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TVAddons, one of the leading add-on libraries for the Kodi platform, has disappeared:
TVAddons, the leading library for unofficial Kodi add-ons, has mysteriously disappeared. The site's domain names have become unresponsive after the DNS entries were removed. It's unclear why these drastic actions were taken, but since TVAddons was sued last week, some fear the worst.
Last week we broke the news that third-party Kodi add-on ZemTV and the TVAddons library were being sued in a federal court in Texas. Since then, the 'pirate' Kodi community has been in turmoil. Several popular Kodi addons decided to shut down, and now TVAddons itself appears to be in trouble as well.
TVAddons is one of the largest repositories of Kodi add-ons, many of which allow users to watch pirated content. The site has grown massively in recent years and reported that nearly 40 million unique users connected to the site's servers in March.
[...] Based on the current downtime issues, it's no surprise that people are getting worried. If TVAddons doesn't return, the Kodi-addon community has lost what's arguably its biggest player. The site's extensive library listed 1,500 different add-ons, of which the community-maintained Exodus addon was one of the most popular. Now that the site is no longer available, people may run into issues while updating these.
Previously: Kodi Panic in the UK and Popularity in North America
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @09:55PM (3 children)
This is what happens when you are visible. You become a target they can hit. Everyone needs to get off the 'opennet', today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @12:44AM (1 child)
In fact both seem to have lower content and activity levels than ~2012ish.
Have some new darknets sprung up to replace them?
(Score: 2) by cykros on Saturday June 17 2017, @10:36PM
More like their reputations preceded them as hotbeds of underage porn and other activity that is not only illegal but actually considered undesirable by the majority of people.
Combine that with the various successful attacks on them (okay, they're attacks on browsers to make them leak, but how many people get the difference?) along with some of the Snowden revelations pointing out to those who were paying attention how limited the darknets could actually be, and frankly interest largely fell off. Besides, when people are getting away with live streaming murders on FACEBOOK, you start to feel silly when you're routing your encrypted traffic all over the world so that you can infringe on copyrights (very slowly, I might add).
(Score: 2) by cykros on Saturday June 17 2017, @10:18PM
At best the solution using darknets would be to incorporate darknet functionality into Kodi for acquiring plugins while actually using those plugins over the clearnet. Considering the Kodi team doesn't particularly approve of piracy oriented plugins, don't expect this to be streamlined any time soon. And while it's probably POSSIBLE to do this all without any major changes, remember that Kodi plugins as a piracy method are popular not because they do anything new, but because they make it painfully convenient and easy. Take that out of the equation and most of the allure evaporates as the userbase goes back to Netflix or BitTorrent.
Meanwhile, it should go without saying that actually trying to stream the content these plugins provide over darknets is absolutely the height of folly. You're lucky if some of the sources can maintain a stream even on a direct cable connection let alone after bouncing it around the globe a few times.