This is quite an interesting read.


https://torrentfreak.com/unlikely-pi...uggest-170105/

On one level I feel sorry for the Kodi developers as they likely never intended for their product to become the de-facto name for piracy and obtaining copyrighted content but then on the other hand, if they're that bothered by it then they could either remove the add-on facility all together or just hobble it to the point where the add-ons maybe only are relevant to locally stored content on your media device of choice.

The other option is to rigidly enforce some sort of Add On Store policy so that only approved add ons that have passed Kodi verification can be loaded. A bit like the Apple App store.

That might weed out the pirates as they are unlikely to submit their products for verification and if no-one can load unapproved apps then that would kill the problem stone dead.

Unlikely to ever happen though. And no doubt the pirates would come up with some other way to get their products into peoples homes if it did.

I think you're absolutely right. There are many, many highly skilled coders out there who would likely easily find a way around any verification procedure.

If Denuvo can be broken, as it has been on a few titles, then Kodi would likely be small change in comparison.

I can only guess the developers of Kodi are earning money from it in it's current form, even though it's freeware, so they're likely reluctant to make any major changes as it might have an effect on that revenue stream.

If they hobble, or remove, the addons then there's no doubt that people would move to another platform - I know Plex has a basic add-on functionality so you'd likely see that become more prominent maybe.

Nobody makes money from Kodi, not even the pirate streaming sites as they get no ad revenue.

Kodi is open source.
If the developers decided to place some form of discriminating restrictions on plugins (which they never will) then someone would just fork the project and carry on like it never happened.

Chinese Android STB manufacturers may beg to differ.

That's a good point actually.

I suppose it's kind of the "lesser evil" to continue to develop it so they can retain some semblance of ownership over the system.

Makes me wonder what would happen if the Kodi team essentially just said "**** it" and fully embraced the piracy aspect ?.

There's a follow up article on torrenfreak today ..

https://torrentfreak.com/fact-lawyer...utions-170106/

It would seem to me that it is not possible to circumvent "effective technological measures", which would be the offence under section 296ZB of the CDPA. I would argue that if the measure was 'effective' then a person wouldn't be able to circumvent it........
Probably too simplified, but, whatever happens, I don't think they'll be very successful in holding back the tide. It will carry on in one form or another.
The lawyers will make money though!!!

Here's a thought though - if kodi can simply be forked and developed by another team in to some kind of all-inclusive pirating behemoth, why hasn't it been done already ?

the closest we've seen is open and libre elec that embed kodi in to a self contained OS, but i can't recall any actual standalone forked versions of kodi though, unless anyone knows any different?

SPMC a fork of Kodi by former Kodi android developer Koying, solves quite a few bugs in Kodi 16.1 including an annoying multi channel audio glitch (available on the Play Store).

Also another fork called DBMC, I've not tried it yet, but apparently it comes preset with some source URLs.

It's flimsy but I don't know how. I've never personally known anyone who used XBMC, now Kodi, for anything other than downloaded media of questionable origins, going back to when I first saw it on a purposely bought XB with XBMC ready in 2005ish. Streaming is another matter, I guess, but it was always heavily pushed as the Holy Grail for downloaders.

There's no need to fork it just for addons as its so easy to create a "fully loaded" kodi.
You could say that the folks who release these fully loaded builds (I won't mention any names) are in fact creating the behemoth you refer to.

Interesting. Wasn't aware of those. I've got libreelec installed on my android box, but i might have a look at them on my PC out of interest.


I suppose I can't really talk because I have Sickrage installed on my NAS drive for the US TV content I can't get from Sky and use Kodi to manage that, as well as all of the local content I have on the NAS as well.


Fair point.