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Amazon Bans Sales of Media Player Boxes That Promote Piracy (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the tough-stand dept.

Amazon is taking a tough stance against vendors who sell fully-loaded Kodi boxes and other "pirate" media players through its platform. From a report: The store now explicitly bans media players that "promote" or "suggest" the facilitation of piracy. Sellers who violate this policy, of which there are still a few around, risk having their inventory destroyed. [...] While Kodi itself is a neutral platform, millions of people use third-party add-ons to turn it into the ultimate pirate machine. In some cases, the pirate add-ons are put onto the devices by vendors, who sell these "fully-loaded" boxes through their own stores or marketplaces such as Amazon. The ecommerce giant appears to be well aware of the controversy, as it recently published an updated policy clarifying that pirate media players are not permitted on the platform. Merely 'suggesting' that devices can be used for infringing purposes is enough to have them delisted.

2 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Isn't that all Kodi? by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Kodi works very well as a media player for media that is on your local network. If you have a collection of DVDs that you've ripped, you can put them on a NAS box and then use Kodi on all your devices to access them. That's my own use case.

    --

    How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
  2. Re:Isn't that all Kodi? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No. I rip copies of all my TV/movie DVD and BD discs and store them on NAS. I also like using the RoosterTeeth addon to binge watch the latest seasons of Red vs. Blue and RWBY before they come out on disc, and I used the YouTube addon to watch at least one of the Presidential debates. If there were an Amazon Prime addon that actually worked, I might be inclined to use that as well. I picked up an nVidia Shield TV explicitly to use with Kodi, streaming my (legally acquired) content from my NAS.

    This is like the arguments the movie companies made when trying to get the VCR banned, but like the VCR, there are many completely legal things you can do with Kodi. See the above paragraph for just a few examples.