto-transcoding server that doesn't rely on annoying nfs/samba configuration, which I wish XBMC had.)
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To be fair, alternate navigation apps don't duplicate any iOS functionality unless they stuck.
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There are no alternate web browsers for iOS. There are alternate shells around the engine of Safari, and there are remote desktop applications that connect to a browser running on someone else's computer. They cannot enable any HTML5 features that Apple has chosen to leave out of Safari.
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There are alternate shells around the engine of Safari
Nope. They are shells around either UIWebView or WKWebView which are wrappers for the iOS-provided WebKit. They are not Safari.
They cannot enable any HTML5 features that Apple has chosen to leave out of Safari.
Which in no way changes whether something is an alternate browser or not.
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And to add to this UIWebView uses a different JavaScript engine and actually renders pages differently than Mobile Safari does. So, it's quite a silly claim to say that an alternate browser that uses UIWebView (such as Chrome on iOS use) is just a shell around Safari. If it was, you wouldn't see such disparity in both rendering and its JavaScript engine.
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Nope. They are shells around either UIWebView or WKWebView which are wrappers for the iOS-provided WebKit. They are not Safari.
It's pretty funny how there's three replies to this angrily telling him he's wrong while missing the point; he may be wrong, but he's still right about there only being one rendering engine permitted on the system.
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There are alternate shells around the engine of Safari
Nope. They are shells around either UIWebView or WKWebView which are wrappers for the iOS-provided WebKit. They are not Safari.
Then what's the substantial difference between "the iOS-provided WebKit", especially in its WKWebView form, and "the engine of Safari"?
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There are no alternate web browsers for iOS. There are alternate shells around the engine of Safari,
So by this logic, PaleMoon is not an alternate browser since it's merely just an alternate shell around Gecko? And current Opera is also not an alternate browser because it's just Chrome with a different shell, too, right? Please do tell.
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On Windows, things like NetCaptor and Maxthon are wrappers for Trident, the rendering engine used by the included Windows Internet Explorer browser. Pale Moon and Opera are alternate browsers because they're not Trident wrappers.
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Does what the Chrome page says about UIWebView apply equally to WKWebView?
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In the article, before that quote, it said:
For Amazon to ban the app is “absurd” according to the Kodi team, because the company is still allowing vendors to sell boxes that are giving the software this bad reputation."
It's sort of a vague statement, but my guess is that Amazon is still allowing sellers on their marketplace to sell boxes preloaded with Kodi.
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I think the devs complain about media boxes which are sold with a preinstalled version of Kodi modified to facilitate piracy and advertised as running "Kodi". This gives Kodi a bad reputation which likely is the reason the software was rejected. Kodi "vanilla" does not facilitate piracy in any way and they are trying to fight the abuse of their software's name.
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anyone who is using it who can tell me what if anything im missing out on?
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Nothing really. It's not worth it upgrading unless you are building a new box.
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Amazon sells a competing product.
Amazon also sells speciality Android hardware with XBMC preloaded.
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Amazon's reasoning for kodi being a pirate application is due to "there is hardware being sold that bundles software that is used to download illicit software". Where this software is being sold ? Amazon.
So essentially Amazon has no problem for hardware "vendors" selling preinstalled kodi w/ plugins that kodi foundation does not condone or even allow and even is fighting against but they have a beef against having the software itself in their store. Hypocrisy anyone?
Re:Plex (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Plex (Score:5, Informative)
It's hard for a community project that doesn't have any revenue to "play the 'pay me' game". Plex is a commercial product.
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While Plex does indeed have a paid tier, and they do charge for (some) of their apps, it's pretty much a free product. The paid tier gets you some of the newest features and access to the most recently supported platforms, but beyond that, the free product is not crippled in any way. None of that is my point.
Plex and Kodi started from the same project, and although the two products are not 1:1, they're pretty goddamn close. Plex is available in the Fire TV App Store but Kodi is not. Amazon could have be
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I have the strange feeling Plex pays a bunch of shills as well. Every article I ever read about XBMC/Kodi has a bunch of rabid a**holes insisting Plex is better in every way and you should never need to use Kodi, despite the fact that they have completely different strengths and use cases. It may be that a lot of Plex users are just idiots, but there seems to be too many of them and they are far too insistent, either way it puts me off Plex.
It's not just shills that like Plex (Score:2)
Logged in just to comment on this without being taken as a shill. (seriously - check my karma.) In much the same way that CryptoCat’s dev team have realized that usability is a core feature of security, and not a nice-to-have, so too has the Plex team made usability a core feature of their product in ways the XBMC team was late to implement.
Plex’s lack of extensibility, scraper support, and local storage support drive me up a goddamn tree, but Plex works and XBMC doesn’t. I’m not a
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The easiest way to get XBMC^H^H^H^HKodi working is OpenELEC [openelec.tv]. It's pretty much an appliance that just works; the only part that remains slightly tricky (and not by muc
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It's all about money (Score:3)
.
How much money does Amazon get for selling things like Roku?
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Do they, now?
I still haven’t figured out how to do that without Plex. DLNA is a hot mess, and I gave up in frustration trying to find a free, software-only DLNA server. Even if it’s just a demo.
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http://www.universalmediaserve... [universalmediaserver.com]
It's a fork of PS3mediaserver.
Just obey. (Score:1, Insightful)
"piracy-enabling" device? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Media too since you can't pirate something if you don't have it to pirate from.
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But this is about the Kodi APP on Amazon, it apps while you app too!
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But the Kodi app supports apps so you can app your app while you app.
I'm confused (Score:5, Funny)
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The Fire Phone especially - why, it can access the whole World Pirate Web (not to mention the Play Store, that den of software iniquity)!
Piracy claims just a ruse to remove competition (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon have Fire TV [amazon.com], a media hub for you TV. That is exactly what Kodi is, but its free. Sure Kodi is just software, and Fire TV is a hardware and software package, but it is very easy to use Kodi (and Kodi based Linux distro, OpenElec) to turn cheap hardware (like a Raspberry Pi) into a powerful media hub.
It is likely the marketing bods at Amazon have been seeing slow Fire TV sales and also noticed that their own app store is serving up a free alternative. As an app Kodi does add key functionality to Fire TV, but if Fire TV users get used to Kodi then sooner or later they wouldn't need the Fire TV.
They can't just outright state that they are pulling it to promote their own competing product; there would be public outcry. However, a 'facilitating piracy' claim does accomplish this and also damages Kodi's reputation as a result. Look to see Amazon pumping the Fire TV as a piracy free alternative in the very near future.
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I actually have a Raspberry Pi 2 running OpenELEC (Kodi) on another TV accessing my media via NFS mounts. But I also have a fire TV stick and installed the Plex channel to connect to my local Plex Media Server to get access to all that same media. How in the hell is that any different than using Kodi to get to that same media? Will they ban Plex next?
Re:Piracy claims just a ruse to remove competition (Score:4, Interesting)
Lets face it, Kodi on the app store vs Kodi sideloaded is no big difference... A user sophisticated enough to actually run something through XBMC is sophisticated enough to run ADB to sideload apps over the network.
I am just glad the fire stick isn't more locked down than it is. Since I got it for 14 dollars, it is the cheapest possible way to run XBMC on my TV.
Re:Piracy claims just a ruse to remove competition (Score:4, Interesting)
There's FiredTV launcher [github.com], an alternative home/launcher for the FireTV line that shows sideloaded apps.
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Or use the FireTV utility app to install Llama, and have Llama redirect a different App to KODI. The default is to have it redirect the art slideshop app, and you can also replace the graphic with that App so that it uses the Kodi logo.
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At least as an Amazon Prime member I want a FireTV stick with Kodi on it as I want access to all the Prime Instant content (the Kodi addon for this sucks completely) but also access to my local DVR content through Kodi since the FireTV doesn't do DLNA. Plex is the only other alternative and I find the interface sucks and it's really big about pushing their pay channels instead of getting me to my own content.
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Wouldn't a PS3 or PS4 work fairly well for your Amazon Prime and DLNA needs? The caveat being that they cost more than the FireTV Stick, and are seriously overpowered if all you want is a streaming stick.
But then again, if you play games and already have one, you're good to go and don't really need a Chromecast/FireTV/Roku
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Sure... it's "stealing" despite the fact that you never actually "stole" anything and have actually paid for it too.
It's not "piracy". It's a violation of the DMCA.
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You did not buy it. At least that is their claim. You bought the media - the disk. On that disk was content. You licensed the content for a specific use per their terms.
You and I both know this is bullshit and you should be allowed to make a backup or alternative playing format. However, we are not the owners of the copyright and we do not have a say, legally. What would be nice, I think, is having a single time download that can be purchased and the onus is on me to ensure that it remains backed up. This d
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Actually backup is fair use. If the media is sold under the exact same terms but not explicitly protected by CSS or whatever then a backup is perfectly legitimate.
DMCA created a weird world where you can break copyright law without infringing copyright. Circumventing a technology intended to protect against infringement is made illegal even with the copyright is not infringed. Circumventing it just to *play* the content is also illegal.
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I don't think it's considered 'piracy', it's a different crime. The copyright is not infringed (fair use applies), but the circumvention of the protection is a crime on it's own regardless of copyright being infringed in the US.
Side loading? (Score:5, Informative)
Can't you just side-load KODI? I have it installed on my fire-stick and that's how I got it on there. I didn't know it was in their app store.
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I suggest that if you have cabletv now that you use your computer to DVR all the content you can then you have local content to watch
How does that work if the cable box adds DTCP encryption to the digital output?
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You need a cablecard compatible tuner from Ceton, Hauppauge, or HDHomeRun.
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Which DVR applications will work with CableCARD compatible tuners once Microsoft withdraws Windows Media Center from distribution in July? I was under the impression that CableCARD's "compliance and robustness" rules excluded all DVR applications distributed as free software.
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HDHomeRun just did a kickstarter for a new DVR/live app platform that will work with the Prime (though it won't allow restricted content to be recorded). It's my understanding that other than technical glitches almost all providers just leave things on copy freely unless it's a premium channel like HBO.
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almost all providers just leave things on copy freely unless it's a premium channel like HBO.
I've read horror stories on Slashdot about cable providers that put "copy once" on everything but local channels.
You've made me curious (Score:3, Interesting)
What are those plugins that enable piracy?
Re:You've made me curious (Score:4, Informative)
I think they mean plugins like Genesis (http://www.tvaddons.ag/). It's pre-loaded on mine and works great.
If I access Netflix US from Canada (Score:3)
Firetv shouldn't Amazon pull that off their website since I infringing copyrights?
Camera apps (Score:2)
Makes hardware choice easier (Score:3, Interesting)
$commentSubject (Score:5, Funny)
Oh go fuck yourselves. Or better yet, sleep with the MAFIAAs.
They got called out on teh boxez and rightfully so. They all facilitate piracy. The internet facilitates piracy. OH HEY, AMAZON SUPPORTS THE INTERNETS, WELL-KNOWN FOR BEING A MAJOR TOOL OF PEDORISTS AND OR DRUG DEALERS.
Oxygen facilitates piracy. This associative bullshit is for politicians, go fuck yourselves.
Tvs? (Score:2)
Only a speed bump unless you own an Amazon device (Score:2)
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