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Kodi
big brother 9
Posts: 18,153 Forum Member
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I have heard about these things many time.
I have a vague idea as to what they are but also no they are illegal.
Do you have one? Is it worth the risk?
How do they work? And how much roughly are they?
I have a vague idea as to what they are but also no they are illegal.
Do you have one? Is it worth the risk?
How do they work? And how much roughly are they?
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Many will insist that these are what is illegal but i think the correct position is that it's still somewhat of a grey area that they're looking to tackle.
Kodi can be installed on a number of different devices and is often installed on small, android set-top boxes that are plugged directly into your television. They average anywhere from £20 quid and up.
Kodi is a media player for computers ie it will play movies, music etc that are on your hard drive - this much is legal. The boxes are basically small computers with Kodi loaded. The thing that's getting movie + TV folk's knickers in a twist is software called addons - these are used to watch movies etc for free on Kodi - this is the illegal bit.
Most computer savvy people know where to go to illegally download movies - I'm referring to so-called cyberlockers not bittorrent. Kodi addons trawl the internet (known as scraping) looking for content (movies, TV) and serve up lists that any non tech dude can just click and bingo - the latest blockbuster for nix. The movies are streamed ie downloaded and watched a bit at a time as opposed to downloading the whole movie before you watch it. Making piracy easy for everyone is what all the fuss is about.
Apart from the illegality, there's a downside - the stuff on the lists don't always work. This means you can spend ages looking through page after page until you find a movie or TV show that looks interesting. You click it and wait, and wait, and wait - then a box pops up 'stream not available'. Start again . . .
The reason a lot of stuff isn't available is that the cyberlockers try to block Kodi addons getting their stuff - they are not getting click-through advertising revenue, so are losing money. Criminals stealing from criminals - would you adam 'n' eve it ?
I heard that there was a Euro court ruling that streaming is legal for punters, as opposed to the guys providing the content who are breaking the law. The people selling the boxes are also breaking the law - and several have been jailed recently. It's all still a grey area legal-wise, but the various agencies have Kodi users in their sights.
Kodi is some software (an App) that can run on Android, Raspberry Pi, Linux, Windows, and Google Chrome devices. There are Android media boxes that come pre-loaded with Kodi and also with a whole load of bolt-ons (add-ons) that extend the functionality. These boxes cost from £30 to £60 generally. Alternatively you can download the Kodi app on to a smart phone or tablet and run it from there. The same goes for getting the add-ons.
Kodi is not illegal to use. All it is is a media player app. Where you get the content from though.... that's a different story.
Using Kodi for what it was designed to do - which is to make it simple to play a variety of different video and audio file formats - that's perfectly fine. However, 3rd party companies have developed these add-ons which go beyond the scope of Kodi's functionality. They allow folk to tap in to streamed video and audio where there are some serious questions about how the content has been made available. That brings us the the whole legal and moral questions about data sharing of someone else's copyrighted content.
A lot of folk try to justify their actions by reasoning that it wasn't them that ripped off the original film/video/sports broadcast/album, and that that somehow makes it okay to watch/listen to that content. You'll even see some references in the more heated debates about a 2014 court ruling that says (in effect) it's okay to view copyrighted material via a streamer. What those who use that argument conveniently forget is that the ruling didn't apply to content being ripped off. That case and it's ruling were more akin to "I bought the CD and still own it. I'd like to listen to it in a different form - say my MP3 player". That's very different from "Some person I never met copied a film, uploadeded it to a streaming site, and now I'm watching it for nothing "
You can probably tell my stance on these issues. I have a Kodi box. I have ripped all my Blu-rays, DVDs and CDs to a big hard drive that's connected via my home network. This is how I watch my films and how I play background music. I've had a look at some of the streamed content and decided it wasn't for me. I'm not so desperate to see a film that I'm happy with watching a camcorder recording of the cinema screening complete with people moving about in the audience. Sport isn't my thing either, but from what I've seen the quality of live football very much depends on how fast your BB service is and how many other people are watching at the same time. I've seen some games where it looks like a early Youtube video; all blocky and smeary. I guess what people are prepared to put up with because they see it as "free" is lower quality than if they paid for it.
Analogous to how Android boxes have made the techy subject of piracy available to non-techy people.
Or did I mean metaphor (or simile ?) XKCD .
BTW - if that's brevity, how long are your normal posts ?
[ brevity's sake . . . ]
Have a look in TV and Home Technology.
Perhaps some of your friends have contributed money through subscriptions, purchases, rentals or ticket prices to make it possible for all of the stuff you watch to be made. I know I and others have.