Google Removes 'Kodi' From Search Autocomplete In Anti-Piracy Effort (torrentfreak.com)

Google has banned the term "Kodi" from the autocomplete feature of its search engine because it's "closely associated with copyright infringement." This means that the popular software and related suggestions won't appear unless users type out the full term. TorrentFreak reports: It turns out that Google has recently removed the term "Kodi" from its autocomplete results. While Kodi can be abused through pirate add-ons, the media player software itself is perfectly legal, which makes it an odd decision. Users who type in "Kod" get a list of suggestions including "Kodak" and "Kodiak," but not the much more popular search term Kodi. Similarly, when typing "addons for k" Google suggests addons for Kokotime and Krypton 17.6. While the latter is a Kodi version, the name of the media player itself doesn't come up as a suggestion. Once users type the full Kodi term and add a space, plenty of suggestions suddenly appear, which is similar to other banned terms. Ironically enough, the Kokotime app is frequently used by pirates as well. Also, the names of all of the pirate Kodi addons we checked still show up fine in the autosuggest feature. Unfortunately, Google doesn't document its autocomplete removal decisions, nor does it publish the full list of banned words. However, the search engine confirms that Kodi's piracy stigma is to blame here. In a statement to TorrentFreak, a Google spokesperson said: "Since 2011, we have been filtering certain terms closely associated with copyright infringement from Google Autocomplete. This action is consistent with that long-standing strategy."

Comments

whew

[mr_resident]

Problem solved!

Re:whew

[Highdude702]

I love how everybody wants the major corporations to police the internet now.

Re:whew

[Anonymous Coward]

But Google uses Linux on their servers, open sources things that has no value business-wise and said they’d Do No Evil. So now all those Google defenders get to reap what they sow from the company who holds control over more than 80% of the search engine market.

Funny how Slashtards always raged over OS monopolies but would defend Google having a near Microsoft-level monopoly on search results because they feigned being an open source company. All this widespread filtering is a direct result of them having the market power to silence things they don’t approve of. Because who are you going to switch to? Bing?

Re:whew

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder when they will ban the term 'google' from search also, since thats the #1 way to find content, including pirated content...

Re: whew

[dj245]

Big corporations control the government, which is currently dysfunctional. It only makes sense that the people are now lobbying the organizations with the actual power and some semblance of effectiveness.

Re:whew

[emaname]

Because who are you going to switch to? Bing?

How about DuckDuckGo? I switched to it about 4 or 5 years ago, right after I was filter bubbled by Google.

Re:whew

[Vitriol Angst]

Nobody asked them to. This is to please copyright holders.

You can still search for weapons, racist comments, slurs, atrocities, porn and the like. But they draw the line at, well, some companies not making a profit.

Is this for starving kids or something? I'll google; "how to eat starving kids" -- goes right through.

Re:whew

[rtb61]

Or more accurately https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kodi... . I don't even understand what everyone is talking about, search for Kodi right there. Is it me or has the rest of the internet gone nuts, I stopped using https://duckduckgo.com/?q=goog..., I don't see a whole slew of problematic searches any more. The googlites have seemingly turned into a whole pack of problematic control freaks, their market lead, their stint in the sun, seems to have caused the arrogantly flow of blood from the bug brain to the egotistical undefined genitals brain, you think from down there and you will make stupid decisions.

You have to keep tech companies small, otherwise they just all go nuts, absolutely nucking futs.

Re: whew

[donaldm]

In other news, google has removed the terms "debugger", "defective -by-design", and "EFF" from their auto complete results due to their association the word "piracy" as the latest savlo in their on going censorship campaign.

Well you can enter "piracy" or "p" in the google search and you do get the "piracy" hint (well I do) as the first word then if you enter or select "piracy" as your search you get the definition of the word followed by top stories (as per 30th March 2018) of which the first one is Kodi. Great advertising. :)

Well, all know that Microsoft would not condone "piracy". I mean just type in the word "sea" and I get "sea of thieves" as my first hint. Oh, wait! ... Must fight the urge. :)

Re:whew

[nospam007]

"I'm not sure this story is a good example of things going bad. Kodi still shows up in the search results."

Sure, but now the pirates have to type the last 'i' themselves!
That will show them.

Re:whew

[InPursuitOfTruth]

Thanks for this news! Just switched to DuckDuckGo.

Re:whew

[Highdude702]

You have a low back number, do you remember what the best part of the internet was 15 years ago or so? It wasn't that most of the people that bother us now were on the internet, although I could see how that comes to mind. It was the fact that you could search for, and find anything you wanted be it illegal(In law not in a moral sense.) or not. And you didn't have search engines that would hide results.. I miss those days. The internet is garbage now, I don't really know if I would miss what the majority of the world thought the "internet" was.

But the freetards will still suck Google's cock

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing all you freetards fell for that 'Do No Evil' bullshit back in the day to enable this shitty company.

The Humanity

[rmdingler]

There has to be a whole other level just north of 1st world problem to properly convey the angst and suffering experienced by the user forced to enter the full four letters to link to the Kodi site.

Re:The Humanity

[93 Escort Wagon]

My daughter’s name is Kodi, you insensitive clod!

Re:The Humanity

[Shompol]

Once they start censoring they will keep censoring, whether it is to please the Disney mouse, a political party, their own agenda, etc. Do you still trust them with finding for what you are looking for or finding what they want you to see instead? Probably not yet but they are trotting towards becoming a world-wide propaganda engine.

Re:The Humanity

[PolygamousRanchKid]

There has to be a whole other level just north of 1st world problem to properly convey the angst and suffering experienced by the user forced to enter the full four letters to link to the Kodi site.

Let me fix that for y'all:

"There has to be a whole other level just north of 1st world problem to properly convey the angst and suffering experienced by the user forced to enter the full four letters to link to the [REDACTED] site."

That word is banned, which means you are not allowed to use it in a post. Google will now report you as a pirate.

Oh, shit! I used that banned word, as well in this post!

Re:The Humanity

[nnull]

The more they keep censoring, the more I don't care about them or their services. Google is not the first service to pull this crap and won't be the last, but it's amazing how Google doesn't learn from the past and realize the companies that went full censorship don't even exist anymore.

Re:The Humanity

[rmdingler]

Once they start censoring they will keep censoring, whether it is to please the Disney mouse, a political party, their own agenda, etc. Do you still trust them with finding for what you are looking for or finding what they want you to see instead? Probably not yet but they are trotting towards becoming a world-wide propaganda engine.

It seems unlikely a corporation could command as much influence as Google without eventually succumbing to either the internal pressures of wielding such power, or the external pressures of governments and advertisers to steer the narrative.

Re:The Humanity

[Rockoon]

Google went back into China. That tells you where Googles limit is w.r.t bending for governments. No limit at all.

Re:The Humanity

[DontBeAMoran]

+1 Funny

Re:The Humanity

[Tough Love]

The more they keep censoring, the more I don't care about them or their services.

The more they keep censoring, the more they become responsible for their content and can be held legally liable for it. Censorship is a dangerous rabbit hole for Google to scurry into.

Kodi has nothing to do with piracy. Google is PEDO

[Anonymous Coward]

This action is so dumb I'm honestly not surprised it came from America. What is the point of attacking Kodi, a media player, for the contents some people use it for? It's like attacking iTunes or Winamp because some people use it to listen to "illegally" downloaded music.

Google is str8 up PEDO and needs to be replaced by a neutral entity that is in no way linked to American government or associated with America's lackeys in Europe and such.

Allah

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll name my Kodi fork Allah. Go ban that. Then I'll rename to Yahweh, and so on. Heck, maybe call it Googel.

Re:Thank goodness for Bing

[squiggleslash]

That's true with Google too. Read the summary again, Google are just removing Kodi from autocomplete, not from their search listings.

Re:kodak

[Desler]

Kodak? Did you pull that reference from the trunk of your Delorean? Kodak hasn’t been relevant in more than a decade.

So done with google

[blackpaw]

Switched to DuckDuckGo and Bing (its actually not bad for technical searches).

I just don't know what to do with my gmail address, its my real name and how I'm contacted by people important to me, a vast history of important emails and the login or recovery email for a large number of services. Dumping it is not really an option.

Can't stand iOS so sticking with my 950XL till grim death. Hoping some of the crowd funded non android phones bear fruit.

Re:So done with google

[DogDude]

Buy your own email. Forward your gmail to it. How fucking hard is that?

Re:So done with google

[blackpaw]

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions, and yah I really have to just suck it up and do it, there will be no future better time or methodology. Tricky bit is deciding on a less evil provider that will stay that way, or finding a decent self hosting option that doesn't require my own inhouse servers. A pity that email addresses can't be portable between providers the way phone numbers are.

Side note: Interesting that the AC's are helpful and positive, while the only asshole is a named account.

Re: So done with google

[DontBeAMoran]

That won't prevent Google from collecting data on him.

Re:So done with google

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, the best is to just start, and don't expect immediate solutions. Enjoy the 'trip' and not just the destination. I think it is like it is with smoking: significant reduction is already quite an improvement to your health.
What I did is get a protonmail account and start using that as default (every communication I initiate) and to reply (most of the mailthreads) and tell closest relations to ditch the gmail and contact me on protonmail.

Then I started to slowly, sloooowly eat my way through my gmail, discarding everything I did not need to keep and forward to my protonmail, or copy to disk what I wanted to keep. Passwords (and contact emailaddresses) for accounts I change and I add them into keepass as i come across them, kill two birds with one stone (stupid password policies I used to have, like mailing to myself and reusing, etc).
With k9mail on the phone for my gmail, i use 'spare time' during travel, etc to purge my gmail slowly. One day I will get to the end of that emailbox, but until that day it is actually an amusing trip down memory lane of the last 20 years or so (got my gmail account when it was still invite only).

I keep the gmail address for android, but try to move away as much as possible. I got a cheap Motorola 4G that I rooted and flashed (just to see if I could do that without experience) only a very small gapps package (playstore, push). I ordered a puri.sm phone so next year I will see if i can step that up some more.

I set duckduckgo as my default search engine. I added Startpage as an extra that I try if duckduckgo does not find what i am looking for, and i resort to google only after these two fail me. A year ago this would happen quite often, but the past few months duckduckgo is often all i need.

For Whatsapp (which I never had) I asked one-on-one relations to get signal private messenger for messaging with me (groups refuse to change to signal for me until all are over on signal because I asked each of the members individually). Not having Whatsapp is a bit of a social isolation sacrifice, but one that I am willing to make. My entire social network has already sold me out by giving their addressbooks to Whatsapp. I'm the clearly white spot in the middle of that social group and they know it...It's a matter of principle now :)

Re:So done with google

[geek]

Do what I did. Put an auto responder on your gmail telling everyone to now email you at your protonmail address. You can forward it too. After a few months, kill it.

I'd recommend getting used to iOS. Its presently the only option for anything resembling privacy. Maybe the Librem phone will change that in time but I'm not holding my breath.

Will this happen to all generic media player apps?

[ZorinLynx]

Because you can use VLC, MPlayer, IINA, Plex and more to watch pirated content, ya know.

It seems odd that Google would single out Kodi. I do wonder how long until the software industry starts making it hard for us to play back arbitrary DRM-free video files.

Re: Will this happen to all generic media player a

[c6gunner]

VLC doesn't have plugins which let you stream pirated content directly from pirate sites.

Don't get me wrong; this is definitely stupid. But your comparison isn't really valid.

Great

[CptLoRes]

I needed a reminder that I haven't donated to Kodi in a while. And donation.. done.

Re: But the freetards will still suck Google's coc

[Anonymous Coward]

They turned into a shitty company, but they didnâ(TM)t start out that way. Any company with deep pockets will eventually attract interesting sociopaths looking to exploit the war chest. These big companies are magnets for the worst possible monsters in society because why would you stop at owning a two-bit company. Itâ(TM)s no wonder they turn evil.

Remember, shit floats to the top.

Re:Thank goodness for Bing

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess Google should start removing Google products, like Android, from the autocomplete with the whole Oracle case going on. I mean, that's a much more direct link than Kodi.

Yep, that'll work

[wonkey_monkey]

As long as everyone forgets how to spell Kodi by themselves, this'll work beautifully.

Re:Yep, that'll work

[Rockoon]

This will stop the flow of "heard about it at work" folks adopting the kodi platform. The autocomplete gets them where they intended to go before they type "y"

Re:Yep, that'll work

[aardvarkjoe]

At least if I type "Kody" into Google, the first result is for https://kodi.tv/.

Precursor to new Google home theatre platform?

[Mike Sheen]

If in 12 months Google release a product/service/platform for managing your offline as well as online media content in a nice interface, then this makes a lot of sense.

Bing It

[NeilAtWhartonSquare]

Oh no, I'll have to use Bing to find out how to spell Kodi.

Re:Not that it actually matters

[gl4ss]

I don't know but I suggest renaming the project to "obama trump".

or mpaariaa

#deletegoogle

[Iem Eel]

As the subject states, no more, no less.

Re:other terms

[BlueStrat]

guns which are used to kill people,

Absolutely true.

Guns are used every day to kill rapists, home-invaders, armed robbers, and would-be murderers.

âoeSelf-defense can be an important crime deterrent,âsays a new report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The $10 million study was commissioned by President Barack Obama as part of 23 executive orders he signed in January.

âoeStudies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was âusedâ(TM) by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies,â the CDC study, entitled âoePriorities For Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,â states.

Won't somebody stop the madness?

Strat

TVaddons

[amiga3D]

And yet TVaddons still autofills! It's amazing they attack the legitimate side and leave the "bad" addons alone! How stupid.

Re:TVaddons

[drinkypoo]

And yet TVaddons still autofills! It's amazing they attack the legitimate side and leave the "bad" addons alone! How stupid.

It's not stupid, it's evil. They're deliberately attacking the platform, not the addon, because it's actually the program they have problems with. It lets you turn a useless Android TV device into one which can play Youtube content without stuttering, and they can't handle the competition.

Who needs a totalitarian government...

[hellopolly]

When a free market monopolist censors just as well.

Re:Why didn't they remove the term 'Youtube'

[nnull]

Was?! It still is!

Kodi is a word

[tonique]

Kodi is a word at least in Karelian, Veps, Ludian, Latvian, Swahili and Chichewa! So members of some linguistic minorities in Russia have to press enter when searching for home.

Re:Thank goodness for Bing

[donaldm]

Kodi's official homepage is returned as the first search result.

Cheers, MS!

Well, you could try "sea of" and get "Sea of Thieves" Microsoft's latest game.

Err isn't that about pirates? Yes, Microsoft is a good role model.

Re: Will this happen to all generic media player a

[donaldm]

VLC doesn't have plugins which let you stream pirated content directly from pirate sites.

Don't get me wrong; this is definitely stupid. But your comparison isn't really valid.

Bring up VLC then click on Media and select Open Network Stream. Enter the URL of the video you want to play.

In case you are interested the above does work with YouTube as well.

Basically, if you can see it and/or hear it you can pirate it.

Is that list available?

[Opportunist]

Purely for research reasons and so I an avoid doing anything bad, of course.

Re:Keep it, but...

[Bert64]

Also register your own domain, then you can move it between different hosting without changing address...
Relying on someone else's domain is only ever temporary, they could shut off the service at any moment or change the terms.

they should block themself

[sad_]

google should block themself, their search is also used a lot for piracy purposes.

More search bans

[Daralantan]

This reminds me of google banning searches for "gun" in the the shop search. Not for "gun" by itself, but anything with "gun" in it. EG: Burgundy wine, Gundam, etc.

Re:Why didn't they remove the term 'Youtube'

[Rockoon]

Was?! It still is!

And Google itself has proven to be the best torrent search engine. filetype:torrent and Bobs your uncle.

Pretty silly

[Riceballsan]

I get that it's just not advertising kodi within the search bar, actually making people learn how to spell kodi before they search for it... but it's still stupid. I'd get it if they just blocked terms for the known kodi piracy addons. But if you are going to punish a software program just because there's a checkbox to allow you to use unofficial sources in the settings, and some of the possible unofficial sources contain tools that can be used for piracy... isn't that basically what android does?

Ban the tool

[sheph]

Yes. Ban the tool because it could be used for illegal purposes. This reminds me of something else.

Re: Will this happen to all generic media player

[c6gunner]

I take it the two of you aren't actually familiar with kodi addons.

Re: kodak

[Desler]

It’s Kodiak dip.

Re: Will this happen to all generic media player

[donaldm]

I take it the two of you aren't actually familiar with kodi addons.

I was only replying to his VLC comment, not Kodi.

For your interest, I only run Linux on my desktop and laptops (Fedora 27). Although I do have Kodi installed I don't really use the application and I am aware it does have plugins, some of which can be used to pirate certain content. Still, most of that content I am not interested in so I have not investigated it.