2016-05-09, 04:19
My apologies in advance to anyone/everyone who didn't want to see yet another thread on this topic pop up here. (But I hope and feel this one may perhaps cover or relate to some things that haven't been clearly touched on elsewhere.)
My apologies in advance also to anyone/everone on Team KODI if this post or any follow-ups generates any consternation of any kind, in any way, for any member of the Foundation or Team KODI. That is certainly not my intent.
Today I have been trying to educate myself by reading through at least a couple of the threads here in the forums... some of which are quite long... regarding the whole set of issues relating to so-called "pirate boxes", most or all of which seems to have become a real serious issue mostly or only since the start of the current calendar year (2016). What I have managed to get through so far has left me with a short list of questions that I haven't seen clear answers for. Here I will put those questions, followed by just a couple of brief comments.
1) Does the Foundation charge licensing fees for use of the trademarked name "KODI[tm]" and are the revenues derived therefrom used, in whole or in part, to cover the legal and other expenses associated with protecting that trademark? If not, why not?
As it happens I own a Sony[tm] branded A/V Receiver. On the front panel of this receiver, the trademarked logos for dts-hd[tm] and also Dolby Digital[tm] are clearly but unobtrusively displayed. My guess is that Sony has permission and legal right to use these trademarked logos in this way as part of a licensing deal with the relevant companies, which covers both the use of the technologies and also use of the relevant trademarks, including but not limited to logos, on licensed Sony products, packaging, and advertising. This all seems perfecly sensible to me, however I have yet to see a single kind of hardware box that is similarly emblazoned with the official trademarked Kodi logo... and this somewhat mystifies me. Did I just miss seeing such boxes advertised for sale? Do any such actually exist? If not, why not? It is a lovely logo, and I have trouble imagining any honest businessman who would balk at signing a legal agreement to license the use of said logo, i.e. in exchange for a modest fee and a few reasonable contractual restrictions, e.g. ones which disallow pre-loading of certain add-on, or any/all add-ons having certain well-defined technical properties.
2) Given that Team KODI and/or the Foundation do appear to have come out rather strongly and explicitly against the sale and/or advertisment of various specific hardware boxes, in particular those being actively advertised as "fully loaded", and given that there appears to be a sizable number of such boxes currently for sale on both Amazon[tm] and eBay[tm] many or most of which sport their own individual and specific brand names, and lastly, given the obvious cost and difficulties associated with enforcement of trademarks via formal legal processes, wouldn't it behoove the Foundation and/or Team KODI[tm] to create, maintain, and prominently publish a list of those specific hardware box brand names which the Foundation and/or Team KODI believe, in good faith, to be violating one or more of the Foundation's registered trademarks?
The above question is prompted by the fact that today, I was just about to purchase a dirt cheap "media box" that I just happened to come across on Amazon. It is advertised as having Kodi on it, but then I looked and noticed the additional words "fully loaded" which I believe, based on what I've read, is indicative of some add-on stuff that is giving Team KODI heartburn, and which is causing much gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair in many quarters. I don't want to mention the specific brand name of this specific box, because that's almost entirely irrelevant. As I learned for the first time today, a simple search on Amazon for "KODI fully loaded" turns up at least dozens, or more likely hundreds of these things, most seemingly sporting their own distinctive brand names. A similar search on eBay turns up thousands. Now, as it happens, I like Kodi[tm]. I like the software. A lot. I like using it. A lot. And I appreciate all of the effort that has been invested by all of the people who have worked on it, and who continue to work on it, even as we speak. So I'm understandably not keen to be giving money to "the enemy", i.e. box vendors who are creating problems for, and/or pissing off the Kodi developers or the Kodi community. But how can I know whether or not the specific box I was looking at is one of the bad ones? Is the current recommended/operative rule to just assume that anything sporting the magic words "fully loaded" is almost certainly one of the ones that Team KODI would prefer that I not purchase? All things considered, I just can't help but think that it would be Nice[tm] if somewhere on the Kodi web site there was an alphabetized list of known "bad box" brands. That way I could just look up brand "XYZZY Media Box" and know that Team KODI would greatly prefer it if I gave my money to somebody else. Having said that, I must also admit that yes, creating, maintaining, and publishing such a list would require non-zero effort, and thus, I probably shouldn't even be floating the idea unless I'm also volunteering to be the list maintainer... an activity that, alas, I personally probably don't have time for. Despite this, I felt that I should at least raise the idea and point out its possible benefits anyway. The good news is that maintaining such a list could almost certainly be done by someone who lacks coding skills, in other words the effort need not draw away resources from actual Kodi development.
3) Does the Foundation own the copyright on the Confluence[tm] initial splash screen image?
I only mention this because I noticed that at least some of these "fully loaded" boxen seem to include in their advertising that rather familiar image of the Confluence splash screen. It is certainly nice/useful that the Kodi project has a set of its own legally registered trademarks, but if it also and separately has some of its own copyrighted images, e.g. the Confluence splash screen, then that potentially opens up a whole separate area of law... including DMCA takedown... that can be applied to the problem of these boxes. In fact, now that I think of it... hummm... I ain't no intellectual property lawyer, and I don't even play one on TV, however It seems to me at least theoretically plausible that various official Kodi logos could be registered as copyrighted images, thus making anybody using them in ways not consistant with the wishes of the Foundation potential targets of DMCA takedown notices. Sure, one or more of the legal entities negatively impacted by any such hypotherical notices could in theory challenge the legitimacy of the relevant image copyrights, but given that anybody wishing to seriously do so would have to hire definitively non-cheap legal talent in order to have any hope of even getting past first base with such a challenge, I suspect that most of these pirate box sellers would just throw in the towel and quit fighting, i.e. they would either simply quit selling boxes, or else they would sign up to become official (& legal) Kodi trademark licensees... getting rid of the offending pre-loaded apps in the process. Some few might try just dodging the bullet by changing their brand name and company name, but after about the fifth time they find they've had to do this... in order to try to evade the DMCA takedown notices... I think they will come to understand that their's is not really a sustainable long-term business model.
4) Can some kind soul please explain the term "youtuber" for me?
I only encountered this term for the first time today, and only in contexts where everybody discussing these "youtubers" apparently already knew exactly what was being discussed... but I personally, don't. I gather that it refers to some individuals who are publishing some sorts of "how to" guides on YouTube... not actual pirated content but just how-to videos explaining how to add certain unapproved third-party add-ons to Kodi which exist primarily or exclusively to obtain pirated content. Is that about the size of it? Assuming that I did correctly understand that part, at least, I sorry to say that I still don't understand the problem/issue of these "youtubers". I did see at least one comment which bemoaned the (alleged) fact that these people are somehow making substantial money by doing what they are doing, but since I personally am, regretably, entirely ignorant of the way(s) in which people posting videos on Youtube can monitize or profit from that activity, I hope somewhat here will exlain it to me, with special emphasis on these specific "youtubers" that seem to be causing angst within the Kodi community, specifically. And oh, by the way, if you reply to this question, please do so in a manner as devoid of emotion as you can possibly manage. I see that this is a topic that stirs more than a little emotion on the part of many forum participants, but please save it. I am just looking for a clinical explanation of the issue/problem, not a tirade about how person XYZ is the devil incarnate. Please leave that sort of stuff for the ex-Speaker of the House, or else for The Donald. I just want a basic understanding of what the issue is, because I am 100% ignorant about this, and coming in cold.
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Ok, so that's all my questions. Now for two brief comments.
1) A humble suggestion for Team Kodi & The Foundation... undoubtedly worth what you paid for it: Stop conflating your efforts to enforce your legal trademark and copyright rights with the issue of "piracy". In fact, I'll go further and say that Team Kodi & The Fountation should go back, even now, and try your best to erase, delete, remove, and expunge frm the public record any and all suggestions and/or references to recent attempts to enforce your trademarks as having anything at all to do with "piracy".
I make the above suggestion for two reasons, to wit:
1) As I understand it, if you want to have and hold a trademark, you are legally obligated to make some effort to defend it. Otherwise you lose it, or rather all rights to enforce it. Defending it only in a limited and highly selective fashion, e.g. with respect to certain violations that, for reasons unrelated to general marketability, you find to be especially onerous to your values or goals, could perhaps be construed as being legally equivalent to deliberately turning a blind eye and not actively enforcing your trademarks whenever you are aware of them being violated. In other words, if you merely wink and nod at unlicensed uses of your trademarks in conjunction with some products that do not offend your sensibilities, even as you come down like a ton of bricks on other unlicensed misuses of your trademarks, you may be inadvertantly giving those legal entities who you most want to wield your trademarks against ammunition to defeat the very legitimacy and/or enforcability of your trademarks in any context.
2) By conflating the enforcement of your trademarks wth the issue of "piracy", as anyone who has looked at the relevant recent threads here can readily attest, you open up the whole Pandora's (TV?) Box of questions... in most cases silly ones, but in other cases less so... about whether or not Kodi, standing alone and without any add-ons at all, is or is not a software "piracy box".
I myself have no intention, here, now, or elsewhere, at any time of plumbing the depths of the legal morass of what does or does not constitute "piracy" either under U.S. law or within any other jurisdiction. The thread I have started here is certainly not the place for all that, and frankly, I'm not even interested in having any part of that discussion. (If I suddenly become so, I will go find some entirely different web site forum where IP lawyers hang out and argue, ad infinitum, about numbers of angels dancing on the head of 17 USC 107.) I do however feel compelled to point out, just briefly, that I just now took my legally-owned, store-bought DVD of the movie Syriana... which I presume and believe to be encrypted via CSS... and popped in into my PeeCee, fired up the copy of Kodi 16.0 that I have installed thereon, and it played the DVD beautifully. I may be wrong about this, but as I understand it, if I had asked, or alternatively, if I did now ask the MPAA for its opinion on my actions, they would tell me that, as far as they are concerned, I am a "pirate", simply for doing what I just described. And likewise, I rather doubt that Fox, or Paramount, or Warner Brothers are ever likely to come out with any sort of full-throated endorsements of Kodi as a perfectly legal tool for watching their content. They and the MPAA may be perfectly wrong, legally speaking, when they make broad pronouncements about the actual legality of this or that, but that's not the point. The point is that it doesn't serve Team Kodi, The Foundation, or the Kodi community generally to draw any kind of connection between the unarguably reasonable and legitimate efforts to enforce the Foundation's 100% legitimate legally-registered trademarks, and the entirely separate, often emotional, and almost always confusing, misinterpreted, and opinionated topic of "piracy". Doing so only opens up threads and discussions, here and elsewhere, typically consisting of more heat than light, about the legal and/or moral and/or ethical legitimacy of Kodi itself, a topic upon which almost everybody seems to have a different opinion, and which is (or should be, at any rate) completely unrelated to the Foundation's legal right to enforce its trademarks... a right which is, in my opinion, both inarguable and also not the least bit controversial.
2) I agree with all those who think that deliberately hobbling Kodi, e.g. by eliminating various widely used features that are not inherently piracy-oriented, is a bad idea.
I have absolute trust and faith that Team KODI understands the folly of calls to "build a wall" to keep the bad add-ons out. Let's leave that kind of retoric to the politicians. Embargos, walls, and prohibitions almost invariably end up being porous and do not actually work in practice. The sensible response to these kinds of problems is to find the legal entities who are profiting from the bad behavior and then make their lives... ummm... complicated. (Don't get me started about U.S. illegal immigration! I said don't get me started!)
P.S. At the very least, this recent bruhaha over the so-called "pirate boxes" motivated me to do something that I haven't done in quite a while, but should have. Today I made another modest donation to Kodi. (Hey! But I didn't get the hoped-for "Donor" designator below my handle in forum posts! What gives?!? Instead I am still just "Señor member"... and I don't even speak Spanish! :-)
My apologies in advance also to anyone/everone on Team KODI if this post or any follow-ups generates any consternation of any kind, in any way, for any member of the Foundation or Team KODI. That is certainly not my intent.
Today I have been trying to educate myself by reading through at least a couple of the threads here in the forums... some of which are quite long... regarding the whole set of issues relating to so-called "pirate boxes", most or all of which seems to have become a real serious issue mostly or only since the start of the current calendar year (2016). What I have managed to get through so far has left me with a short list of questions that I haven't seen clear answers for. Here I will put those questions, followed by just a couple of brief comments.
1) Does the Foundation charge licensing fees for use of the trademarked name "KODI[tm]" and are the revenues derived therefrom used, in whole or in part, to cover the legal and other expenses associated with protecting that trademark? If not, why not?
As it happens I own a Sony[tm] branded A/V Receiver. On the front panel of this receiver, the trademarked logos for dts-hd[tm] and also Dolby Digital[tm] are clearly but unobtrusively displayed. My guess is that Sony has permission and legal right to use these trademarked logos in this way as part of a licensing deal with the relevant companies, which covers both the use of the technologies and also use of the relevant trademarks, including but not limited to logos, on licensed Sony products, packaging, and advertising. This all seems perfecly sensible to me, however I have yet to see a single kind of hardware box that is similarly emblazoned with the official trademarked Kodi logo... and this somewhat mystifies me. Did I just miss seeing such boxes advertised for sale? Do any such actually exist? If not, why not? It is a lovely logo, and I have trouble imagining any honest businessman who would balk at signing a legal agreement to license the use of said logo, i.e. in exchange for a modest fee and a few reasonable contractual restrictions, e.g. ones which disallow pre-loading of certain add-on, or any/all add-ons having certain well-defined technical properties.
2) Given that Team KODI and/or the Foundation do appear to have come out rather strongly and explicitly against the sale and/or advertisment of various specific hardware boxes, in particular those being actively advertised as "fully loaded", and given that there appears to be a sizable number of such boxes currently for sale on both Amazon[tm] and eBay[tm] many or most of which sport their own individual and specific brand names, and lastly, given the obvious cost and difficulties associated with enforcement of trademarks via formal legal processes, wouldn't it behoove the Foundation and/or Team KODI[tm] to create, maintain, and prominently publish a list of those specific hardware box brand names which the Foundation and/or Team KODI believe, in good faith, to be violating one or more of the Foundation's registered trademarks?
The above question is prompted by the fact that today, I was just about to purchase a dirt cheap "media box" that I just happened to come across on Amazon. It is advertised as having Kodi on it, but then I looked and noticed the additional words "fully loaded" which I believe, based on what I've read, is indicative of some add-on stuff that is giving Team KODI heartburn, and which is causing much gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair in many quarters. I don't want to mention the specific brand name of this specific box, because that's almost entirely irrelevant. As I learned for the first time today, a simple search on Amazon for "KODI fully loaded" turns up at least dozens, or more likely hundreds of these things, most seemingly sporting their own distinctive brand names. A similar search on eBay turns up thousands. Now, as it happens, I like Kodi[tm]. I like the software. A lot. I like using it. A lot. And I appreciate all of the effort that has been invested by all of the people who have worked on it, and who continue to work on it, even as we speak. So I'm understandably not keen to be giving money to "the enemy", i.e. box vendors who are creating problems for, and/or pissing off the Kodi developers or the Kodi community. But how can I know whether or not the specific box I was looking at is one of the bad ones? Is the current recommended/operative rule to just assume that anything sporting the magic words "fully loaded" is almost certainly one of the ones that Team KODI would prefer that I not purchase? All things considered, I just can't help but think that it would be Nice[tm] if somewhere on the Kodi web site there was an alphabetized list of known "bad box" brands. That way I could just look up brand "XYZZY Media Box" and know that Team KODI would greatly prefer it if I gave my money to somebody else. Having said that, I must also admit that yes, creating, maintaining, and publishing such a list would require non-zero effort, and thus, I probably shouldn't even be floating the idea unless I'm also volunteering to be the list maintainer... an activity that, alas, I personally probably don't have time for. Despite this, I felt that I should at least raise the idea and point out its possible benefits anyway. The good news is that maintaining such a list could almost certainly be done by someone who lacks coding skills, in other words the effort need not draw away resources from actual Kodi development.
3) Does the Foundation own the copyright on the Confluence[tm] initial splash screen image?
I only mention this because I noticed that at least some of these "fully loaded" boxen seem to include in their advertising that rather familiar image of the Confluence splash screen. It is certainly nice/useful that the Kodi project has a set of its own legally registered trademarks, but if it also and separately has some of its own copyrighted images, e.g. the Confluence splash screen, then that potentially opens up a whole separate area of law... including DMCA takedown... that can be applied to the problem of these boxes. In fact, now that I think of it... hummm... I ain't no intellectual property lawyer, and I don't even play one on TV, however It seems to me at least theoretically plausible that various official Kodi logos could be registered as copyrighted images, thus making anybody using them in ways not consistant with the wishes of the Foundation potential targets of DMCA takedown notices. Sure, one or more of the legal entities negatively impacted by any such hypotherical notices could in theory challenge the legitimacy of the relevant image copyrights, but given that anybody wishing to seriously do so would have to hire definitively non-cheap legal talent in order to have any hope of even getting past first base with such a challenge, I suspect that most of these pirate box sellers would just throw in the towel and quit fighting, i.e. they would either simply quit selling boxes, or else they would sign up to become official (& legal) Kodi trademark licensees... getting rid of the offending pre-loaded apps in the process. Some few might try just dodging the bullet by changing their brand name and company name, but after about the fifth time they find they've had to do this... in order to try to evade the DMCA takedown notices... I think they will come to understand that their's is not really a sustainable long-term business model.
4) Can some kind soul please explain the term "youtuber" for me?
I only encountered this term for the first time today, and only in contexts where everybody discussing these "youtubers" apparently already knew exactly what was being discussed... but I personally, don't. I gather that it refers to some individuals who are publishing some sorts of "how to" guides on YouTube... not actual pirated content but just how-to videos explaining how to add certain unapproved third-party add-ons to Kodi which exist primarily or exclusively to obtain pirated content. Is that about the size of it? Assuming that I did correctly understand that part, at least, I sorry to say that I still don't understand the problem/issue of these "youtubers". I did see at least one comment which bemoaned the (alleged) fact that these people are somehow making substantial money by doing what they are doing, but since I personally am, regretably, entirely ignorant of the way(s) in which people posting videos on Youtube can monitize or profit from that activity, I hope somewhat here will exlain it to me, with special emphasis on these specific "youtubers" that seem to be causing angst within the Kodi community, specifically. And oh, by the way, if you reply to this question, please do so in a manner as devoid of emotion as you can possibly manage. I see that this is a topic that stirs more than a little emotion on the part of many forum participants, but please save it. I am just looking for a clinical explanation of the issue/problem, not a tirade about how person XYZ is the devil incarnate. Please leave that sort of stuff for the ex-Speaker of the House, or else for The Donald. I just want a basic understanding of what the issue is, because I am 100% ignorant about this, and coming in cold.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ok, so that's all my questions. Now for two brief comments.
1) A humble suggestion for Team Kodi & The Foundation... undoubtedly worth what you paid for it: Stop conflating your efforts to enforce your legal trademark and copyright rights with the issue of "piracy". In fact, I'll go further and say that Team Kodi & The Fountation should go back, even now, and try your best to erase, delete, remove, and expunge frm the public record any and all suggestions and/or references to recent attempts to enforce your trademarks as having anything at all to do with "piracy".
I make the above suggestion for two reasons, to wit:
1) As I understand it, if you want to have and hold a trademark, you are legally obligated to make some effort to defend it. Otherwise you lose it, or rather all rights to enforce it. Defending it only in a limited and highly selective fashion, e.g. with respect to certain violations that, for reasons unrelated to general marketability, you find to be especially onerous to your values or goals, could perhaps be construed as being legally equivalent to deliberately turning a blind eye and not actively enforcing your trademarks whenever you are aware of them being violated. In other words, if you merely wink and nod at unlicensed uses of your trademarks in conjunction with some products that do not offend your sensibilities, even as you come down like a ton of bricks on other unlicensed misuses of your trademarks, you may be inadvertantly giving those legal entities who you most want to wield your trademarks against ammunition to defeat the very legitimacy and/or enforcability of your trademarks in any context.
2) By conflating the enforcement of your trademarks wth the issue of "piracy", as anyone who has looked at the relevant recent threads here can readily attest, you open up the whole Pandora's (TV?) Box of questions... in most cases silly ones, but in other cases less so... about whether or not Kodi, standing alone and without any add-ons at all, is or is not a software "piracy box".
I myself have no intention, here, now, or elsewhere, at any time of plumbing the depths of the legal morass of what does or does not constitute "piracy" either under U.S. law or within any other jurisdiction. The thread I have started here is certainly not the place for all that, and frankly, I'm not even interested in having any part of that discussion. (If I suddenly become so, I will go find some entirely different web site forum where IP lawyers hang out and argue, ad infinitum, about numbers of angels dancing on the head of 17 USC 107.) I do however feel compelled to point out, just briefly, that I just now took my legally-owned, store-bought DVD of the movie Syriana... which I presume and believe to be encrypted via CSS... and popped in into my PeeCee, fired up the copy of Kodi 16.0 that I have installed thereon, and it played the DVD beautifully. I may be wrong about this, but as I understand it, if I had asked, or alternatively, if I did now ask the MPAA for its opinion on my actions, they would tell me that, as far as they are concerned, I am a "pirate", simply for doing what I just described. And likewise, I rather doubt that Fox, or Paramount, or Warner Brothers are ever likely to come out with any sort of full-throated endorsements of Kodi as a perfectly legal tool for watching their content. They and the MPAA may be perfectly wrong, legally speaking, when they make broad pronouncements about the actual legality of this or that, but that's not the point. The point is that it doesn't serve Team Kodi, The Foundation, or the Kodi community generally to draw any kind of connection between the unarguably reasonable and legitimate efforts to enforce the Foundation's 100% legitimate legally-registered trademarks, and the entirely separate, often emotional, and almost always confusing, misinterpreted, and opinionated topic of "piracy". Doing so only opens up threads and discussions, here and elsewhere, typically consisting of more heat than light, about the legal and/or moral and/or ethical legitimacy of Kodi itself, a topic upon which almost everybody seems to have a different opinion, and which is (or should be, at any rate) completely unrelated to the Foundation's legal right to enforce its trademarks... a right which is, in my opinion, both inarguable and also not the least bit controversial.
2) I agree with all those who think that deliberately hobbling Kodi, e.g. by eliminating various widely used features that are not inherently piracy-oriented, is a bad idea.
I have absolute trust and faith that Team KODI understands the folly of calls to "build a wall" to keep the bad add-ons out. Let's leave that kind of retoric to the politicians. Embargos, walls, and prohibitions almost invariably end up being porous and do not actually work in practice. The sensible response to these kinds of problems is to find the legal entities who are profiting from the bad behavior and then make their lives... ummm... complicated. (Don't get me started about U.S. illegal immigration! I said don't get me started!)
P.S. At the very least, this recent bruhaha over the so-called "pirate boxes" motivated me to do something that I haven't done in quite a while, but should have. Today I made another modest donation to Kodi. (Hey! But I didn't get the hoped-for "Donor" designator below my handle in forum posts! What gives?!? Instead I am still just "Señor member"... and I don't even speak Spanish! :-)
