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How Kodi Took Over Piracy (wired.com)
A reader shares a report: For years, piracy persisted mainly in the realm of torrents, with sites like The Pirate Bay and Demonoid connecting internet denizens to premium content gratis. But a confluence of factors have sent torrent usage plummeting from 23 percent of all North American daily internet traffic in 2011 to under 5 percent last year. Legal crackdowns shuttered prominent torrent sites. Paid alternatives like Netflix and Hulu made it easier just to pay up. And then there were the "fully loaded" Kodi boxes -- otherwise vanilla streaming devices that come with, or make easily accessible, so-called addons that seek out unlicensed content -- that deliver pirated movies and TV shows with push-button ease. "Kodi and the plugin system and the people who made these plugins have just dumbed down the process," says Dan Deeth, spokesperson for network-equipment company Sandvine. "It's easy for anyone to use. It's kind of set it and forget it. Like the Ron Popeil turkey roaster." Kodi itself is just a media player; the majority of addons aren't piracy focused, and lots of Kodi devices without illicit software plug-ins are utterly uncontroversial. Still, that Kodi has swallowed piracy may not surprise some of you; a full six percent of North American households have a Kodi device configured to access unlicensed content, according to a recent Sandvine study. But the story of how a popular, open-source media player called XBMC became a pirate's paradise might. And with a legal crackdown looming, the Kodi ecosystem's present may matter less than its uncertain future.
It's that simple. People want to view content and issues of availability, cost, censorship, convenience figure into individual choice as to whether one uses the app and how one uses to the app.
Is this the same Sandvine whose business model included spoofing data packets to discourage bittorrent activity, regardless of whether the content being torrented was legal?
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
Kodi is an extensible media player. Piracy happens in separate plugins which are neither produced nor endorsed by the Kodi developers. If Kodi took over piracy, so did the OS it runs on, because that too effectively serves as a base for the piracy plugins. Kodi is not piracy software!
I don't see why people say money laundering is a problem. Doesn't it get dirty with dust, bodily residues and microbes over time?
#DeleteFacebook
If content creators don's want people pirating their content they can make it more easily accessible.
I would LOVE to have a Netflix plugin that works with Kodi so I didn't have to switch inputs and start my Playstation.
I USED to have a an app that could play Amazon video without having to switch inputs and turn on my Playstation, but Amazon actively thwarted the software that only worked if I paid my Prime anyways.
I would love it if I could just watch Hulu from Kodi without having to switch inputs and turn on my Playstation.
Really I could just leave my Kodi box running and watch all of the movies I paid for by streaming it from the Kodi box to the Playstation, but let's face it, Kodi has a great interface.
I CAN play a bunch of PBS stuff legally on my Kodi box, I can play some random stuff from various local TV stations that have an accessible on-ramp, including some national networks,100% legally. That's not quite as slick as using the Playstation, but it's not horrible.
TO fix the problem you don't have to start giving everything away for free, but not being pricks about APIs would fix a lot of it.
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It's necessary to point out that there is plenty of legitimate use cases in Kodi. For example, playing videos and displaying photo slideshows from a home media server, or allowing me to interact from just about any device in my network with my DVR - watching and scheduling recordings as well as live TV.
I'm pretty sure there's more paying households of Netflix and/or Hulu than there is households equipped with a Kodi box with piracy-enabling plug-ins.
#DeleteFacebook
Can't stop the signal.
So many choppy sentences starting with conjunctions. I actually had to re-read the last part several times to get what was going on.
Some of you may find it unsurprising that Kodi has swallowed piracy: a recent Sandvine study projects a Kodi device configured to access unlicensed content in a full six percent of North American households. The story of how a popular, open-source media player called XBMC became a pirate's paradise might; and, with a legal crackdown looming, the Kodi ecosystem's present may matter less than its uncertain future.
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Uhmm, say what?
I pretty much stay up to date on Kodi. I'm running it on hardware I re-purposed, not one of those already setup for piracy boxes from online, in fact I'm running it on an old Mac Pro.
Not a single bloated plugin doing stuff I don't want it too. Yes - I do have a plugin that matches my file names to online databases the themoviedb.org and thetvdb.com, but I can very easily not use them, I really like my scrapper info being there.
Even getting into advanced stuff with Kodi isn't necessarily out of reach. I am not a programmer and I've altered plugins I wanted to use that pulled video anonymously or with a shared account to actually put my own paid-for credentials in instead of a generic shared account. That particular program probably should have had a way to do it without editing scripts, but the fact I did and I can't claim to actually know any programming languages means something.
Kodi is one of the most configurable things I've ever come across, that's part of WHY there are so many piracy plugins for it, they're not hard to make.
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How about suing the actual content providers who host and serve the pirated copies, Google, dropbox, Amazon? If they can analyze your content to serve ads they should be able to identify pirated videos.
Oh wait, they have more lawyers than open source coders. Maybe not so good idea then.
I resent hyperbolic click baiting media dragging Kodi's name thru the mud with sensational headlines "How Kodi took over piracy" when authors know full well its misleading bullshit.
So, I'm at work, and a lot of sites are normally blocked (not even worth clicking on half of them), but how do these plugins work? Are they user-friendly torrent interfaces? So they're torrents under the hood? Do they troll through newsgroups? Or are there illicit http sites out there providing the data? Or something else entirely? I couldn't figure it out skimming TFA... did I miss something?
Thanks a lot for the advice definitely not MPAA agent.
The real reason bittorrent "piracy" traffic is down is because bittorrent sites have been taken down and also Comcast started blocking access to torrent search sites in certain areas. You CAN control the Internet with enough effort. Monopolies and walled gardens make it even easier.
Having read it twice, I still don't understand the point the summary is trying to make. It says piracy is much lower now than in 2011. It says Kodi "took over" the piracy arena and made it easier than ever before to access unlicensed content. It says a full 6 percent of households have a Kodi box. So what the heck is the point the summary is making? Piracy is down because Kodi makes it so much easier to access unlicensed media? That makes no sense at all. Or is this all past tense and Kodi has been stomped out and since it had taken over piracy was greatly reduced? I just don't understand what Kodi has to do with any of this, or how they know it took over online piracy when piracy is down even though Kodi makes it easier. Makes no sense.
Better known as 318230.
Where do I put my five hard drives of content and nVidia card on that FireTV again?
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NAS.
It's interesting that Kodi gets blamed for this. Showbox is side-loadable and *way* easier to use than any streaming plugin in Kodi. Also there are tons of free steaming video sites. There is way more to this than Kodi.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
What's next? "How Slashdot took over fake news?"
I'll plug my nVIdia card and game controller right into that.
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links to pirated content are not piracy themselves.
That depends on the country. One district court in Slashdot's home country ruled in 2000 that linking to an infringing copy is contributory infringement. Intellectual Reserve, Inc. v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Inc.
But practically, what power would the maintainer of an application distributed as free software have to deter misuse of the application to infringe third parties' copyrights?
Although the ACs suggestion is fairly lacking, and actually mine may very well too, but one more tool that might come in handy for the toolbox:
http://moonlight-stream.com/
It's an open source version of the Nvidia GameStream protocol supported by the higher end GTX cards, usually advertised for use with the Nvidia Shield devices.
Very low latency video streaming that actually does work pretty well with games at 1080@60
There is an android version that works side loaded on a FireTV, right next to a Kodi load.
I've used it to play fallout 4 on the ipad pro on a lark, but it worked quite well.
The mobile versions do have a built in on-screen control pad setup but it sucks about as much as you'd imagine.
In my case I just used a bluetooth gamepad paired to the host PC, mainly due to Apple not allowing such devices to pair with an ipad, but I don't believe any of the other OSes have that same limitation.
May be useful in other situations even if you have no interest in a FireTV device.
Kodi did nothing of the sort. That's like saying VCRs took over piracy. Kodi is a tool.
Why is wired misrepresenting this? The general public likely doesn't understand the nuance here.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
You plug in a game controller? Are you a time traveller from the 1980s?
To a computer. You're already right up against the screen.
That's pretty cool. I use some in-home Steam streaming, both with Steam Link and client to client. I may look at this one a bit.
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Kodi is all about flexibility. By forcing people into an Android only box you're the one ignoring the point, not me. Part of what makes Kodi awesome is its ability to load other programs from it's 10 Foot Interface.
I'm not the one who wrote this plugin so the fact it exist means it's on-topic about Kodi and about the original point of my posts, which is we have the ability to have an all-in-one unit except for content providers being pricks. Limiting the selection to Android to get around it isn't a real fix.
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Slashdot has long been merely a corporate repeater. Look at the stories it picks to point to, the views expressed here (including the editorializing by way of direct comment, iconography, and one-liner comments just underneath the headline): they're all no threat to power. That's what makes sites like /. less free than older discussion forums on Usenet. Certain topics and views are simply outside the allowable limits of debate or marginalized for no good reason.
If established power wants to posit that Kodi == "piracy" and in so doing stand against software freedom (how dare people run, inspect, share, and modify Kodi software to suit their needs!), who is /. to object.
Digital Citizen
District Court Judge Posner ruled that streaming copyrighted material isn't a copyright violation, it is no more a copyright violation than sneaking I to a theater. He said it may be something else, but it is not a copyright violation.
Read all of the linked article:
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Actually the court ruled that hosting the copyrighted content and, while under an injunction, actively emailing out instructions on how to infringe is infringement.
How to Start an Urban Legend: the Reporting of Intellectual Reserve, Inc. v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Inc.
Those who open their minds too far often let their brains fall out.
Your 'freedom' is a nothing but a farce since the 1950ies.
I can't stand the typical user... they bitch about their "Android Box" when the problem is really Kodi or the plugin... but they're too fucking stupid to differentiate between them. Most of them don't even understand that what they're doing is piracy, and have no idea where the sources are coming from... the whole thing is just a septic tank of stupid users.
ITunes, Spotify, made me actually finally pay for music? why? unlimited and I can say "Whoever" play xyz. I think the only solution is to do what music has done. Charge 9.99 a month(hell we pay for real-redbird for dedicated streams, some even pay for vpns). And I can say, Sirii, Cortana, Whoever, play “Goodfellas” No playing with inputs, no finding streams, no vpns, not dedicated servers, no setup, no downloading etc. My brother in law has apple tv, its kodi without the setup, and of course less content, but more content then anyone else. That’s the solution, people will pay monthly fees , for convenience, and no hassle. Even On demand is a pain finding movies on cable, and have only what they are licensed for. Open it up to all movies, and turn your loss revenue into all the lost revenue to the MPPA
In the base package, simple useless modules are enabled by default and grayed-out for removal.
The easiest access point for the source code is the original sources.
Apparently you have not idea what you are talking about.
AC, Should I be surprised ? I think not.
I'll try to make it simple, even for you. Old XBMC: small, simple, static, good. New Kodi: big, bloated, dynamic, bad.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
That's not the point (but kudos for spending time altering code, sincerely). ./configure --disable-all-plugins --enable-all-decoders --disable-all-encoders && make && make install
Besides installing the default minimal package (Arch), the most I would do with Kodi is
I'm a dev and I have more interesting things to do in my spare time than trying to understand why some modules cannot be removed physically in a trivial manner. It's not worth it. (I prefer to invest my remaining energy into improving something more interesting, e.g. : Wine)
And my slightly paranoid side tells me allowing plugins when none are needed for my use case is inviting trouble a.k.a entry point.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
There are some titles that donâ(TM)t interest me and I will NEVER watch them (especially if I have to pay for them), but sometimes I might be bored and looking for something different and watch the odd titled for a change of pace. I wouldnâ(TM)t pay for it either way, but it makes that impress me enough that I might pay for the next one. In either case itâ(TM)s a zero sum loss, they lose nothing by charging (because I wonâ(TM)t watch it) and lose nothing by my not being able to watch it legally because I wonâ(TM)t pay for it. Itâ(TM)s just another case of corporations crying foul because they canâ(TM)t squeeze every dime out of you. If itâ(TM)s something I WANT to watch then Iâ(TM)ll pay for it. And you know what? If I liked it, Iâ(TM)ll watch it a few more times at my leisure.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
You spelled âoeHillaryâ wrong.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
You spelled âoeHillaryâ wrong.
Indeed. Eveyone knows its ôëHillary¾.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.