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

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.

Comments

Easy circumvention

[Orgasmatron]

Just change all of the listings slightly. "Perfect for piracy" becomes "Perfect for not piracy". "Never pay for cable again" becomes "Never not not pay for not cable again"

Seriously though, the Kodi developers despise these guys, and I think have been actively seeking to get amazon, ebay, etc to crack down. The scammers make big promises and tell the customers to post on the developer mailing list or forums for support, even though the end user almost never has problems with Kodi, but with some third party add-ons or websites.

Isn't that all Kodi?

[kamapuaa]

If they looked that far into it, why would anybody want a Kodi box at all, except for piracy? That's really the only reason to get one, whether they say "this is great for piracy!" or not.

Re:Isn't that all Kodi?

[T.E.D.]

If they looked that far into it, why would anybody want a Kodi box at all, except for piracy? That's really the only reason to get one, whether they say "this is great for piracy!" or not.

There aren't a lot of mainstream streaming devices for cord-cutters that also act as a DVR. As a Roku user, that's the first thing that strikes me about it.

Re:Isn't that all Kodi?

[DaHat]

Jack Valenti? Is that you? Probably not... he's been dead for 10 years, but the argument is the same... though about VHS tapes in the home 30 years ago.

Re:Isn't that all Kodi?

[aardvarkjoe]

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.

Re:Isn't that all Kodi?

[w1zz4]

In many country it is perfectly legal to rip you own DVD/Blu-Ray or remove DRM from a file you purchased legally.

Re:Isn't that all Kodi?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Isn't that all Kodi?

[0bject]

Kodi has MythTv plugin that allows it to work as a fantastic MythTv frontend. Can play all your over-the-air DVR'd shows. Also DVDs/BluRays and their players with young kids don't mix. Its easier to rip the movies to a file server on the network and play the movies from kodi then have a 3 year old scale furniture with a disk in his mouth trying to put it in the player.

Re: Isn't that all Kodi?

[Opportunist]

Depends entirely on your country whether circumvention of anti-ripping technology is legal.

Re:Isn't that all Kodi?

[Highdude702]

I used to download bootleg movies and shit when i was younger. but nothing hollywood produces even comes close to interesting me anymore. so dont even watch tv/movies. I listen to a bit of music but free pandora subscription is plenty for me. With what hollywood has turned into. we could only hope for their demise anyways.

I run Kodi on my Amazon Fire Stick

[netsavior]

I side-loaded Kodi on my amazon fire stick... and I use an Alexa skills hack to play movies on my TV with voice control.

Maybe they should limit sales of the Echo dot and fire stick?

Is this just removing stuff like Popcorn Time?

[rsilvergun]

what was scary about Popcorn Time was that it's interface was so slick I knew folks who had it and didn't even know what bit torrent was or that they were pirating content. Remember, high speed internet is around $80-$100/mo in most places. That's 10-15x the ISP's cost (based on SEC filings from Comcast). For that kind of money folks don't necessarily realize that they're just getting a data communication line and nothing else...

oh the irony

[liquid_schwartz]

Amazon pirates things every day by going to suppliers of the original and knocking it off with Amazon Basics. That Amazon, distributor of many a fake / counterfeit piece of merchandise, is cracking down on others for piracy is definitely the pot calling the kettle black.

Citations: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/08... https://qz.com/738620/birkenst...

Re:Well, duh

[BancBoy]

You wouldn't download a child!

Mod parent up

[gwolf]

Now, if we had an all-set Kodi box that used Tor by default...