Just saw this article about Kodi/DRM
#16
(2017-04-14, 02:46)natethomas Wrote: Pretty much.
I think that's to be expected and as long as it isn't foisted on users, I don't think we have much to complain about. The streaming services are popular, and I can understand that many would want them more easily available (although I don't really understand why going to another site in a browser is such a big deal). I might like going up to the shop and buying dvds, but I'm not so clueless as to believe that I'm going to be able to continue doing that in the future as digital delivery becomes even more widespread. It's all very well not to like the changes that have happened and will continue to happen, but there's not much that can be done to change how things progress.
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#17
(2017-04-14, 05:11)bilgepump Wrote: although I don't really understand why going to another site in a browser is such a big dea

Because the majority of people use a remote with their TV and browsers are not remote friendly. It's like the difference between Android TV apps and mobile Android apps, both can do the same things, but mobile version (for the most part) are nearly impossible to use with just a remote.
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#18
(2017-04-14, 05:52)Tinwarble Wrote:
(2017-04-14, 05:11)bilgepump Wrote: although I don't really understand why going to another site in a browser is such a big dea
Because the majority of people use a remote with their TV and browsers are not remote friendly.
a-ha, thanks for that. I've seen tvs advertising that they have access to some of the streaming services, presumably that would be remote-friendly, but if you don't have a whizz-bang new telly, I can understand why people would want it through a remote-friendly application. Thanks for the info.
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#19
It's not just TVs, the Shield TV, Mi box, AirTV (by SlingTV), Nexus Player, and some others that all run Android TV (the OS, not Android on the TV like so many).

Then you have Rokus, TVs with other than Android TV OSs, Apple TVs, etc, etc. that all have access to streaming services.
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#20
There is a LOT of misinformation out there.
Some of it is just plain false. Some of it is the result of misunderstanding.

I saw one report that said that Kodi would play ONLY drm protected content.
It was very quickly shot down by other readers and a correction was made within a few hours.
However, anyone who read the original article and did not return to see the correction will have a very bad idea of this proposal.



As I see it, the problem with getting people like Netflix on board is going to be copyright laws - again.
A lot of their content is copyrighted to be viewed only in certain areas. (The Netflix US library is almost 100 times the size of the Australian library)
How do they write those geographical restrictions into an add-on?
Is that even possible? (I can barely spell add-on let alone create one!)

The world is now a global community and until content providers can find a solution to the fragmented copyright situation we have now, rights management and piracy will continue to be major issues.
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#21
what's the chances of Nintendo or Sega jumping on board with this DRM. Users could then play old school video games 100% legally via Kodi's RetroPlayer? Or perhaps those said companies would be put off by the fact that Team Kodi fully supports the idea of streaming pirated roms from 3rd party sources (Internet Archive Rom Launcher), which is fully supported by Team Kodi and openly discussed on the forum. This could turn into a can of worms for Kodi, especially at this time with all the current Kodi piracy cases here in Europe.

I guess the piracy lawyers haven't dug deep enough into the Kodi forums (yet), since the support thread for this addon is buried deep in the the development side of the forum, hmmmm wonder why..........

I can safely say this internet archive rom launcher addon will NOT be supported on the Kodi forums for much longer. Similar to how "Plexus" the torrent streaming video addon got the boot (and it was developed by a Team Kodi member)
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#22
(2017-04-15, 13:09)Gr0k Wrote: A lot of their content is copyrighted to be viewed only in certain areas. (The Netflix US library is almost 100 times the size of the Australian library)
How do they write those geographical restrictions into an add-on?
Is that even possible? (I can barely spell add-on let alone create one!)

exactly the same way as with browsers and android/IOS apps: you check the IP server side.
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#23
Big Aero, I'm fairly sure we've had this debate before, but I appreciate how you've decided to borrow another thread to re-open it. To re-iterate, The Internet Archive is not a streaming pirate source, because the US government has very specifically granted them them an exception to the DMCA rules on the matter regarding archiving vintage software. http://archive.org/about/dmca.php To the best of my knowledge, neither Plexus nor any other site out there has a specific DMCA exception that makes them legal under the law.

Until the government rescinds that exception, I don't personally see any reason to stop supporting the addon. And, frankly, given that you are taking over another person's thread, I feel very little compunction against an immediate ban if you stick with it.

Regarding the small part of your post that was on topic, I don't believe the binary blob we're looking at would have the ability to also act as a distribution for ROMs, so I don't think companies could use it to distribute old games.
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#24
Okay Cheif natethomas. - Gotcha.
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#25
Sorry for the geek-out.

Up front: I'm all for DRM support in Kodi. But there are risks. Good news, they are quantfiable risks. Bad news: quantifying and mitigating them is probably more difficult than writing code.

The risk isn't the DRM itself, so much as the "indirect" constraints / impacts on the existing functionality of the Kodi integration that the provider might enforce, impose or expect the Kodi developers to deliver. Considering they'll be more familiar with what they can do with a standalone website or a standalone TV plugin that's vetted (either of which maintains the watch lists etc on their own system and doesn't interface with an offline library at all), they might have their own ideas on what their plugin can (and can't) do when talking to an OFFLINE provider-agnostic solution with a local database that's not hosted in the cloud.

What they may expect already when doing implementations for smart TVs:
  • Telemetry based restrictions, e.g.
    • Netflix restricts the number of simultaneous uses of an account that can initiate playback unless you hit a button to upgrade your account.
    • Region locking / country based content filters.
  • Content being available one week and not available the next, or free this week and PPV next week (Prime and Netflix, I'm looking at you)
  • Movies and TV Series categories, and "watched lists" that ONLY exist in their their own platform
  • UI interruptions before playback - e.g. pay-to-play acceptance buttons for PPV.
  • Assumptions/ requirements (on their side) for Cinavia protection, commercial DVD/BluRay codecs, region locking etc (as is the case on consumer devices with optical drives)

And if they develop the same functionality, can it lead to abuses of the Kodi platform like:
  • Interrogating the system configuration to see what other plugins are installed
  • Metrics: logging what's been watched in their plugin is fine, allowing them to track what's been watched from a LIBRARY would be a very neat way to indirectly spy on what content the competition's providing.
  • If two competing providers offer the same film at the same time, one offering it as PPV and the other including it in the subscription, how do you represent that in the UI?

I'd suggest the Kodi team needs THREE levels of oversight required:

1. A compliance/legal/contractual level to ensure that the DRM content and the plugins providing it are constrained in their ambitions for their plugins

2. A technical level, which ensures that commercial plugins adhere to the specifications and limitations provided by (1) are enabling their plugin won't break functionality OR vendor agnosticism.

3. A Kodi design principles team, which ensures that they don't get dragged down rabbit holes.

Simple example: suppose a provider of DRM streamed content is happy to develop a Kodi connector but they provide the Kodi team with a baseline specification they work to when creating other connectors for other platforms but that spec implies Kodi can't just have that content exposed to end users through two source-agnostic "Movies" and "TV Shows" libraries, it has to implement a per-vendor namespace, to allow a plugin for a specific platform to look after its content only, e.g. decide what is and isn't a TV show, what is and isn't freely provided, what is covered by the subscription, what's PPV or time-limited, and so on.
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#26
I think there would be a lot of support for DRM addons in the community. Just look in the past at the interest in the Netflix and Amazon Prime addon threads.

Imagine being able to add films and shows from Netflix, Amazon and other streaming providers straight to your Kodi library. You could have them all in one place, all your favourite shows and movies, it would be great
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#27
Sadly some content providers are narrow minded and only allow you to watch their content through their own "awesome" user experience app
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#28
(2017-04-15, 20:23)Martijn Wrote: Sadly some content providers are narrow minded and only allow you to watch their content through their own "awesome" user experience app

One of the reasons that despite having a Prime membership and a 4K smart TV that runs the Amazon app, yet I use Kodi and some 'other stuff' to actually watch their original 4K content. The Amazon Tizen app is just a terrible interface. D:
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#29
(2017-04-15, 17:44)tstaddon Wrote:
  • Interrogating the system configuration to see what other plugins are installed
  • Metrics: logging what's been watched in their plugin is fine, allowing them to track what's been watched from a LIBRARY would be a very neat way to indirectly spy on what content the competition's providing.
  • If two competing providers offer the same film at the same time, one offering it as PPV and the other including it in the subscription, how do you represent that in the UI?
As far as I understood the GPL is that the part that is interacting with the KODI APIs and internal objects needs to be released under GPL as well, so we'd be able to review the data retrieved from Kodi APIs. What we wouldn't be able to see is whatever else is happening in a closed source binary blob they might use to talk to their servers and aggregate the data.
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#30
I have tried many addons with DRM and yes it is very easy to install. Also, I have read it a week ago on TechRadar I believe, that Kodi now will be using DRM to fight piracy issues.

Taken from article: Kodi is a fantastic media streaming program, but it’s gained an unfortunate reputation over the years as a piece of piracy software thanks to the way third-party developers have been producing add-ons that enable access to thousands of premium channels without paying a penny.

For its part, Kodi has been fighting back by going after those who sell hardware with pirate Kodi add-ons pre-installed, but the bad reputation is proving hard to shake.

Source: http://www.techradar.com/news/kodi-is-th...ght-piracy
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