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Facebook Bans the Sale of All Kodi Boxes (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Facebook previously banned the sale of fully-loaded pirate streaming devices, as did Amazon and eBay, but the social network appears to have expanded this to all Kodi-powered hardware now. This is made clear in the prohibited content section of the company's commerce policies, as shown below. Facebook states that users are no longer allowed to promote "the sale or use of streaming devices with KODI installed." In addition, jailbroken or loaded devices are also banned from the platform. The issue was first noticed by CordCuttersNews which notes that sellers who violate the policy may have their Facebook accounts banned. Interestingly, Facebook will still permit the sale of "add-on equipment for KODI devices," including keyboards and remotes. However, selling any devices with the software itself is no longer allowed.
If they ban Kodi they'd better start banning Raspberry Pis, Mythboxes, HDHomerun tuners, and VCRs.
12:50 - press return.
...and you cheered; now reap your bitter reward of hate.
Not that Facebook is required to do anything. But many Facebook users were rewarding them for censorship, so should not be anything but surprised when the reward for your support is increased censorship that will eventually encompass all content that is not Care Bears.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
computers, mobile devices, gaming consoles all can stream illegal material.
come to think of it, lets ban facebook, people use it to share kiddy porn, share links to illegal material, also facebook illegally collect data from non-users who have no way to tell them to stop like the members do. they also share personal data collected...
The reality is, kodi is legit device that streams legal content. If you decided to ban everything that can be used for illegal activity, then there will be nothing left but to twiddle our fingers - as long as that is what we are using our fingers for.
Here's the real-world answer:
Many different streaming appliances - but most commonly Amazon Fire Sticks - can be jailbroken to load additional software onto them. Kodi is the most common of the programs that are added. The reason for this is not because of Kodi itself, but because the third party repositories that allow pirated movie streams and other similar media to be consumed with relative ease, and obviously without paying for it or even the annoyance of picking out which streaming app has what, and so forth.
Less-tech-savvy folks tend to prefer these devices over traditional torrent downloads because ISPs have been stepping up on the *AA letters when public trackers are used. Unlike Plex or other DLNA servers they don't require a local server to be implemented, and the ability to buy a pre-configured device means that they don't even have to watch a Youtube tutorial to do it themselves.
Despite the fact that Kodi has done everything short of disallowing third party add-ons and repo addresses to dissuade people from utilizing pirated streams, their OSS software has been heavily circulated in this way, and since "Kodi" is the most prominently branded part of the process, it became the means by which non-Slashdot people identify "watching still-in-theaters movies, at home, for free".
And no, I don't own one...but at least five friends have asked me to jailbreak their Amazon Fire Sticks or Chromecasts for the purpose.
First they said they'd never censor. Then its just for cp. Then its just for that and terrorism. Then its just for all that and neonazis. Then its only all the former and the altright which are just like neonazis trust us. then its just for all that and conspiracy theories, then 'fake and misleading news'. Now its copyright infringement... But trust them, they'll just censor this little thing and no more.
Why do you think they big companies are getting rid of headphone jacks? Perfect way to implement a DRM flag.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard