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+--- Thread: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement (/showthread.php?tid=259387)
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - jsergio123 - 2016-02-12
Here is a nation wide company in the US who claims to have 70k+ users and fastly growing. They claim to have made millions last year and here in the US the "dragon box" has become a brand name just as a fire tv stick is. They preload kodi with piracy addons and market it all over the country as a way to stream movies, TV, sports, and ppv events. They recruit their customers or anyone willing to become a distributor to branch out in other cities. This is different than the average Chinese eBay box seller.
I have seen celebrities endorsing their devices on tv. I have seen them on CNET at CES this year. I have heard them on the radio.
Their packaging displays the kodi trademark and logo. Their Facebook and Web site pages are filled with the same. They directly tie kodi to piracy and mislead their ignorant users.
http://www.thedragonbox.com
https://facebook.com/TheDragonBox/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/DragonBoxGlobal/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app_dbe.layout
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - InkAndDrink303 - 2016-02-12
^^^ I'll be honest, this sort of thing pisses me off. I see it alot on local Facebook selling groups, people selling Fire Sticks 'pre-loaded' etc and always comment about the legality of it.
They always delete the comment *shrugs*
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - Soulbind - 2016-02-12
They claim to have 70k+ users and millions in cash, yet posts on their Facebook page have a whooping 8 to 15 likes , each one. I don't have 70.000 people buying my stuff yet most of my posts have more likes than that. Doesn't add up if you ask me.
Not saying legal action shouldn't be taken, just making a small observation regarding their claims.
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - Abyss999 - 2016-02-12
(2016-02-12, 16:30)jjd-uk Wrote: Those saying that using Kodi in the domain name is fair use obviously don't remember this http://www.aftvnews.com/amazon-is-requiring-me-to-turn-over-firetvnews-comWell this just shows that he didn't know his rights and folded to intimidation. He stated that he wasn't gonna put up a fight not that Amazon was in the right.
http://www.bitlaw.com/internet/domain.html
Take note of the dispute section. I would've offered to sell it to them.
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - MrMC - 2016-02-12
Interesting thread.
My thoughts;
Unrestricted addons are the #1 contributors to the ruination of the Kodi brand. That's why MrMC has stripped them. There is a plan for something else but we are still thinking about it.
Some possible things to do:
1) Remove of the ability to runtime fetch from non-kodi addon repos. Not in the official repo, too bad, you have to sideload install it.
2) Disallow installing an addon FROM an addon except from the offical repo. This means you can't install a non-official repo and fetch more crap.
3) Allow user installed sideloaded addons. Only at runtime. Not in the official whitelist preload, it does not run or show up. This causes those pirates to waste time/money installing at runtime, each and every crap addon they want. It also runes the 1st run pretty, both for Android and the App. No more, build a distro with all the crap preloaded.
Users can still runtime sideload any addon they want. No lost freedom there. But they cannot install an addon that provides access to non-official repos to install more.
If you make hard to quickly install a bunch of pirate addons, so hard it becomes uneconomical, then these pirate boxes will die off and those that provide them will move to easier pickings. Right now it's just way too easy to provide Kodi with preload crap.
Put the above in source code, so that source code changes MUST be done to bypass. Once the source code is altered, it's not Kodi any more and if they do not rebrand, hunt them down and hurt them bad with Trademark abuse. I'm serious here, no nice guy approach, these are pirates and they don't care about being nice. Hurt a few real bad and the word will get around. Don't mess with the Kodi brand or bad things WILL happen.
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - PixelJunkie77 - 2016-02-12
(2016-02-12, 18:10)jsergio123 Wrote: Here is a nation wide company in the US who claims to have 70k+ users and fastly growing. They claim to have made millions last year and here in the US the "dragon box" has become a brand name just as a fire tv stick is. They preload kodi with piracy addons and market it all over the country as a way to stream movies, TV, sports, and ppv events. They recruit their customers or anyone willing to become a distributor to branch out in other cities. This is different than the average Chinese eBay box seller.
I have seen celebrities endorsing their devices on tv. I have seen them on CNET at CES this year. I have heard them on the radio.
Their packaging displays the kodi trademark and logo. Their Facebook and Web site pages are filled with the same. They directly tie kodi to piracy and mislead their ignorant users.
http://www.thedragonbox.com
https://facebook.com/TheDragonBox/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/DragonBoxGlobal/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app_dbe.layout
When I clicked on the website you linked, in no way did I think they were affiliated with the Kodi name. Yes they have your logo, they also have Androids. But this link is no different http://kodi.tv/download/.
The iOS (jailbroken) one is the icing on the cake. Irony at its best
I totally understand the group reasons to be angry at the association with piracy. But I dont think you guys have fully thought this through, and have gone about this completely the wrong way.
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - Gombeek - 2016-02-12
I think this thread has opened up a really good dialogue and it is really highlighting the confusion and frustration of the Kodi dev team, add-on devs, "legitimate" kodi users, and kodi users interested in 3rd party content.
Regardless of your position/opinion I think all 4 groups can agree that something needs to change. the term "kodi" shouldn't be synonymous with piracy, just like the words "computer, windows, apple, microsoft, internet' isn't synonymous with piracy. On that note, none of the aforementioned companies acknowledge piracy by attacking websites, youtube videos, etc, they simply rise above it and continue to add value to the software/hardware which supersedes the value of piracy.
Not caring if you have a large user base or make money through donations is actually what is hurting the legitimacy of Kodi. The aforementioned companies care about their products (not saying you don't by any means) but they want end users, they want market share. So they promote them selves as legitimate and the brand is known for that. The fact Kodi/XBMC doesn't have strong promotion in a legitimate way is been a contributing factor in this mess.
Now the word "piracy" has been thrown around here loosely, using a torrent to download a movie or tv show is piracy and is illegal in most parts of the world. Streaming content however is most parts of the world isn't illegal, so calling it "piracy" isn't really correct. But i get why you don't want to be associated with it don't get me wrong. I also read the justification of torrents as it can be used to download legitimate software, which is true, but add ons i will not mention also allow you to view/stream legitimate content such as big buck bunny, the documentary about the pirate bay and so on.
So how do you move forward and start to clean up the mess? Well making lawyers rich isn't going to do anyone any favours and like you mentioned you're a non profit so you're going to run out of funds faster than the box sellers or you tubers. I would say start a Kodi youtube channel to discuss the awesome features of the software, which i can see some of the dev's already did, but they stupidly called it "Kord Kutters", this only adds to the problem. I would also say talk to the you tubers, get them to place a disclaimer at the beginning of their videos about Kodi. Get them to talk about the legitimate Kodi functions. Work together to achieve more.
As for the box sellers, this has become a mess and factories in China pumping out thousands of android boxes a day are preloading the boxes with the third party add ons. Short of getting the border security to seize and inspect all boxes it will be impossible to stop. I don't know how much power you'll have to stop people from loading 3rd party add ons or what liability you will face, if any, as its no different than when people sell computers preloaded with torrents or various other software for obtaining pirated material. What i mean by that is Windows/Microsoft or Apple have no way of preventing people from adding software to their software. Just like they can't prevent people from loading Kodi onto their environments (perfect example is the apple tv 2). The quickest method to end the box sellers is to end the Android version, this would immediately destroy the "piracy" market for Kodi. It has been mentioned numerous times that the Android version isn't as good as the other versions anyways so this is a valid method for containing the situation. Sure someone could make a fork of the software but thats would still solve the problem of Kodi being associated with "piracy".
The point here being you can't have it both ways, i respect your vow to keep things open source and not interfere with those who want to make add ons for Kodi, but this is the equivalent of a needle company who doesn't like the fact drug dealers are selling heroin users their product. If you want it to stop, stop selling the drug dealers needles.
IMHO
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - Tinwarble - 2016-02-12
(2016-02-12, 19:43)PixelJunkie77 Wrote: The iOS (jailbroken) one is the icing on the cake. Irony at its best
I totally understand the group reasons to be angry at the association with piracy. But I dont think you guys have fully thought this through, and have gone about this completely the wrong way.
Except you're comparing a legal activity [jailbreaking], at least in the US, to illegal activity.
Quote:United States
The main law that affects the legality of iOS jailbreaking in the United States is the 2012 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which says "no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under" the DMCA, since this may apply to jailbreaking.[63] Every three years, the law allows the public to propose exemptions for legitimate reasons for circumvention, which last three years if approved. In 2010 and 2012, the U.S. Copyright Office approved exemptions that allowed smartphone users to jailbreak their devices legally,[64] and in 2015 the Copyright Office approved an expanded exemption that also covers other all-purpose mobile computing devices, such as tablets.[65] It is still possible Apple may employ technical countermeasures to prevent jailbreaking or prevent jailbroken phones from functioning.[66] It is unclear whether it is legal to traffic in the tools used to make jailbreaking easy.[66]
In 2010 Apple announced that jailbreaking "can violate the warranty".[67] This may be affected by the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975.
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - Soulbind - 2016-02-12
Streaming content is downloading, how do you think that video comes up on your screen from X server on the Internet, by magic? It's downloaded chunk-by-chunk , in a buffer. Instead of waiting for the full download, like on a torrent, you playback the X downloaded chunk, meanwhile downloading the next Y one, then play Y , repeat. It's just as illegal as torrents, copyright laws do not mention if you download the full thing or part-by-part, non-authorized duplication of copyrighted content is piracy, and when you're streaming, you're doing exactly that.
PS : Kodi on something like the Shield can do 4K/1080p h265 8bit, h264, VC-1, HD audio bitstreaming, 24p playback , just about everything Kodi can do on Win / Linux / OS X. Even more in the future can be added since the hardware supports it, like 10 bit h265 whenever that gets into ffmpeg mainline/kodi , good look getting an Intel iGP doing that (hardware decoding) before Kaby Lake comes out.
So i fail to see how Kodi on Android is any less capable. And good luck stopping all these sellers from switching to "fully loaded Raspberry PIs 2 " once you killed the Android port. I wonder how it all started... hmm, oh yeah, with the fully loaded Apple TV 2 people were selling on Amazon for 200-250 $, not with Android.
Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - ilovemymac - 2016-02-12
Android is good I have a fire tv and a fire tv 2 and have had no issues other then sometimes with 2 profiles sometimes it freezes when trying to switch profile but not often and that's the only issue I've ever had so this issue about android version of being is good same stupid me I had more trouble with it on my Apple TV two years ago that I do with android
And no it won't stop box sellers because in the end we can be flashed to openelec so what would keep people from going that way I would guess
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - Ned Scott - 2016-02-12
I understand some of the one-off posters getting banned, but there are at least two long time forum posters who have been banned for what seems like "disagreeing with Team Kodi". I don't think that is the case, but it looks like that to the outsider, and that looks bad. Right now a lot of people are trying to convince the masses that Team Kodi has gone crazy, and this reinforces that false narrative.
To everyone else, please don't take comments on the forum to be the gospel truth (for a lack of better words. Some of the guys you are seeing are just very frustrated at the moment, but are very intelligent and reasonable people. It's okay to share your view on the situation, but it would really help to have a little faith in Team Kodi. Plus, they have real lawyers that will steer them correctly about this issue.
Now, let's get back to focusing on the people who are clearly assholes and start bustin' heads.
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - jsergio123 - 2016-02-12
(2016-02-12, 19:04)Soulbind Wrote: They claim to have 70k+ users and millions in cash, yet posts on their Facebook page have a whooping 8 to 15 likes , each one. I don't have 70.000 people buying my stuff yet most of my posts have more likes than that. Doesn't add up if you ask me.
Not saying legal action shouldn't be taken, just making a small observation regarding their claims.
Bro I think your confused. They have multiple fb pages some not official. The fb page I linked to has over 5k followers and the closed group is the more active one and has even more users than that. 70k units is not an exaggeration.
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - jsergio123 - 2016-02-12
(2016-02-12, 19:43)PixelJunkie77 Wrote:(2016-02-12, 18:10)jsergio123 Wrote: Here is a nation wide company in the US who claims to have 70k+ users and fastly growing. They claim to have made millions last year and here in the US the "dragon box" has become a brand name just as a fire tv stick is. They preload kodi with piracy addons and market it all over the country as a way to stream movies, TV, sports, and ppv events. They recruit their customers or anyone willing to become a distributor to branch out in other cities. This is different than the average Chinese eBay box seller.
I have seen celebrities endorsing their devices on tv. I have seen them on CNET at CES this year. I have heard them on the radio.
Their packaging displays the kodi trademark and logo. Their Facebook and Web site pages are filled with the same. They directly tie kodi to piracy and mislead their ignorant users.
http://www.thedragonbox.com
https://facebook.com/TheDragonBox/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/DragonBoxGlobal/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app_dbe.layout
When I clicked on the website you linked, in no way did I think they were affiliated with the Kodi name. Yes they have your logo, they also have Androids. But this link is no different http://kodi.tv/download/.
The iOS (jailbroken) one is the icing on the cake. Irony at its best
I totally understand the group reasons to be angry at the association with piracy. But I dont think you guys have fully thought this through, and have gone about this completely the wrong way.
When you visit their website there are images of kodi logo and trademark on the site even screens shots of the UI with the kodi logo and name. It even says on the main page "powered by kodi" with the logo....
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - PixelJunkie77 - 2016-02-12
(2016-02-12, 20:36)Tinwarble Wrote: Except you're comparing a legal activity [jailbreaking], at least in the US, to illegal activity. IN THE US
RE: Call to Arms: Combatting Trademark Infringement - Tinwarble - 2016-02-12
(2016-02-12, 21:04)PixelJunkie77 Wrote:(2016-02-12, 20:36)Tinwarble Wrote: Except you're comparing a legal activity [jailbreaking], at least in the US, to illegal activity. IN THE US
Which is all that matters as to Kodi.