Slashdot Mirror
The Kodi Development Team Wants To Be Legitimate and Bring DRM To the Platform. (torrentfreak.com)
New submitter pecosdave writes: The XBMC/ Kodi development team has taken a lot of heat over the years, mostly due to third-party developers introducing piracy plugins to the platform. In many cases, cheap Android computers are often sold with these plugins pre-installed with the Kodi or XBMC name attached to them -- something that caused Amazon to ban sales of such devices. The Kodi team is not happy about this, and has taken the fight to the sellers. The Kodi team is now trying to work with rights holders to introduce DRM and legitimate plugins to the platform. Is this the first step towards creating a true one-stop do it yourself Linux entertainment system?
There's a reason many people used this platform (right or wrong) and they're removing that reason. Now, they'll just be yet another media player that's locked in with DRM in a giant pool of pre-existing systems.
When these guys start doing something people hate, someone will fork and make it good again. Just look at Apache->MariaDB or OpenOffice->LibreOffice.
PLEASE!
I am sooo tired of running windows 7 and Media Center just so I can watch and record protected content... Soon I won't be able to do even that, once M$ stops supporting Win 7...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That would be great.
But anything that is going to restrict the usage of other features/media, that's not going to work.
This seems to happen whenever an OSS project goes mainstream and someone decides they want to be "respected" by the evil jerks who created the situation that led to the OSS project being created in the first place. If they create addons with DRM they will have to be binary only and separate from KODI itself since KODI is GPL2. That said KODI even points you to forks should you dislike their new direction
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Plex has overtaken them hard and they are desperately trying to catch up with the popularity of the rogue fork from years ago.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Over the last few years Kodi removed karaoke, choose a worse default skin and menu layout with worse customizability and worse loading icon, and created issues with virtually every add on with their updates and now they want to drm it? Gotta say Kodi is going way way downhill. I want a simple media player. This isn't a game breaking change on its own but it could be the last straw of many poor decisions that kills it. What are the other options now?
Because free market a lie, it is not about what the consumer wants, it is about what the corporate overlords force him to want, either via education or via threatening.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
All the content I need is on a computer connected to my TV over HDMI. I don't need kodi for myself, but when my mom is babysitting my 2-year-old, I would like something with an easy menu interface that I can program content from multiple sources on. So whether my daughter wants to watch a show on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, or a mp4 video file on the hard drive, my mom shouldn't have to know or care what the source of the content is.
Hopefully, Kodi can get to that point someday, but without official support from those streaming providers, it will never get there. Maybe this is a step in the right direction.
I have no qualms about DRM for things like Netlix, where I'm explicitly paying to 'rent' and suffering the ill effects of content coming and going just enough to frustrate me.
I have serious qualms that any 'digital' download to 'own' is DRM encumbered and will break if the vendor goes away or I look at things funny.
I had such high hopes when digital music drm went the way of the dodo, but ebooks and videos are still infested.
Of course, I am dealing with DRM still with media based purchases, but at least it is fully offline and not subject to the fortunes and whims of whatever business I bought it from.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Because Kodi has an infinitely better interface from the couch than any of the websites.
Even if a particular website's interface somehow caters to the 'from the couch' usage, an application like Kodi provides an infinitely better interface for changing between providers, when the content is provider based, as well as enforcing some semblence of consistency across the board (if you use amazon prime, netflix, youtube, and crunchyroll, each has their own precious snowflake interface for navigation and playback control).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
worked great, Napster became the most dominant platform for legitimate music downloads.
I keep my Kodi install media just for this reason. I have OpenElec/Kodi 5.95 install media if you want an image of it. Runs rock solid on my intel NUC.
Good-bye
YouTube at least works well enough on Kodi using the Chrome Launcher add-in to run Chrome in kiosk mode. The interface seems to work logically enough with my Harmony remote. It isn't perfect, but close enough it doesn't bother me. Maybe it's just close enough to my configuration with my Kodi skin (forget which one, I'm at work right now) that while it might be a touch off, it's not enough to bother me. The two issues I have are that occasionally Chrome just decides that it wants to somehow lose part of its cache or my cookies, so while it'll say I'm signed into my YouTube account, all of a sudden it'll show my subscriptions but not playlists. That's only happened once or twice in the past year, year and a half I've had it set up (I think that's the right timeframe) and I fixed it by just manually launching chrome, clearing cache, and re-signing in. The other little nuisance is that when I hit exit to close out of it, instead of bringing it back to home (which is where I have the shortcut set) it drops me into the add-ins menu and I have to manually return to home.
youtube has it's own plugin that doesn't use a browser, and I use that. The second that kodi launches a browser, it loses pretty much all of it's appeal for me.
Though I will admit their player is crap at dealing with seeking particularly with streaming content or corrupted DVR recordings. If they fixed that I would be wholly ecstatic with my Kodi setup.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Not so much that they get associated with "piracy", but by being associated with DRM.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
When I was looking at adding YouTube, I kept seeing people talking about the plugin having problems. Did they actually fix that? That's the reason I went for the solution I did since it'd get what I wanted, even if it wasn't the ideal setup.
...Forked.
The Year of the Linux Entertainment System(tm).
I don't care if it forks. The version that exist is great and they've already said they're not going to combat piracy by trying to lock it down (in TFA). There's no point in forking it as long as they leave the DRM in the plugins.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
CableCard is only a problem when it actually invokes its DRM capabilities
In other words, CableCARD is only a problem most of the time.
Legal, paid content is already available on existing platforms.
Through which existing platform can a U.S. or Canadian customer lawfully obtain Song of the South, Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, or Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea (the English dub of Les mondes engloutis)? Their publishers refuse to take my money.
They could of been more open source and Linux friendly, but thought that was stupid. Piracy via open source projects like Kodi add-ons is their fault. Is there an official add-on for these platforms on Kodi? Nope. When did Firefox start supporting those services for Linux? A few months go. Chrome is a bullshit option because they killed 32-bit almost two years ago and it's riddled with Google spyware. Chromium with Widevine works, but add-ons for Chrome anything sucks. Most web sites these days are slow as hell anyway with too much JavaScript and Flash everywhere. Kodi is much much faster and safer.
Right now I run Kodi on an RPi2 Model B+. It's connected to my external hard drive, which stores all my movies and music, and HDMI out to my 40in LED. I'm already considering ditching this setup in favor of an Odroid-XU4 w/Ubuntu, since I just need something to basically run VLC....DRM will make me switch even faster.
"Because Kodi has an infinitely better interface from the couch than any of the websites."
Kodi works from the couch but it isn't exactly a great interface. For viewing content it is simple enough (although I wouldn't call it better than most systems) but getting any deeper and Kodi is actually cluttered, filled with similarly named categories and features, non-intuitively named options, etc.
If you understand what add-on and repository mean then with a decent interface it would be obvious without any misclicks how to install the same without ever having seen the app before as well as how to setup and organize access to local media. There is a reason there are a million and one "guides" for how to do this.
Kodi is a great media player due to technical capabilities. The interface, particularly the bits for configuration, is horrible.
I won't disagree, but grading on a curve, it's at least reasonably viable to do from the couch, contrasted with general browser design, which is expecting to be about 1 foot from the eyes and mouse or touch involved, and the specific websites which mostly are in the same boat with rare exception.
Particularly the way video plugins are generally handled is a bit clunky, not well integrated with the general media and most skins treat vdieo plugins as third class citizens, except for certain special skins dedicated to a specific video add-on...
But even despite how dismal things are from the ideal, still way better than the state of affairs in a web browser from the couch, where your best hope is a clunky keyboard and an air mouse or touchpad.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
As long as they (KODI) utterly refuse to stop playing non-DRM content, this is a no-lose scenario.
The instant the DRM crowd try to insist on policing the non-DRM content, KODI should walk, or fork.
- Paul
"Can someone dumb it down enough for me to understand why in the hell someone would go to the trouble of throwing together a plugin to offer up illegal streaming content?? How is the plugin creator making money?"
Some make money, though usually not much and often not enough to offset their own costs. Money is just one of many reasons people do things. For most people who are heavily money motivated you usually have to look no further than their car to find a great example of something they do that isn't money motivated. It might make them money but that Lexus, BMW, or what have you makes them no more money than keeping a five year old inexpensive version of whatever they drive for practical reasons would. Not only does that nicer car not make one any money, one actually spends a great deal of extra money to get it without much tangible benefit.
Some are legitimately protesting the broken models and the way the copyright cartels are at war with the world destroying massive swathes of innovation that have nothing to do with movies or music with the laws they buy to protect their interests. Some are seeking recognition from their own peer group that values such things more than fancy cars. Some are impressing themselves because they are simply less caught up in the opinions of others. Some enjoy the thrill and the challenge. Some find the kind of meticulous work that goes with collecting and maintaining this content to be meditative. Some are basically just digital hoarders and feel the need for an excuse to justify their massive hoard.
The open source communities and the piracy communities are the most dangerous opponent of capitalism there is. They are naturally evolved and true communism (something never seen with a government) with people who aren't profit motivated volunteering labor and collaborating in a way that isn't oppressive and is not only successful but so far unstoppable.
It's forkin' time!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I have not been able to get the youtube app within Kodi to work for some time. It starts up and then errors out after clicking on anything to play. Has not worked for me for several years.
Luckily I can just back out of Kodi to get native FireTV menu (the platform I have it running on), and use the app from there and it works fine.
My kingdom for a supported, reliable Netflix add-on.
Sure but a browser isn't the competition or a common interface. Plex, the FireTV interface, Netflix/Hulu app interfaces, and set top boxes interfaces made to be controlled with standard remotes/touch are the relevant peers Kodi competes with. Especially when talking about a space where you want to implement DRM and convince everyone to use the kodi app for everything.
Back in the day when you had no choices for media streaming/playback with lots of formats XBMC was the winner mostly because it was the only serious player on a platform that was difficult to program/hack and most definitely not made for that purpose.
Legitimate, or DRM-encumbered? Can't have both.
Nonaggression works!