An anti-piracy alliance supported by many major US and UK movie studios, broadcasters and content providers has dealt a blow to the third-party Kodi add-on scene after it successfully forced a number of popular piracy-linked streaming tools offline. In what appears to be a coordinated crackdown, developers including jsergio123 and The_Alpha, who are responsible for the development and hosting of add-ons like urlresolver, metahandler, Bennu, DeathStreams and Sportie, confirmed that they will no longer maintain their Kodi creations and have immediately shut them down.
[...] The crackdown suggests the MPA/MPAA-led Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has a thorough understanding of how owners of so-called "Kodi boxes" are able to stream TV shows and films illegally. While Colossus merely hosts the tools, urlresolver and metahandler did much of the heavy lifting for streamers. Their job was to scrape video hosting sites for relevant streaming links and serve them up for tools like Covenant inside Kodi. Streamers will find it very difficult to find working video streams of their favorite content without them, but they could reappear via a new host in the future.
Source: Hollywood strikes back against illegal streaming Kodi add-ons
Additional info at TorrentFreak and TVAddons.
Related Stories
The Kodi media player has re-entered the Xbox ecosystem. But can it be "fully loaded"?
The popular Kodi media player software returned to its roots today. The team just announced that Kodi for Xbox One is available worldwide through the Microsoft and Xbox store. This means that the project, which once started as the Xbox Media Player, has come full circle. [...] The roots of Kodi are directly connected to the Xbox, as the first iterations of the project were called the "Xbox Media Player." As time went by XBMP became XBMC, and eventually Kodi. The last name change made sense as the software was no longer being developed for Xbox, but for other devices, running on Linux, Windows, OSX, and Android.
While the broader public was perfectly happy with this, the sentimental few were missing the Xbox connection. For them, and many others, Kodi has a surprise in store today after returning to its roots. "Let us end the year 2017 with a blast including a nostalgic reference to the past," the Kodi team announced. "It has long been asked for by so many and now it finally happened. Kodi for Xbox One is available worldwide through Windows and Xbox Store."
Also at Engadget.
See also: Our 'Kodi Box' Is Legal & Our Users Don't Break the Law, TickBox Tells Hollywood
Previously: XBMC Is Getting a New Name: "Kodi"
Five Arrests in 'Fully Loaded' Kodi Streaming Box Raids
MPAA Chief Focuses Attention on the Kodi Platform
Kodi Panic in the UK and Popularity in North America
Kodi Add-on Library "TVAddons" Disappears After Lawsuit
Hollywood Strikes Back Against Illegal Streaming Kodi Add-Ons
Netflix, Amazon and Hollywood Sue Kodi-Powered Dragon Box Over Piracy
Several major Hollywood studios, Amazon, and Netflix have filed a lawsuit against Dragon Media Inc, branding it a supplier of pirate streaming devices. The companies accuse Dragon of using the Kodi media player in combination with pirate addons to facilitate mass copyright infringement via its Dragon Box device. [...] In recent months these boxes have become the prime target for copyright enforcers, including the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy partnership between Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and more than two dozen other companies.
After suing Tickbox last year a group of key ACE members have now filed a similar lawsuit against Dragon Media Inc, which sells the popular Dragon Box. The complaint, filed at a California federal court, also lists the company's owner Paul Christoforo and reseller Jeff Williams among the defendants.
According to ACE, these type of devices are nothing more than pirate tools, allowing buyers to stream copyright infringing content. That also applies to Dragon Box, they inform the court. "Defendants market and sell 'Dragon Box,' a computer hardware device that Defendants urge their customers to use as a tool for the mass infringement of the copyrighted motion pictures and television shows," the complaint, picked up by HWR, reads.
According to TorrentFreak (TF) entertainment coalitions such as the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) are continuing to threaten developers of Kodi addons:
The MPA, Netflix, Amazon, and dozens of other content companies are ramping up the pressure on a third-party Kodi addon developer. Last year, JSergio123 was warned by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment to cease his activities and sign a confidential settlement agreement. He did not and now he's coming under pressure to comply. But what are ACE's demands?
[...] JSergio123's reluctance to sign an agreement with ACE hasn't gone unnoticed by the anti-piracy group. In a letter dated March 5, 2018 and signed by Kelly Klaus of US-based lawfirm Munger, Tolles & Olson, the developer is reminded of what transpired last year and what is expected of him moving forward.
"I understand that ACE counsel have discussed with you various of your "Addon" software applications and related software and services, including URLResolver (collectively, the "[redacted] Addons") and other actions you have undertaken to induce and contribute to the mass infringement of the ACE members' copyrighted works," Klaus writes. "I also understand that ACE counsel have provided you with a proposed settlement agreement, pursuant to which you would end your infringing activities and provide cooperation and other consideration in exchange for ACE agreeing not to pursue legal action against you arising out of your infringing activities. To date, you have not signed the settlement agreement."
JSergio123's precise reasons for not signing the settlement agreement aren't being made public. However, TorrentFreak understands that some of the terms presented to addon developers last year have caused considerable concern. In some cases they are difficult to meet, not to mention unpalatable to the people involved. They include promises to ensure that specified addons and indeed any developed in the future can no longer infringe copyright. For those that scrape third-party sources, this could prove impossible to absolutely guarantee. This could effectively put developers out of the addon game – legitimate or otherwise – for good. TF is also informed that ACE demanded a high-level of cooperation, including that the developers should supply what amounts to a full confession, detailing all the projects they've been involved in, past and present.
Meanwhile, Dish Network is continuing to pursue a lawsuit against TVAddons and ZemTV.
Related: MPAA Chief Focuses Attention on the Kodi Platform
Kodi Panic in the UK and Popularity in North America
Kodi Add-on Library "TVAddons" Disappears After Lawsuit
Hollywood Strikes Back Against Illegal Streaming Kodi Add-Ons
Kodi Returns to its Roots With an Xbox One Release
Two New Lawsuits Against Makers of "Pirate Streaming Devices"
Google has censored the term "Kodi" from its search engine's autocomplete feature, despite it being completely legal open source software:
Google has banned the term "Kodi" from the autocomplete feature of its search engine. This means that the popular software and related suggestions won't appear unless users type out the full term. Google has previously taken similar measures against "pirate" related terms and confirms that Kodi is targeted because it's "closely associated with copyright infringement."
[...] The company demotes results from domain names for which it receives many DMCA takedown notices, for example, and it has also removed several piracy-related terms from its autocomplete feature. The latter means that when one types "pirate ba" it won't suggest pirate bay. Instead, people see "pirate bays" or "pirate books" as suggestions. Whether that's very effective is up for debate, but it's intentional.
[...] The Kodi team, operated by the XBMC Foundation, is disappointed with the decision and points out that their software does not cross any lines. "We are surprised and disappointed to discover Kodi has been removed from autocomplete, as Kodi is perfectly legal open source software," XBMC Foundation President Nathan Betzen told us.
The Kodi team has been actively trying to distance itself from pirate elements. They enforce their trademark against sellers of pirate boxes and are in good contact with Hollywood's industry group, the MPAA.
Related: MPAA Chief Focuses Attention on the Kodi Platform
Hollywood Strikes Back Against Illegal Streaming Kodi Add-Ons
Kodi Returns to its Roots With an Xbox One Release
Kodi Media Player Addon Developers Under Pressure from ACE, Dish Network
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Entropy on Sunday November 19 2017, @01:13PM (8 children)
Instead of fighting against Netflix(and similar) perhaps they should offer content digitally with reasonable rates. They do everything they can to fight against how people want to actually view content, then whine when piracy is popular. News flash: We're not interested in gathering around the TV at 7PM to watch 30 minutes of commercials and 30 minutes of television program. We're not interested in 7 episode "seasons". Stop sucking, Hollywood.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stretch611 on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:22PM
Why not fight Netflix. It doesn't matter... Win or Lose with Neflix, the media companies win in either case.
The media companies fought tooth and nail against VHS and Betamax... The idea of recording shows to watch later was obviously illegal./s They lost that case and were punished by having VHS (and later DVD) sales start making more money than anything else.
If they win, they lose competition... if they lose, they gain a regular income stream.
Must be nice... you make horrible decisions and make money regardless.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday November 19 2017, @07:09PM (5 children)
This. I've gotten to like the series "The Orville". However, there is no legal way for me to view it, at least, not as far as I can figure out. I'd pay a reasonable per episode fee, but no, not possible. Stupid, but there you are. So I pirate it. I haven't tipped the torrent site, but I likely will when I download the next episode. So my money goes to the real service provider...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @02:49AM (4 children)
Be careful. I live in the U.S. and don't have a TV or antenna, but The Orville is broadcast over the airwaves, so it seems fair to be able to watch each episode once. I haven't torrented OTA TV shows for years, haven't been watching TV shows as much in general, but as a Trek fan, I wanted to see if the show was any good. So I went to TPB and downloaded the first two episodes. They downloaded very quickly, and I was going to watch them later that night.
Less than 60 minutes after the torrents completed, I had voicemails on my cell phone from my cable ISP saying that I had downloaded copyrighted content, with a live human being's voice on the other end.
I was shocked, not so much that the studios' minions are monitoring the torrents, but that their system is so efficient, and that the ISPs (or, at least, some of them) are so integrated with them that within an hour of downloading a torrent, they were calling me on the phone! This, for a show broadcast freely over-the-air.
So, if that's how they want to do things, fine. I deleted the Orville episodes without watching them, and I will not be watching any of that show, ever. They have alienated me as a potential fan. No big loss, can't stand Seth McFarlane anyway.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday November 20 2017, @05:43AM
I guess they will consider success when they find the general public much like me. I was not even aware of Orville.
And do not have much incentive to find out.
I guess I am a model consumer for Hollywood. I do not pirate. Hell, I could probably go to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and only recognize five or six stars out of the whole shebang. Yup, the kind of guy Hollywood would lobby Congress for. I take more interest in a discarded soda can than pirating their stuff.
I spend much more of my time on stuff like posting stuff like this, reading the same kind of stuff that others posted, and actually *being* with friends. I just don't have that much time for Hollywood anymore. They became too much of a pain in the ass with their relentless ads. As far as I am concerned, the whole Hollywood community has become much like a roadway in terrible repair, mottled with so many large potholes that took several minutes each to navigate, that I completely gave up even trying to use that method.
I don't believe Hollywood is going to notice much until they start putting their movie "star" posters up and people ignore them like they would a poster of our 14'th president ( I don't know who that was either! ).
Piracy will be the least of their concerns when the public no longer considers them even worth the time to watch.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday November 20 2017, @09:15AM
I understand, but I'd need a really good antenna to pick up the shows, since I live in Europe. Moreover, downloading here is explicitly accepted (uploaded would be illegal), so leeching a torrent is fine.
The thing I just don't understand is: why doesn't the producer sell rights to the show. Put up their own download links, for a cheap-but-reasonable price, and they'd put the pirates out of business. For all of us outside this US, this is money they are not getting. There's zero loss to them, only gain, for actually selling their products.
As for your experience, I totally understand why you were surprised. As you say, they are teaching the wrong lessons: next time you want to download, you'll use a VPN.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @04:26PM (1 child)
Magnet links, VPN, and encrypt your torrent stream, bro.
(Score: 2) by gottabeme on Tuesday November 21 2017, @05:46AM
TPB only uses magnet links. DHT doesn't stop them from monitoring.
Ditto for encryption. I have unencrypted torrent connections disabled. It's not a MitM attack; they monitor the torrent by acting as a client. I use updated blocklists, but obviously they're not enough.
A VPN is basically the answer, yes. Can you recommend a good one?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by arslan on Monday November 20 2017, @12:55AM
Cause Netflix doesn't have everything?
The no ads bit is definitely a factor, but apart from that I know for a lot of Folks in Asia, having a single place/app to access various programs across different asian (and non-asian) regions is also very handy.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @01:18PM (1 child)
What sites should you use to configure Kodi in November 2017?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday November 20 2017, @01:53AM
I don't think this is about Kodi itself, its about the dozen or so providers of little boxes that are nothing but a Single board computer ( often not eve up to raspberry Pi quality) running Kodi.
Things like http://www.streamsmart.tv/ [streamsmart.tv] just one of the "fully loaded Kodi boxes" that you can buy for exorbitant prices, but usually less than you would pay for basic cable in a year.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Sunday November 19 2017, @01:23PM (3 children)
The sort of problem, is that the optimization of the "capitalistic system" , is that greed is baked in. Every single company has a mantra of "make profit", no matter *what* the PR dept says!
So we live in an age of massively saturated media - essentially since probably 1960, the accumulated movies, tv and music has been produced than could not possible be perceived by a human in a lifetime.
Hence, we have oversupply. By the mechanism of the "free market", the corporations that produce the media "product", introduce artificial scarcity into the market to bump up the prices.
So it may take $100,000,000 to make a movie. But does the company drop the price when they recoup $100,000,001? No.
Hence, this is the artificial scarcity "security blanket" that the $CORPs want.
Netflix and Amazon basically have said "you folks are unreasonable - we'll make our own".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:39PM
Greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and capitalism itself is afflicted. It's out of control in the US, with outrageously high executive pay, financialization, money recognized as "free speech", and public worship of the rich just for being rich almost no matter what crimes and robberies they've committed. That's not democracy, that's plutocracy.
Many others listened to the MAFIAA's ownership propaganda and thought they could apply it to their business, create artificial scarcities and/or engage in rent seeking with intellectual property law and DRM: Microsoft, Big Pharma, Monsanto, Keurig, Lexmark, SCO Unix, tractor manufacturers, academic publishers, and the thousands of patent trolls. But at the least their greed was too blatant, and many got a lot of blowback and had to back down. So there's hope.
#ExxonKnew
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday November 20 2017, @02:16AM (1 child)
That's just break even. Nobody makes any money breaking even.
Your example would have been better if you asked if they drop the price after they recoup $500,000,001.
But in any case, your answer of "NO" is just wrong.
First run Movies are barely finishing their first run ($8.84 average admission [hollywoodreporter.com] price in North America) when it appears on DVD and BlueRay.
Then in rental shops for well under $5, then in Netflix/Amazon essentially for free after the subscription.
The price steadily falls with time. The availability steadily increases over time. So much for artificial shortage.
But many people balk at paying even RedBox's 2 bucks a day rental price.
Then the Kodi Boxes showed up and you have a digital free-for-all.
You're right, there is greed. But its at the opposite end of the transaction from where you claim it is. Your position is that a large group of people should work day and night to provide fresh content to you, but they are only allowed ONE dollar of profit after all the bills are paid, and the loans paid off.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @08:33AM
That's an outdated view.
Nowadays, with cell phones and noisy kids, the time between a movie being shown in the cinema and being available on DVD and streaming is self-induced lost sales. Those who really want to see the movie pirate it because they can't buy it, and the rest just wait and then when the movie comes out on DVD and streaming, it's already an old movie, they've heard all the bad reviews, etc, so they don't bother watching it until they stumble upon it in the discount bin or on a free to air channel.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 19 2017, @03:21PM (4 children)
What a title! How are these add-ons illegal? Just because they could be used for 'nefarious' purposes? Any law declaring such is unconstitutional as it comes in direct conflict with the first amendment, regardless of what our treacherous courts have to say. It would be nice if the media didn't spread falsehoods for copyright thugs.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stretch611 on Sunday November 19 2017, @06:33PM
Unfortunately, to prove your first amendment rights you have to pay for the lawyer and all legal fees to defend them. They are attacking people who are giving their time making add-ons for free.
Against highly paid lawyers for the studios that have deep pockets. Even if you can shore up a defense for an early win, the studios will just make appeal after appeal until you go broke on legal fees. If you can't eat because you are broke and die of starvation, they win.
As for the media spreading their falsehoods... Think of how much money the studios spend on advertising the next movie or dvd release. Who is going to bite the hands that feed them. They risk losing huge amounts of revenue if they criticize the wrong people.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday November 20 2017, @02:22AM (1 child)
Its not the add-on coders that they are going after.
Its the guys that take that add-on, package it up with Kodi on a single board computer and sell it to unsuspecting doofuses that couldn't install a .DEB if their life depended on it. They pocket the money, and leave Joe Opensource Coder with barely enough for a Pizza and a new hard drive.
You want to build a Kodi Box from pieces, parts and packages? Nobody is going to come looking for you.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by stretch611 on Monday November 20 2017, @09:05AM
Originally, they started going against the people making and selling "kodi boxes" with illegal streaming add-ons.
However, the last week or two, they started going after the individual developers.
https://torrentfreak.com/kodi-addon-dev-says-show-force-will-met-defiance-171119/ [torrentfreak.com]
https://torrentfreak.com/ares-kodi-project-calls-it-quits-after-hollywood-cease-desist-171117/ [torrentfreak.com]
https://torrentfreak.com/kodi-developers-quit-following-threats-from-mpa-netflix-amazon-171116/ [torrentfreak.com]
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @09:43AM
No, because they are designed to be used for 'nefarious' purposes. These are not the official plugins, we are talking about plugins that are rejected from the Kodi add-on repository because they have no non-'nefarious' purposes.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bornagainpenguin on Monday November 20 2017, @02:08AM
Instead they try to libel the good name of the Kodi application by tying it to thieves who steal the work of the Kodi developers by pretending to sell a Kodi box that puts off all support to the Kodi developers who have nothing to do with these things and use their voice pieces in the media like this one to create the association that anything to do with Kodi is illegal. Their actions add insult to the injuries already inflicted by the victims of the theft of the Kodi developer's labor who show up at the Kodi forums blasting the developers for selling them a broken box when inevitably the poorly managed streams all break down and their boxes no longer provide them with what they thought they were paying for. It's libelous and compounded foolishness to try to make people believe Kodi has any kind of responsibility here while simultaneously denying them any form of legal streaming to direct the angry mob to.
Kodi will eventually become a household name with or without Big Media, sooner or later some branch of Hollywood will offer an olive branch and allow legal streaming services to exist on the platform and that ease of use and convenience will float their boat on a tide that the entire industry could ride if they hadn't been cursed with such confounded ignorance and unwillingness to accept that technology has moved on from the eighties. There will never be another MASH Finale. The 'Must See TV' and 'TGIF' events are over. This has already begun--anime (which almost always seems to live right on the bleeding edge) has already been offered on Kodi via Crunchyroll addons that subscribers can log into and watch the shows they paid to stream from within Kodi's interface. Other addons are following such as Crackle to name one other are growing in popularity.
Too bad most of Big Media insists on leaving money on the table for the smaller wiser guys to grab at...