[anebayuser]

I was selling two used Android boxes with XBMC pre-installed on Ebay. This morning I received an email from Ebay stating:

After reviewing your eBay account, we've taken the following action:
- Listings have been removed. A list of items that were removed can be viewed at the bottom of this message.
- We have credited any associated fees to your account.

Your listing was removed after the rights owner notified us that your item violated their copyright. We urge you to contact the rights owner directly for more information about why they requested the removal of your listing and whether you can relist the item.

For more information on our VeRO program, please visit::
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/vero/infoforusers.html

Please be sure your current and future listings follow these guidelines, keeping in mind that additional violations could result in the suspension of your account.

The rights owner or an agent authorized to act on behalf of the rights owner, XBMC Foundation, notified eBay that this listing violates intellectual property rights. When eBay receives a report of this type of violation, we remove the listing to comply with the law.

We encourage you to contact XBMC Foundation directly if you have any questions.

You can send an email to:
contact@xbmc.org

Can someone from the XBMC Foundation please provide clarification as to their position regards selling products with XBMC pre-loaded?

Why did XBMC Foundation act to get my listings pulled?

Will this happen with all future listings of products with XBMC pre-loaded?

---

And what about Amazon listings?

Other retailers?

[misa]

Strange, when you sell boxes with plain XBMC, what's wrong with that?

[anebayuser]

That's what I thought.

For clarity this was plain XBMC 13.1 and XBMC 12.0 with no pre-installed add-ons.

Both products had the factory firmware which included XBMC.

[anebayuser]

One listing contained the word 'Kodi' - saying something like 'compatible with Kodi 14 betas' but the other did not.

I've read various stuff about XBMC trying to commercialise XBMC by Trademarking the word 'Kodi', but they don't have a trademark on 'XBM'C so I can't understand why listings for older versions of XBMC might be pulled. If the Trademark was the reason..?

A proper statement from XBMC Foundation would be nice.

[nickr]

The foundation is not trying to commercialise. Quite the opposite. Read the threads about the name change, and think about whether you have the right to sell something branded as xbmc. You don't need to register a trade mark to prevent passing off.

I do not speak for the foundation. I am a lawyer (in case you want to pick a legal argument) .

[anebayuser]

Less than 2 hours after the listings were pulled I have got one reinstated by Ebay using the Vero reinstatement page: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/prog...ro-ov.html

Still would like a statement from XBMC Foundation though.

It's a crap situation for customers to have Ebay listings with lots of bids suddenly taken down.

---

The foundation is not trying to commercialise. Quite the opposite. Read the threads about the name change, and think about whether you have the right to sell something branded as xbmc. You don't need to register a trade mark to prevent passing off.

I do not speak for the foundation. I am a lawyer (in case you want to pick a legal argument) .

I am not selling anything 'branded as XBMC'. I am selling a product with the free and open source XBMC app pre-installed (in this case included in the product firmware)

I am not a lawyer(!) but XBMC will do their image with users a lot of harm by being over zealous in trying to control use of XBMC.

XBMC was created by thousands of individuals working for free over many years, all of whom were doing it for the community and not for 'XBMC Foundation'.

[anebayuser]

It interests me how this came to happen.

I guess 'XBMC Foundation' have employed a legal team to search for listings that they think infringes their rights (probably based on keywords and nothing else) and then have them removed without notice.

It smacks of the way pirated content is blanket removed by DMCA and is somewhat in contrast to the origins of XBMC and the ethos of it's userbase!

[Memphiz]

The only thing we pull off are boxes which have addons preinstalled which are made to access illegal content as those are harming our reputation. If your boxes where pulled without falling into that category it is just a false alert i guess.

I am not speaking for the XBMC Foundation here. I am just saying what i have read internally. Will poke the people which are handling the ebay stuff for an official statement.

Also let me say that your assumptions are really mirroring that you want to find something "against" the XBMC Foundation/us.

Fact 1 - we don't want to commercialise XBMC - the rename cause was cleared up multiple times now and i won't repeat it here.
Fact 2 - we don't have a legal team which crawls ebay for unwanted boxes. Some of our Team Members does this as port of the Hobby we all have here. Also i am pretty sure he looks close to each of those instead of just applying keywords.
Fact 3 stop posting your conspiracy theories - instead just ask and you will get an answer god damn.

[anebayuser]

The only thing we pull off are boxes which have addons preinstalled which are made to access illegal content as those are harming our reputation. If your boxes where pulled without falling into that category it is just a false alert i guess.

I am not speaking for the XBMC Foundation here. I am just saying what i have read internally. Will poke the people which are handling the ebay stuff for an official statement.

Thanks for the reply. None of the products we sell have any add-ons installed. This is in fact something which differentiates us from other sellers and which has been hurting our business (customers want the add-ons..). It's good news that you act to remove sellers of 'fully loaded XBMC' products.

---

Also let me say that your assumptions are really mirroring that you want to find something "against" the XBMC Foundation/us.

All I know is that this morning I woke up to see that XBMC Foundation had pulled two of my listings from Ebay for no obvious reason. It aroused suspicions.

[Martijn]

We ask e-bay to remove any items that fall under these

* Alteration of installed branded application without consent
* Adding add-ons to our application that violate DMCA
* Using our brand as advertisement in connection with media that violates DMCA
* Changing/altering our XBMC logo without consent
* Changing/altering our Zappy mascot without consent

So either adding or altering the default program as found on the xbmc.org website without our knowledge. This could either be by adding different add-ons which our against our policy. Connecting XBMC / KODI with "free movies and tv shows or sports". By saying this you are basically saying you have added extra add-ons.

The reasons we started doing these take down request, is the wild growth of eBay (or any other shop) that offer 'fully loaded XBMC' products. These gives XBMC a bad name in our view and offer little to no support to the buyers. Some of us go through e-bay and use certain keywords and check the listing on these "violators". Some times they are single sellers and some cases it's a whole shop that is promoting piracy. This needs to stop, certainly in the light of the new name we need to take preventive actions against abuse which taints the program as a whole. There are many many thousands of these and all need to be checked manually if they are dodgy. Who knows this time some slipped through accidentally. But there is likely a good reason they were on the list.
If you say that you sell boxes that have unaltered versions which the manufacturer installed, they can still violate our policy. We already need to notify companies who make they boxes that they violate the policy. They unknowingly add add-ons that breach DMCA. Once we notify them they realise their mistake and take appropriate actions. So again saying that you sell unmodified boxes from a manufacturer doesn't mean it's against the policy. If they do better notify the manufacturer from whom you got these.

We are not trying to be the boogie-man or commercialising the product. It is merely to protect the existence of the program and remove or counter the negative vibe that hangs around it due to a minority.

and read what Memphiz said. Stop doing conspiracies. It is a well known fact since years that we do not want anything to do as a group or foundation with they possibly illegitimate practises (note they can vary by country but we operate under US law and as such we protect it)


Let me make it very clear, yes XBMC / KODI is open source and you can use the code to your liking as long as you respect the GPLv2 license. Whoever XBMC / KODI are names we should and can protect against abuse. There is nothing wrong with selling boxes with XBMC or KODi on it. We love that people try to spread these. We just don't want any one altering it and by that saying "ey this is XBMC which by default gives you a crap load of free movies and tv shows".

Our general trademark policy for both brands:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Off...ark_Policy
http://kodi.wiki/view/Official:List_of_F...Trademarks
http://kodi.wiki/view/Official:Trademark_Policy_FAQ

To add you also ignored eBay policy with this:

If your listing was reported by a VeRO participant, and you believe that your listing was removed in error, try to contact the rights owner directly. The email we sent you about the removal will include their contact information. If the rights owner agrees that they made a mistake, have them email eBay and we'll allow you to relist your item.
If you are unable to resolve your dispute with the rights owner directly, contact us.

Did you contact us? Likely not else you would have know the answer already.



Hope that clears it up.

[anebayuser]

Did you contact us?

I am doing so here. It seemed contacting Ebay simulataneously was also a good idea - they put the listing back up quickly.

It's good that you're acting against fully load retailers.

I'm not going to give away who I am but my business is vocal in campaigning against the fully loaded retailers. It's an accident waiting to happen.

In this case I think you applied too broad a brush. One product has a custom version of XBMC 13.3 approved by you (at least that's what it's relatively large Android box manufacturer says!). If you want this product removed from Ebay you're looking at thousands of listings. The other product has vanilla XBMC 12.0 (it's old).

Thanks for the reply. It does clear things up.

[Martijn]

Did you contact us?

I am doing so here. It seemed contacting Ebay simulataneously was also a good idea - they put the listing back up quickly.

"ask on the forum" is not what eBay says.

It's good that you're acting against fully load retailers.

I'm not going to give away who I am but my business is vocal in campaigning against the fully loaded retailers. It's an accident waiting to happen.

great and we appropriate that there are sellers who are against this and try to do the right thing.

In this case I think you applied too broad a brush. One product has a custom version of XBMC 13.3 approved by you (at least that's what it's relatively large Android box manufacturer says!). If you want this product removed from Ebay you're looking at thousands of listings. The other product has vanilla XBMC 12.0 (it's old).

There is no official 13.3 official version, as such we cannot "approve it". So if they claim so we would like to know which company and what they add extra.

Thanks for the reply. It does clear things up.

no problem

[Martijn]

to clarify using an example of a reply we got, which is wrong or certainly grey area.....

The android box i sell which has the xbmc/kodi software is not altered in anyway, neither do i install any extra addons.
I use the configuration wiazrd which installs the addons that are only within xbmc/kodi, no additional addons are installed.
What made you think extra addons are installed? as i do not provide this, neither is this mentioned in any of the listings.
Kind Regards

so he doesn't alter it and doesn't install add-ons, however he does use configuration wizard to install add-ons. XBMC Foundation does not provide any "wizard" and certainly not to install add-ons. So mentioning "configuration wizard" is already a trigger that the listing is fishy.

[nickr]

When one sees news like this http://torrentfreak.com/fact-wipes-pirat...ub-141026/ one sees why there are efforts being made to keep XBMC squeaky.

[HeresJohnny]

The foundation is not trying to commercialise. Quite the opposite. Read the threads about the name change, and think about whether you have the right to sell something branded as xbmc. You don't need to register a trade mark to prevent passing off.

I do not speak for the foundation. I am a lawyer (in case you want to pick a legal argument) .

Great, the lawyer card. I'm a lawyer, too. And what I read here about defending the brand etc. sounds a bit self-righteous at times. Just food for thought: You have moved an entire userbase to a new brand "Kodi". Have you asked their consent? Did they agree to any data protection provisions? I'm suddenly getting emails from kodi.tv. Did anyone ask for my permission? You might have conferred with trademark lawyers, but not with anybody specialized in internet law, good people of Kodi. Also,


www.kodi.de

Just saying...