Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Pulls Kodi Media Player From App Store Over Piracy Claims
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."
Plex has spent a LOT of money greasing the wheels of the big players. Thats why they have official apps on Xbox one and PS4. Kodi doesnt play the 'pay me ' game.
Good-bye
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.
Amazon have Fire TV, 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.
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.