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DRM Piracy Entertainment

The Kodi Development Team Wants To Be Legitimate and Bring DRM To the Platform. (torrentfreak.com) 156

Posted by msmash from the not-giving-up dept.
New submitter pecosdave writes: The XBMC/ Kodi development team has taken a lot of heat over the years, mostly due to third-party developers introducing piracy plugins to the platform. In many cases, cheap Android computers are often sold with these plugins pre-installed with the Kodi or XBMC name attached to them -- something that caused Amazon to ban sales of such devices. The Kodi team is not happy about this, and has taken the fight to the sellers. The Kodi team is now trying to work with rights holders to introduce DRM and legitimate plugins to the platform. Is this the first step towards creating a true one-stop do it yourself Linux entertainment system?
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The Kodi Development Team Wants To Be Legitimate and Bring DRM To the Platform. More

The Kodi Development Team Wants To Be Legitimate and Bring DRM To the Platform.

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  • DIY? No, more like DOA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HumanWiki ( 4493803 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @02:22PM (#54216383)

    There's a reason many people used this platform (right or wrong) and they're removing that reason. Now, they'll just be yet another media player that's locked in with DRM in a giant pool of pre-existing systems.

    • Re:DIY? No, more like DOA (Score:4)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @03:01PM (#54216807)

      There's a reason many people used this platform (right or wrong) and they're removing that reason.

      You have an altruistic view of why people use that platform. More likely:
      1. They bought a box with it pre-installed.
      2. They installed it because of the incredible amount of pre-made hardware specifically made for Kodi pre-installed.
      3. They use it because it's incredibly well polished, far more so than many other media centres.
      4. They use it because it is incredibly expandable with a rich plugin scene and theming.
      5. They use it because it plays almost everything (with a bit of DRM that will resolve the last problem as well)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vlad30 ( 44644 )
        Actually I bought one of these Kodi boxes as it also supported Netflix and a number of other streaming services most of which have some form of DRM. Kodi was a nice surprise never used it before even supports h265. so this is just BS from Amazon. Amazon also banned AppleTV and Google Chromecast essentially they are being anti-competitve and are abusing there position in the market

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by vlad30 ( 44644 )
          Also forgot to add didn't buy from amazon but from another etailer that was far kinder to my credit card
        • The ironic part, is that I own 3 Amazon FireTV's with Kodi installed on them. In fact, that was the #1 reason I bought the FireTV's at all, was not for Prime Video, nor for Netflix (or name your app store app)... But because it runs Kodi rather well for a $40 stick or $100 box. (even less if you wait until Amazon puts them on sale).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by WallyL ( 4154209 )

      But it's plugins, I assume. Just don't use those plugins. The beauty of open-source: Learn what you're doing, and then you can use just the parts that you want!

    • I'm one of the people who uses Kodi religiously without piracy add-ons. I buy my own content, both music and movies, and use it. I even have a hacked Gen 1 Apple TV to play those things remotely. It's annoying to have to start up the PS3 in the living room or the Wii in the bedroom for Netflix, Hulu and Amazon content, especially since there used to be a working Amazon plugin.

      No, some of us just want to be legal and convenient at the same time.

    • You didn't read the article, did you.

      They don't want to remove anything, just add options for users to stream content legally:

      "âoeOur view on this is that [removing code] would not help a bit, because the code is open-source and others can easily revert it. Blocking add-ons wonâ(TM)t help since they would instantly change the addon and the block would be in vain,â Kaijser tells us.

      The Kodi team feels that pirates are leeching off their infrastructure and put the entire community at risk. But,

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rikkards ( 98006 )

        This will probably be their undoing. They don't understand that the pointyhaired bosses that they are trying to woo are not going to stand to have their products support a system that open because it is a gateway to the illegal stuff.

        Sure Joe Public may buy a Kodi box to get legit access but shortly after they will discover Genesis and its ilk and get everything for free.

        That's how they think

        • Yes, I too fear that the PHBs won't understand that they need to make their products at least as accessible as the "free" competition, but it does seem the Kodi team is trying to convince them.

          One would have hoped that the success of accessible audio streaming might have convinced them that making video streaming more accessible would result in more money from happier customers ...

        • Actually Genesis was shut down quite a while ago (over a year ago or more). The creator moved on and released Exodus, which is "almost" the same but doesn't support Library integration functions (crippled it).

          A couple Genesis forks came out, but the new people trying to maintain those forks have not been able to keep it working as reliable as the original creator and so they haven't been able to get the traction that the original had.

  • The Beauty of Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ausekilis ( 1513635 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @02:26PM (#54216435)

    When these guys start doing something people hate, someone will fork and make it good again. Just look at Apache->MariaDB or OpenOffice->LibreOffice.

    • Error.....Mysql->MariaDB

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Apache->MariaDB

      That's one hell of a fork.

      • Re:The Beauty of Open Source (Score:4, Funny)

        by Junta ( 36770 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @03:08PM (#54216865)

        Yes a group of people got tired of apache stubbornly supporting only http and not SQL. They recognized that http isn't needed by anyone and so they forked it. Strangely, after all their hard work the code looked a lot more like MySQL than it did Apache, and perhaps it would have been easier to fork MySQL than it would have been to do Apache, but here we are.

    • You mean like XBMC -> OSXBMC -> Plex.

  • Make DRM work with my CableCard.... (Score:3)

    by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @02:28PM (#54216453)

    PLEASE!

    I am sooo tired of running windows 7 and Media Center just so I can watch and record protected content... Soon I won't be able to do even that, once M$ stops supporting Win 7...

    • Re:Make DRM work with my CableCard.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by silas_moeckel ( 234313 ) <silas&dsminc-corp,com> on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @02:39PM (#54216571) Homepage

      Stop supporting people that refuse to let you do what you could legally do back in the days of VCR's.

      • Tell me about it. Today I Learned of a Slashdot user who still hasn't cut the cord. I thought protected cable card had gone the way of the floppy discs.

        • I tried going back. one of those if you bundle it's cheaper than just internet deals. HDHomeRun outside some tests never used it. Sure it could DVR a show but then I needed to spend CPU/GPU time and associated electricity to remove commercials and reencode it. Before a decently beefy system could do all that I had a nice copy from usenet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )

      First Plex cant record.
      Second, dont hold your breath. There is a reason that windows 10 does not have media center
      Third, just get a freaking Tivo. anything that will allow recording protected content will not allow access to unprotected. so just get a Tivo.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SeaFox ( 739806 )

        First Plex cant record.

        Who said anything about Plex?

        Also, even if Plex can't record, doesn't mean you can't use Plex to enjoy recorded shows.
        Plex isn't a torrent client either, but that doesn't stop me from having my torrent client use a folder that Plex has in one of its libraries, so it automatically updates with the listings/metadata of the files the torrent client has independently downloaded.

        You could do something similar with a PVR app. All it has to do is name the recordings to reflect the show name and season/episode numb

        • Except Plex can do recorded TV. Its a bit limited in the devices it currently supports though. Personally speaking being in the UK there are very good catchup options for almost all channels that I would care about. So unless I want to keep the program for some reason and its not on the BBC (get_iplayer does if it is not a film and even then some are on iplayer) then recording TV is not much used, but my Plex server has tvheadend on for good measure. The main thing I have recorded is "Blaze and the monster

      • just get a Tivo.

        Which is the fall back plan of last resort. Have you priced a HD Tivo with two HD playback units? The upfront price hurts and then there is the monthly fees.

        Yes, I'm cheep.... My system is a home brewed Media server (windows 7 & 3 TB of disk space) a HD Home Run network tuner and 3 Xbox 360's... Works great... For now....

        • I could deal with the upfront cost and even the fees, its the ADS IN THE INTERFACE that makes refuse to even entertain Tivo.

  • Official Plugins for Commercial Services. (Score:3)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @02:32PM (#54216495)

    That would be great.
    But anything that is going to restrict the usage of other features/media, that's not going to work.

  • Please respect us (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @02:39PM (#54216573)
    This seems to happen whenever an OSS project goes mainstream and someone decides they want to be "respected" by the evil jerks who created the situation that led to the OSS project being created in the first place. If they create addons with DRM they will have to be binary only and separate from KODI itself since KODI is GPL2. [github.com] That said KODI even points you to forks [kodi.wiki] should you dislike their new direction

    • Re:Please respect us (Score:4, Interesting)

      by CanEHdian ( 1098955 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @04:21PM (#54217541)
      The problem is when "legitimate" devices can only run Kodi add-ons that have been signed by the MPA(A)/local chapter. And yes, that means the ones that don't have that "feature" are therefore automatically in the "illegitimate" category. Because the only reason you'd want one of those is "because of piracy". And that makes the circle round again.

    • Wow I am really surprised that XBMC4Xbox is still going strong. My xbox failed awhile ago and is too old to handle these new video formats anyways.
      But even more surprising apparently most of the developers for openelec left for libreelec awhile ago. I do not know if Open caught up eventually, but apparently Libre is far from a minor offshoot.

    • This seems to happen whenever an OSS project goes mainstream and someone decides they want to be "respected" by the evil jerks who created the situation that led to the OSS project being created in the first place.

      I think what you meant is that the devs get tired of toiling in poverty. They are (rightly) discovering that to get paid for their work they need to have some semblance of legitimacy. What have they got to lose?

      • I say what I mean. Anyone who goes into an OSS project expecting to get paid is a fool. XBMC was a cool project to make an outdated console a useful tool again. Nobody expected it to morph into the extraordinary Swiss Army Knife media center it has become. But it couldn't have done that without skirting the **IA's regs and making it useful to a wide range of interests. Now they want to add some of the tools of the industry that shunned them. As long as they don't remove the features that their users demand
    • And the media companies then label the DRM crippled Kodi as "legitimate" and the forks as "piracy tools" so the "legitimate" Kodi will be in app stores and readily available on your devices while the piracy tools will be blocked if not directly attacked.

      They tried blocking Kodi on systems like FireTV but the platform is too popular. This is a great way to divide and conquer the user base.

  • Plex wont... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @02:45PM (#54216619) Homepage

    Plex has overtaken them hard and they are desperately trying to catch up with the popularity of the rogue fork from years ago.

    • This is likely the most accurate answer. Even though I don't use Plex because it isn't open source, it is clearly better functionality.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Altrag ( 195300 )

      My guess is more along the lines of "our lawyers received a scary letter from the MPAA saying they will sue us for $gazillions and tie us up in court for so long that we'll be broke even if we win."

    • Plex has issues too (which in no way vindicates Kodi, more a state of this application space).

      Everyone I know running Plex is having audio stuttering issues and has been for months. Different clients, different servers, different underlying OS, different homes entirely, and different content all exhibiting the same audio (but not video) stuttering. In the past this would have likely been fixable by adjusting cache/buffering options but the interface has been crippled in the last year on most platforms remov

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 )

        Everyone I know is not having those problems. One friend has 4 cloud servers in a Germany hosting service with 22TB of video on it with well over 40 clients using it daily.

        Sounds like your friends are using low grade server hardware and low end players as well as low grade networks. ATV4/Nvidia Shield are the only two playback devices worth using plex on right now for TV sets. The Roku's are so horribly underpowered they have always been a problem. Ipads and decent android tablets all work very nic

        • "ATV4/Nvidia Shield are the only two playback devices worth using plex on right now for TV sets."

          Which constitutes a broken condition for Plex given that no other streaming provider requires that level of overkill and Plex didn't either a year ago with the same content. The FireTV has no issues with 4k content that looks just fine blown up to 120" from Amazon/Netflix/Vudu (really, the only issue with these services is audio and missing content of course). Perhaps tuning for these overpowered devices resulti

  • Rolling further downhill (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SmaryJerry ( 2759091 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @02:46PM (#54216633)
    Over the last few years Kodi removed karaoke, choose a worse default skin and menu layout with worse customizability and worse loading icon, and created issues with virtually every add on with their updates and now they want to drm it? Gotta say Kodi is going way way downhill. I want a simple media player. This isn't a game breaking change on its own but it could be the last straw of many poor decisions that kills it. What are the other options now?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Altrag ( 195300 )

      Pfft. Removing features and making things harder to use has been the definition of "new and improved" in computers basically since the internet got popular and "lowest common denominator" became the target demographic of choice for basically all programs and websites. Can't really blame Kodi for following the trend (though of course it would have been nice if they'd bucked it instead..)

  • I've tried Kodi before (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kingramon0 ( 411815 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @02:55PM (#54216735) Homepage

    All the content I need is on a computer connected to my TV over HDMI. I don't need kodi for myself, but when my mom is babysitting my 2-year-old, I would like something with an easy menu interface that I can program content from multiple sources on. So whether my daughter wants to watch a show on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, or a mp4 video file on the hard drive, my mom shouldn't have to know or care what the source of the content is.

    Hopefully, Kodi can get to that point someday, but without official support from those streaming providers, it will never get there. Maybe this is a step in the right direction.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fred911 ( 83970 )

      Why isn't that obtainable for you today? If you create bookmarks, users don't have to know the location of the source. I've never used the Netflix plugin, there's one that functions and there are Hulu, Amazon and YouTube plugins that function perfectly. Kodi has a pretty simple front end and allows for a significant amount of tinkering on the back end.

      By creating a user account for Mom with items bookmarked for your daughter (or whoever), you'll make an dead-end users interface that is pretty and easy. Sho

      • Maybe I'll give it another try, but last time I played with it none of those plugins worked for me, and the interface was not simple enough. I want to give her a remote that only has arrow buttons, enter, and back.

    • Plex is the better path. I highly recommend following the naming guide for your content since it will make your life easier long term. If you have a lot of existing content that can be a pain but it is easy to maintain (especially if you use downloaders with automatic renaming).

      Plex automatically builds a rich metadata database for your content so mom and you can enjoy posters, ratings, a summary of what the show is about, sort by directors, year of release, whether you've watched it before, etc. It also ha

  • I have no qualms about DRM for things like Netlix, where I'm explicitly paying to 'rent' and suffering the ill effects of content coming and going just enough to frustrate me.

    I have serious qualms that any 'digital' download to 'own' is DRM encumbered and will break if the vendor goes away or I look at things funny.

    I had such high hopes when digital music drm went the way of the dodo, but ebooks and videos are still infested.

    Of course, I am dealing with DRM still with media based purchases, but at least it

  • Napster Approach (Score:5, Funny)

    by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @03:20PM (#54216993)
    worked great, Napster became the most dominant platform for legitimate music downloads.

    • worked great, Napster became the most dominant platform for legitimate music downloads.

      Yes, yes, haha, Napster didn't own the market...but I submit that this was primarily because of colossally bad timing more than anything else.
      Napster 'went legit' in 2003. In 2003, 802.11b was new, exciting, and expensive, and iPod/iTunes had just come to the PC. The RIAA was still trying to figure out how to combat Kazaa, Windows 2000 was still the preferred version of Windows because 'XP' stood for 'Xtra Problems', an 80GB hard disk was like 8TB now, and cellular data was billed per-minute and ran at 28.8

  • Not so much that they get associated with "piracy", but by being associated with DRM.

  • The Year of the Linux Entertainment System(tm).

  • They could of been more open source and Linux friendly, but thought that was stupid. Piracy via open source projects like Kodi add-ons is their fault. Is there an official add-on for these platforms on Kodi? Nope. When did Firefox start supporting those services for Linux? A few months go. Chrome is a bullshit option because they killed 32-bit almost two years ago and it's riddled with Google spyware. Chromium with Widevine works, but add-ons for Chrome anything sucks. Most web sites these days are slow as
    • And for the love of God, don't give me that they run Linux servers and htop nonsense. I know. -_- Cloud computing will be the death of desktop open source software.
    • With the notable exception of Amazon who wants to lock down their platform this is only a partially fair criticism. In order to get content from content producers streaming companies like Netflix and Hulu had to integrate DRM which limited their options.

      Loading in a browser is kind of a fringe case now anyway. Almost all of these platforms support embedded linux in the form of Android which is the puzzling thing... the only thing this gets you is access to the content within the Kodi app... anyone running K
  • Right now I run Kodi on an RPi2 Model B+. It's connected to my external hard drive, which stores all my movies and music, and HDMI out to my 40in LED. I'm already considering ditching this setup in favor of an Odroid-XU4 w/Ubuntu, since I just need something to basically run VLC....DRM will make me switch even faster.
    • I guess I don't understand the appeal vs a nice polished FireTV box which you can load Kodi on. Yeah it's 30 bucks more but the hours saved will more than make up the difference.
      • Hardware and software configuration/experimentation is part of the benefit, not a cost. It's the whole reason I even own RPis or Odroids. I have engineers in Vietnam building an open-source hardware device for me, and I had originally intended to use the Odroid-XU4 as a basis.
        • Fair enough. I have all sorts of DIY and hacked gear sitting around in finished/in progress/and never going to be finished projects for similar purposes.

          For myself I've just found that anything my wife is going to have to use is a poor choice for that type of project because I can't tinker with it or she'll get unhappy about any downtime. A portion of my tech is essentially treated as a production environment as a consequence.

  • As long as they (KODI) utterly refuse to stop playing non-DRM content, this is a no-lose scenario.

    The instant the DRM crowd try to insist on policing the non-DRM content, KODI should walk, or fork.

  • It's forkin' time!

  • My kingdom for a supported, reliable Netflix add-on.

  • Legitimate, or DRM-encumbered? Can't have both.

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