@
Denny
There is work going on that will do exactly as you desire and better. However, it takes time to do it properly. The media import branch being worked on by Montelesse along the Pseudo TV plugin can achieve exactly what you describe. It will aggregate your chosen plugins as sources of content, include all you local content and your friends content too. It is not ready yet. But that does not mean that it is not being worked on.
The standards of Team Kodi is a little bit higher than some of those addon developers, and box sellers. So a bit of patience is required.
Maybe you should encourage some of those developers to contribute to the project. Just remember to the tell that their pay will be the same as the members of Team Kodi.
Cheers,
LongMan
(2016-09-26, 18:04)Denny Wrote: [ -> ]I disconnected that external hard drive and tossed it in a drawer.
You really shouldn't toss a hard drive around, they can be easily damaged.
RLW
(2016-09-26, 22:18)da-anda Wrote: [ -> ]sad fact is that providing piracy content seems to be way way easier than legal content thanks to pointless DRM
Don't forget region blocking
(2016-09-26, 23:27)LongMan Wrote: [ -> ]@Denny
There is work going on that will do exactly as you desire and better. However, it takes time to do it properly. The media import branch being worked on by Montelesse along the Pseudo TV plugin can achieve exactly what you describe. It will aggregate your chosen plugins as sources of content, include all you local content and your friends content too. It is not ready yet. But that does not mean that it is not being worked on.
The standards of Team Kodi is a little bit higher than some of those addon developers, and box sellers. So a bit of patience is required.
Maybe you should encourage some of those developers to contribute to the project. Just remember to the tell that their pay will be the same as the members of Team Kodi.
Cheers,
LongMan
This is good news!
(2016-09-26, 23:53)0wing Wrote: [ -> ] (2016-09-26, 22:18)da-anda Wrote: [ -> ]sad fact is that providing piracy content seems to be way way easier than legal content thanks to pointless DRM
Don't forget region blocking
geo blocking has legal backgrounds (no license to broadcast to certain countries etc), so these are IMO fine and should be respected (even though it sucks in times). But DRM just doesn't serve any purpose. It only makes the life of paying customers harder in all ways (constant firmware updates of devices, like bluray players, no freedom to watch with the software of choice...) while pirates have 1-click solutions with all possible comfort. This is just wrong in so many ways, but this is nothing we can influence - the media industry has to wake up. They should stop wasting huge amounts of money in DRM solutions and rather lower the prices for on demand content. Make it affordable and easy to consume, then more people will be willing to pay. That's IMO the way to fight piracy, not DRM and whatever else copy protection. Pirates will always find a way to pirate, so copy protection is pointless. And a real pirate will never pay for a movie that can't be pirated - he just won't watch it then. IMO even if all these piracy boxes would charge a monthly fee of like 10$ the regular customer of these boxes would be willing to pay - it's the comfort and wide selection of brand new content that make these illegal add-ons so popular, not necessarily the fact that everything is free to watch.
That's how I think about it.
There was a very good article I was reading the other day about US copyright, and how most content companies don't understand that copyright law is not supposed to restrict usage, only copies. Things like geoblocking, device restrictions, and so on, are not actually protected by copyright in the US. Copyright says that once you have your copy, so long as you are not making another copy (which is a tricky definition for digital items) then you can do whatever you want with that copy. Even if you go to another country.
I don't know how true this is globally, but it's one of the reasons I hate geoblocking. If a person has legal access to content from one country, they should be able to access it from anywhere. Geoblocking is a lazy way to do things, IMO. The entire concept of local license negotiation is basically a money grab in 2016 (in the past it was necessary from a logistical standpoint, but that is no longer the case).
Of course, then the DMCA made a mess in the US of things with DRM, but that's another issue..
(2016-09-27, 10:36)da-anda Wrote: [ -> ] (2016-09-26, 23:53)0wing Wrote: [ -> ] (2016-09-26, 22:18)da-anda Wrote: [ -> ]sad fact is that providing piracy content seems to be way way easier than legal content thanks to pointless DRM
Don't forget region blocking
geo blocking has legal backgrounds (no license to broadcast to certain countries etc), so these are IMO fine and should be respected (even though it sucks in times). But DRM just doesn't serve any purpose. It only makes the life of paying customers harder in all ways (constant firmware updates of devices, like bluray players, no freedom to watch with the software of choice...) while pirates have 1-click solutions with all possible comfort. This is just wrong in so many ways, but this is nothing we can influence - the media industry has to wake up. They should stop wasting huge amounts of money in DRM solutions and rather lower the prices for on demand content. Make it affordable and easy to consume, then more people will be willing to pay. That's IMO the way to fight piracy, not DRM and whatever else copy protection. Pirates will always find a way to pirate, so copy protection is pointless. And a real pirate will never pay for a movie that can't be pirated - he just won't watch it then. IMO even if all these piracy boxes would charge a monthly fee of like 10$ the regular customer of these boxes would be willing to pay - it's the comfort and wide selection of brand new content that make these illegal add-ons so popular, not necessarily the fact that everything is free to watch.
That's how I think about it.
Minus the geoblocking respect, I agree 110% with this! You'd think with all of the marketing and sales these companies have, the logical choice is to lower the prices. If a dumb shit like myself can figure it out, why can't they?
I disagree about Geoblocking having a legal basis...
It is nothing more than a marketing scam to get 1000s of companies to all bid against each other on the same content.
They know a company like Netflix will only pay X Amount for rights to stream so they limit where they can stream to so they can get some company in that other geolocation to pay them even more.
It has nothing to do with Broadcast which is an entirely separate license which is sold separately and regardless of if someone like Netflix paid for streaming rights to that location. Netflix paid for the rights to stream MovieX in the US but that sure doesn't stop NetworkY from broadcasting the same movie!
Geolocation is just an attempt to squeeze more water out of the IP Rock.
And now they want to stop VPNs from being legally used because it can screw up their money grab!
Stopping Piracy is one thing...But if they didn't show such greed there wouldn't be such a high piracy rate.
don't get me wrong, I'm not pro geo blocking, I personally also think it sucks and has to go, but without spending too much thougts on it, I can imagine some legit use cases, like differing age restrictions in different countries? As a US citizen you ofc would like to watch with your US Netflix account wherever you are on the planet, but by doing so you might end up watching a show that's forbidden in a certain country. How to deal with this if not with geo blocking? Again, I don't like it, but I think there are at least a few valid reasons for it.
(2016-09-26, 18:04)Denny Wrote: [ -> ] (2016-09-25, 20:09)Ed76 Wrote: [ -> ] (2016-09-25, 20:01)Denny Wrote: [ -> ]It seems to me that there is a lot of legally available media online, both free and paid. But the LEGAL Kodi addoons seem to handle it piecemeal. Use one addon for Fox News, another for Euronews. Or Bravo. Or yadda, yadda, yadda.
The pirate addons are popular because they consolidate a lot of content - legal or illegal - in one place and make it easy to find things. If the Kodi community were to make an official addon that brought as much of the legal content together as possible and organized it in an easy to navigate manner, then a lot of the appeal for pirated media would fall away.
absolute nonsense!
Nonsense? Really? Most people don't want EVERYTHING. They know they'll never watch all of it. But they do want enough to keep it interesting. And there is plenty of free content out there.
Take ABC as an example.
THEY HAVE A FREE ONLINE LIVE STREAM. On YouTube it seems that some of the most popular Kodi unofficial addons is an EPG that can link to other unofficial addons that gather together various live feeds, giving you live TV comparable to cable. Why can't there be an "official" EPG that links to legal live streams from the IP owner?
ABC also has recent episodes of all of their shows (Once Upon a Time, black-ish, Designated Survivor, Grey's Anatomy, Marvel's Agents of Shield, How to Get Away With Murder, Modern Family, etc) available on demand. Why can't there be an addon that allows those shows to be integrated into the Kodi TV library (like a certain "unofficial" addon does thru the traktd.com website)?
Other networks like CBS, Fox, NBC, Bravo, A&E, etc, have their own content available as well.
Other "official" Kodi addons make a lot of movie content available as well - public domain or freely supplied by the IP owner. Classic Cinema Online, Comet TV Live, Crackler, Popcornflix, Sundance TV, etc. If all of that content was to be consolidated and made easily searchable, such an addon would rival any of the "unofficial" addons offering pirated content.
The same applies to sports. There are official addons for ESPN, NBCSN, the NFL, the NHL, the NBA, MLS Live, Sports Illustrated, and Sportsnet Now. Aggregate all of that content and you have a viable LEGAL alternative to a certain "unofficial" addon that has a smiling soccer ball as a logo.
News too. We have addons like euronews and Fox News. MSNBC has a live stream. So does CNN.
Why can't the Kodi community simply make legal addons that work the same way as the pirate addons, but with legal content?
For me - and I'm willing to bet there's a lot of other users like me - Kodi isn't a tool for controlling all of my video catalog that I have painstakingly transferred from DVD/blueray to a huge HHD. I use it as an OTT to stream TV shows and movies to my TV. I disconnected that external hard drive and tossed it in a drawer.
The Kodi community needs to recognize that streaming is the direction EVERYONE is going in and try to encourage users to do so legally. Trying to chase down pirates and pirate box sellers all around the world and sue them out of business is a fool's errand. Ruining the pirates' business by making it easy to get content legally is a much more workable solution.
it would be nice to have such addons that make it much more easy to find some interesting content. but in my opinion you are wrong: thats not the reason why banned addons are so popular. the reason is that this addons offer content you will never get for free, like live champions league football (europe, paytv only), new movies which normally are only available on bluray, new series that is only available on netflix.... simple, but i think thats the truth.
(2016-09-27, 21:31)da-anda Wrote: [ -> ]don't get me wrong, I'm not pro geo blocking, I personally also think it sucks and has to go, but without spending too much thougts on it, I can imagine some legit use cases, like differing age restrictions in different countries? As a US citizen you ofc would like to watch with your US Netflix account wherever you are on the planet, but by doing so you might end up watching a show that's forbidden in a certain country. How to deal with this if not with geo blocking? Again, I don't like it, but I think there are at least a few valid reasons for it.
I wasn't meaning to suggest you were pro Geoblocking...
But the only legal reason for geoblocking that makes any sense is in cases where there are import restrictions on another countries content (such as the EU has on American content). And that should only apply to Broadcast, not Internet services such as Netflix. If what you are saying was true then the country should be the one blocking the service not the Content Creators.
But it is the Content Creators who are insisting on using geoblocking not the countries.
They have created all these separate markets out of the planet so they can make you pay X amount of markets more than one despite the fact one can serve the entire planet.
Netflix will only pay 1 Billion for the rights to stream to their customers.
But by blocking Australia they can get another Billion and double their money!
A USA customer who goes to Australia has already paid for the right to watch that movie but because of where he is located they force him to pay again (to whatever sucker in Australia paid for what Netflix did) to see the movie he has already paid for!
If it was as you say and countries blocking the content it would be one thing but it is the content creators themselves who wish to multiply that one billion by X amount of markets they created due to greed.
(2016-09-27, 11:18)Ned Scott Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know how true this is globally, but it's one of the reasons I hate geoblocking. If a person has legal access to content from one country, they should be able to access it from anywhere. Geoblocking is a lazy way to do things, IMO. The entire concept of local license negotiation is basically a money grab in 2016 (in the past it was necessary from a logistical standpoint, but that is no longer the case).
From my point of view (look at my location). geoblocking is much like racial segregation in the Southern states before the Civil right movement. If a black person would walk into a "white only" bar somewhere in Atlanta in 1940-s, he would be thrown out despite the fact that he wore a descent suit and had a wallet full of cash. The same here: as far as media content concerned, with a Ukrainian IP I'm like a "coon" (no offense meant to anyone) in a "white only" bar.
Regarding the piracy itself, it cannot be beaten completely, but can be reduced to reasonable minimum. All they need is to drop this geoblocking nonsense and to create convenient channels to buy legal content for users all over the world.
My favorite example here is the videogame industry in the Eastern Europe. In 1990s - early 2000s Ukraine, Russia and other exUSSR countries were basically a pirate's haven for videogames. Stalls with cheap pirated CDs were common sight on Kyiv streets around 2000. But with the raise of worldwide online videogame stores like Steam, EA, Battle.net the situation has changed, and now most of videogame copies sold in Ukraine, both digital and on CD/DVD are legal ones. And on Petrovka market the same stalls that sold pirated videogames a decade ago now sell legal copies with license keys and everything. Because as soon as an average user has got a convenient way to buy videogames for reasonable prices, they do not want to bother with all these torrents, cracks and such.
Unfortunately, movie/TV companies do not want to go this way.
A better analogy is the Movie Theater analogy....
Each Movie Theater pays a fee to have exclusivity to play a Movie. (They also pay a percentage of sales but that doesn't apply here).
A Theater can only pay so much for that exclusivity before it loses money.
So the Content creators decide to create MULTIPLE EXCLUSIVITY ZONES that they can use to multiply the theater fees they get by the number of zones.
This made a ton of sense as a business model in Broadcasting where the broadcaster had a limited range of signal (Limited to Regional Access), and to distribute to more people more REGIONAL Distributors (geolocations) had to be sold Broadcasting rights to cover that region.
The problem is they are still applying that model to the Internet which does not have a limited range.
Unfortunately Netflix is not in a powerful enough position to insist on removing geoblocking since it needs movie stream rights to stay in business and are at the mercy of the Content Creators.
so, let's just protest the content creators and don't watch any Hollywood stuff anymore
. Most blockbusters are utter crap anyways these days. Same "story" line with different actors and a shit load of CGI and 3D slowmotion effects. There are unfortunately not many movies worth spending money on these days. I used to buy more blurays a couple years ago - these days I mostly rent them or wait until they air on TV or Netflix.
Better to just use VPNs and support those businesses who run them so the price can stay low enough to offset what you might have to pay for the 10 different services you need to get the same thing one USA Netflix account gets you.
When those other services stop buying rights because they have no subscribers then Netflix will have the power to say we are the only game in town and we are only willing to pay for World Rights.