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?

Comments

DIY? No, more like DOA

[HumanWiki]

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.

Re:DIY? No, more like DOA

[HumanWiki]

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.

perhaps it could be considered that actually using a product for its intended purpose would be why people choose it, adding new features to a product does not necessarily diminish the value of the existing features

or maybe you're just a stupid troll

You clearly don't understand the product or why it's so popular. The problem isn't if they add DRM for plugins and modules for properly licensing content.. It's that it USUALLY will mean they will have to enact it across the board or lock our certain other plugins as part of the licensing model. That's where they're going to lose out and the point of my comment.

Re: DIY? No, more like DOA

[ArmoredDragon]

Or maybe the whole project was born from mplayer and a pirated Xbox SDK. Oh, and they justified not releasing the GPLed source code since they only released it through piracy sites.

Now, tell me what its original purpose was again?

Re:DIY? No, more like DOA

[HumanWiki]

The problem isn't if they add DRM for plugins and modules for properly licensing content.. It's that it USUALLY will mean they will have to enact it across the board or lock our certain other plugins as part of the licensing model.

you mean like how firefox had to go closed-source before they could play netflix videos? and you are telling me that "only closed source browsers can support flash"

what an idiot you are

Feel free to log in to continue this conversation.

Re:DIY? No, more like DOA

[thegarbz]

There's a reason many people used this platform (right or wrong) and they're removing that reason.

You have an altruistic view of why people use that platform. More likely:
1. They bought a box with it pre-installed.
2. They installed it because of the incredible amount of pre-made hardware specifically made for Kodi pre-installed.
3. They use it because it's incredibly well polished, far more so than many other media centres.
4. They use it because it is incredibly expandable with a rich plugin scene and theming.
5. They use it because it plays almost everything (with a bit of DRM that will resolve the last problem as well)

Re:DIY? No, more like DOA

[Grishnakh]

This "discussion" you're having here is completely typical of today's Slashdot. It's sad how far this site has fallen; it isn't even worth it to me to bother commenting in these stories any more.

Re:DIY? No, more like DOA

[ScienceofSpock]

LOL, "what an idiot you are" is not an argument

Re:DIY? No, more like DOA

[green1]

And yet you just did...

Re: DIY? No, more like DOA

[buchanmilne]

"Supporting DRM means that the software is no longer open source nor is it for the users but for the corporations."

Firefox now supports DRM, did I miss the announent that it is no longer open source?

Read the article, they don't want to *prevent* these plugins, they just want more legitimate streaming options to be available.

Like many of their users (including me).

Re: DIY? No, more like DOA

[coofercat]

+1 (me too)

I'd love to be able to use Kodi for all of my media viewing - ideally including live TV as well. If Kodi had a Netflix plugin, we'd use Kodi in place of the crappy Netflix player built into the TV. If they had an Amazon Video plugin, we'd ditch the Amazon FireTV box too. If there was a decent way to hook up a MythTV server and Kodi, then we could ditch the satellite box too. We'd be down to a couple of raspberry pis to do the lot. Sounds pretty awesome to me.

The Beauty of Open Source

[ausekilis]

When these guys start doing something people hate, someone will fork and make it good again. Just look at Apache->MariaDB or OpenOffice->LibreOffice.

Re:The Beauty of Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Apache->MariaDB

That's one hell of a fork.

Re:The Beauty of Open Source

[Junta]

Yes a group of people got tired of apache stubbornly supporting only http and not SQL. They recognized that http isn't needed by anyone and so they forked it. Strangely, after all their hard work the code looked a lot more like MySQL than it did Apache, and perhaps it would have been easier to fork MySQL than it would have been to do Apache, but here we are.

Re: The Beauty of Open Source

[ichthus]

No, no. Believe it. They just watch Big Buck Bunny, over and over again.

Make DRM work with my CableCard....

[bobbied]

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...

Re:Make DRM work with my CableCard....

[silas_moeckel]

Stop supporting people that refuse to let you do what you could legally do back in the days of VCR's.

Official Plugins for Commercial Services.

[SeaFox]

That would be great.
But anything that is going to restrict the usage of other features/media, that's not going to work.

Please respect us

[ArhcAngel]

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

Re:Please respect us

[CanEHdian]

The problem is when "legitimate" devices can only run Kodi add-ons that have been signed by the MPA(A)/local chapter. And yes, that means the ones that don't have that "feature" are therefore automatically in the "illegitimate" category. Because the only reason you'd want one of those is "because of piracy". And that makes the circle round again.

Re:Please respect us

[ArhcAngel]

I say what I mean. Anyone who goes into an OSS project expecting to get paid is a fool. XBMC was a cool project to make an outdated console a useful tool again. Nobody expected it to morph into the extraordinary Swiss Army Knife media center it has become. But it couldn't have done that without skirting the **IA's regs and making it useful to a wide range of interests. Now they want to add some of the tools of the industry that shunned them. As long as they don't remove the features that their users demand that shouldn't be an issue. But we know for them to add those features the "Bosses" will demand a tribute.

Plex wont...

[Lumpy]

Plex has overtaken them hard and they are desperately trying to catch up with the popularity of the rogue fork from years ago.

Re:Plex wont...

[Troed]

sidetracked: For that same reason I use Emby, not Plex. Really happy with it as well.

(But of course every screen has Kodi running on it. Emby's only used for mobile and web access from outside the local network)

Rolling further downhill

[SmaryJerry]

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?

I've tried Kodi before

[kingramon0]

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.

Re:It's called a "web browser"

[Junta]

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).

Napster Approach

[Luthair]

worked great, Napster became the most dominant platform for legitimate music downloads.

Re:Former Kodi User

[spire3661]

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.