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ticho writes:

Since 2002, the popular media center software known as XBMC has gone through three namings. First, it was called Xbox Media Player. Upon realizing that it did a bit more than your traditional media player, in 2004 the development team elected to rename it Xbox Media Center. A mere 4 years later in 2008, the team once again elected to rename the software to simply XBMC, given that it had moved on from its original roots on the Xbox. Support for the Xbox was dropped shortly thereafter. Today it's all happening one last time, along with a new release announcement.

Beyond the nonsensical nature of the software's name, there is a secondary issue. Because "XBMC" was originally based on the name "Xbox," the developers of the software (that's us) have never had any sort of legal control over the use of its name, which has resulted in a whole slew of problems.

Phoenix666 writes:

Five people have been arrested, accused of selling set-top boxes modified to stream subscription football matches, television channels and films for free.

The sale of so-called "fully loaded Kodi boxes" has been called a "top priority" by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact).

The five traders were arrested in early morning raids.

Fact said it believed the suspects had made in the region of £250,000 selling the devices online.

Kodi is free software built by volunteers to bring videos, music, games and photographs together in one easy-to-use application.

Some shops sell legal set-top boxes and TV sticks, often called Kodi boxes, preloaded with the software.

The latest battle in the Forever War...

Original Submission

takyon writes:

In an interview with Variety, the Motion Picture Association of America's CEO Chris Dodd spoke out about the growing popularity of Kodi open source media player:

While torrent sites have been a thorn in the side of the MPAA for more than a decade, there's a new kid on the block. Speaking at the Berlin Film Festival, MPAA chief Chris Dodd cited the growing use of the Kodi platform for piracy, describing the problem as the "$64,000 question."

[...] Legal battles over the misuse of the platform are ongoing, mainly in the UK and the Netherlands, where test cases have the ability to clarify the legal position, at least for sellers of so-called "fully loaded" devices. Interestingly, up until now, the MPAA has stayed almost completely quiet, despite a dramatic rise in the use of Kodi for illicit streaming. Yesterday, however, the silence was broken.

In an interview with Variety during the Berlin Film Festival, MPAA chief Chris Dodd described the Kodi-with-addons situation as "new-generation piracy". "The $64,000 question is what can be done about such illegal use of the Kodi platform," Dodd said.

While $64,000 is a tempting offer, responding to that particular question with a working solution will take much more than that. Indeed, one might argue that dealing with it in any meaningful way will be almost impossible.

First of all, Kodi is open source and has been since its inception in 2002. As a result, trying to target the software itself would be like stuffing toothpaste back in a tube. It's out there, it isn't coming back, and pissing off countless developers is extremely ill-advised. Secondly, the people behind Kodi have done absolutely nothing wrong. Their software is entirely legal and if their public statements are to be believed, they're as sick of piracy as the entertainment companies are. The third problem is how Kodi itself works. While to the uninitiated it looks like one platform, a fully-modded 'pirate' Kodi setup can contain many third-party addons, each capable of aggregating content from dozens or even hundreds of sites. Not even the mighty MPAA can shut them all down, and even if it could, more would reappear later. It's the ultimate game of whac-a-mole.

Previously: XBMC Is Getting a New Name: "Kodi"
Middlesbrough Trader Prosecuted for Selling Streaming Boxes Preloaded With Kodi
Five Arrests in 'Fully Loaded' Kodi Streaming Box Raids

[Ed Note: This is the same Chris Dodd who served 30 years as a US Senator from Connecticut. Probably best known for the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Kodi, previously known as XBMC or Xbox Media Center, is being used "fully loaded" with add-ons (such as TVAddons.ag) by millions of households in North America:

New data published by Canadian broadband management company Sandvine reveals that close to 9 percent of all North American households have at least one Kodi device. Roughly two thirds of these actively use pirate add-ons, which is good for millions of families in total.

[...] Sandvine analyzed a dataset from multiple North America tier one fixed-line provider, which covers over 250,000 anonymized households throughout North America. Using this data, it was able to estimate how many households actively use at least one Kodi device. "The Kodi application itself does not generate much data, but it is easy to detect within a household due to its 'heartbeat' traffic which can easily be identified," Sandvine reports.

Overall Sandvine estimates that 8.8% of the households with Internet access across North America have an active Kodi device. This translates to several millions of households and many more potential users. [...] Looking at the various traffic sources for the streaming data, including file-hosts, the company determined that 68.6% of the households with Kodi devices also use unofficial, or "pirate" add-ons.

Meanwhile, UK tabloids are running stories (tall tales?) about Kodi:

You know a technology's gone mainstream when the tabloids start yelling about it. This year the Sun, the Mirror, the Express, and the Daily Star have run splashes ranging from "Kodi Crackdown" through "Kodi Killers" to "Kodi TOTAL BAN!". It's not that they've stumbled on an underground hack scene; the stories have been briefed by copyright owners and law enforcement agencies.

[...] Illicit use of Kodi has reached a point where the UK government's Intellectual Property Office issued a "Call for Views," which closed in April, to find out how law enforcement agencies were dealing with infringing use. They use the term "IPTV," but also refer specifically to Kodi. No conclusions have yet been published, but three basic enforcement approaches are possible: shutting down suppliers of boxes, cutting off illegal streams, and going after end users.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

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

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

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.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

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.

takyon writes:

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"

Original Submission

takyon writes:

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

Original Submission