[Ned Scott]

I think you're focusing too much on what is technically a violation of the law or not. It comes down to what hurts the project's image. This is all about image, at least for situations where that image can have a major impact on the Kodi project, and not just in a superficial way.

• Video add-on/service/whatever that is in a legal gray area because of how people define "streaming" vs downloading, but is still pretty much viewed as pirating or stealing by most people.
  

vs

• A bunch of game ROMs that have been deemed as abandoned.
  

One can and has hurt the Kodi project's image. The other, well, no one cares. Yes, it's really that shallow, but no one cares. Sega and Nintendo don't even care (at least, not enough for them to really do anything major about it). If they did then maybe it would be different. The more controversial a topic is the more something like Kodi will distance itself from.

If there's no controversy and it seems legal as best anyone can tell? Then it's okay. There may be exceptions to that, but that's the general idea.

[Wilzhere]

JUST SAYIN....
Who has been ruining Kodi.....GOOGLE your friend?...READ THIS...once you put it in the Playstore it went to crap ...sorry for my language...READ this..

YouTube is a video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States. The service was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. In November 2006, it was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion.[4] YouTube now operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.[5] The site allows users to upload, view, rate, share and comment on videos, and it makes use of WebM, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media video. Available content includes video clips, TV clips, music videos, movie trailers and other content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.

Your statement:
Being removed from an App Store this summer because of the campaigning of others was like a slap in the face. Most of all, we are tired of a thousand different salesmen and Youtubers making money off ruining our name.

I saw this coming as soon as you went to the Play crap Store...Want to fix this, get rid of GOOGLE who wants to rule the world...
i should also admit that i love KODI even bought a T-Shirt Best Media device in 40 years of Beta testing.. didnt google even have there own box...would they just want to give up,,,,dont think so... Go ahead and Delete this post i dont care ...Ban me' i will miss you but i'll read on ....Just had to vent my frustration, knowing at least i know one person has read it ...

[MrsAngelD]

JUST SAYIN....
Who has been ruining Kodi.....GOOGLE your friend?...READ THIS...once you put it in the Playstore it went to crap ...sorry for my language...READ this..

YouTube is a video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States. The service was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. In November 2006, it was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion.[4] YouTube now operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.[5] The site allows users to upload, view, rate, share and comment on videos, and it makes use of WebM, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media video. Available content includes video clips, TV clips, music videos, movie trailers and other content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.

Your statement:
Being removed from an App Store this summer because of the campaigning of others was like a slap in the face. Most of all, we are tired of a thousand different salesmen and Youtubers making money off ruining our name.

I saw this coming as soon as you went to the Play crap Store...Want to fix this, get rid of GOOGLE who wants to rule the world....

Kodi is in the google play store, it was removed from the Amazon app store. So how is google the problem?

[liveforthereds]

JUST SAYIN....
Who has been ruining Kodi.....GOOGLE your friend?...READ THIS...once you put it in the Playstore it went to crap ...sorry for my language...READ this..

YouTube is a video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States. The service was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. In November 2006, it was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion.[4] YouTube now operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.[5] The site allows users to upload, view, rate, share and comment on videos, and it makes use of WebM, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media video. Available content includes video clips, TV clips, music videos, movie trailers and other content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.

Your statement:
Being removed from an App Store this summer because of the campaigning of others was like a slap in the face. Most of all, we are tired of a thousand different salesmen and Youtubers making money off ruining our name.

I saw this coming as soon as you went to the Play crap Store...Want to fix this, get rid of GOOGLE who wants to rule the world....

Kodi is in the google play store, it was removed from the Amazon app store. So how is google the problem?

If I remember rightly Amazon removed it for the reason of copyright issues ie. 3rd party addons plus they don't want somethings on the sticks or box that is similar to Prime. For some reason Google ain't bothered as you can get all manner of non-legal stuff on the App store. Apple don't want anything to do with anything that might be seen as competition to they own platform.

[da-anda]

the one and only reason was piracy - as Amazon connected Kodi directly with piracy (guess why). That's all that was mentioned in their notification mail IIRC

[harlekin]

While I mostly agree with your recent press release, I feel that it is naive - bordering on being dishonest in two points.

1. The Amazon issue wasnt a simple misunderstanding. Back then, maintainers of this product voted not to hit back - right at the issue, when it counted - and now you are trying to make a reference case out of something that was at its core mismanaged at the time.

Let me elaborate. Amazon announcing that Kodi was actively enabling piracy - and removing it from the store under that pretense was a pure and simple marketing lie. They ultimately saw channel competition and they didnt like it. That Kodi now is choosing to go with the promoted reason given - is to surrender to their telling of the story completely. It is to say Amazon had a point there - when they didnt. They lied, the made a powerplay - and the Kodi project didnt even do as much as put out a press release that confronted their reasoning.

When you are now putting this little episode up on the banners you are currently parading around against commercialized piracy - I call "foul play". You did nothing to refute the image back when it counted - and now are complaining, that it is how people now are in danger to see you. You ducked away from any publicity at the time when you should have taken a stance.

2. If you start taking actions based on uninformed users coming to these forums and having a hard time to differentiate between right and wrong, or even legal or not - I am sorry, but you are pandering to the masses and calling out "for something that could stop this confusion". This is at its core politics. Because you are saying that you have to take the uninformed voices into account and now take some actions on their behalf. I am sorry - but have you been on the internet lately?

In no field - none, whatsoever - we can talk about having close to the same forum dynamics, we had, when this project first was launched on the Xbox. All communities are flooded with "help me out here" requests from people not even willing in the slightest to participate themselves.

I'd call this another perfect example of "white knight syndrom" - and finding it hard to cope with the fact, that self organizing of communities does break down, when they are abused by an abundance of people who have no interest in providing something themselves.

You can try to preach it away - but from my point of view, the cause is NOT the naiveté you suggest is at the core of peoples hearts, when they get tricked, even abused into buying a 100 USD box with the label "free" on it.

That said, I agree with the actionplan you have brought forward.

Just be more honest, when it comes to the role Kodi currently holds up - that stands entirely against the walled garden concept Amazon and others like to employ - and also own up to the steps you havent taken in the past, and their outcomes. Amazon isnt naive - so why should Kodi's peers be?

[keith]

While I mostly agree with your recent press release, I feel that it is naive - bordering on being dishonest in two points.

1. The Amazon issue wasnt a simple misunderstanding. Back then, maintainers of this product voted not to hit back - right at the issue, when it counted - and now you are trying to make a reference case out of something that was at its core mismanaged at the time.

Let me elaborate. Amazon announcing that Kodi was actively enabling piracy - and removing it from the store under that pretense was a pure and simple marketing lie. They ultimately saw channel competition and they didnt like it. That Kodi now is choosing to go with the promoted reason given - is to surrender to their telling of the story completely. It is to say Amazon had a point there - when they didnt. They lied, the made a powerplay - and the Kodi project didnt even do as much as put out a press release that confronted their reasoning.

I have many emails to Amazon people, ignored. We posted a blog post, and it hit major news sites, that confronted their reasoning. Do you have the money/resources of a PR firm to release press releases? If so, please, by all means, get us in contact with them who will do it for us for free. I don't know how much more the Kodi team could have 'confronted their reason'.

2. If you start taking actions based on uninformed users coming to these forums and having a hard time to differentiate between right and wrong, or even legal or not - I am sorry, but you are pandering to the masses and calling out "for something that could stop this confusion". This is at its core politics. Because you are saying that you have to take the uninformed voices into account and now take some actions on their behalf. I am sorry - but have you been on the internet lately?

In no field - none, whatsoever - we can talk about having close to the same forum dynamics, we had, when this project first was launched on the Xbox. All communities are flooded with "help me out here" requests from people not even willing in the slightest to participate themselves.

I'd call this another perfect example of "white knight syndrom" - and finding it hard to cope with the fact, that self organizing of communities does break down, when they are abused by an abundance of people who have no interest in providing something themselves.

You can try to preach it away - but from my point of view, the cause is NOT the naiveté you suggest is at the core of peoples hearts, when they get tricked, even abused into buying a 100 USD box with the label "free" on it.

That said, I agree with the actionplan you have brought forward.

Just be more honest, when it comes to the role Kodi currently holds up - that stands entirely against the walled garden concept Amazon and others like to employ - and also own up to the steps you havent taken in the past, and their outcomes. Amazon isnt naive - so why should Kodi's peers be?

I have no idea what you are talking about. Amazon didn't remove us from their store because we were mis-using their brand name. They removed us because they thought we were responsible, directly, for the piracy.

The rest of your ramblings is super unclear. When Xbox launched, nobody posted up questions asking 'where can I find the latest download of a movie in the theaters?' 'why doesn't my torrent downloader work' they were related questions on the system. I was there, in #xbmp, and #xbmc, and on xboxhacker and xbox-scene, and nobody asked where to obtain content, which is essentially the problem now.

People don't view Kodi as a player, they view it as the vehicle to obtain copyrighted material, we just don't want *our brand* directly associated with the very clear copyright infringement that is obtaining content. We will never tell users how to use our product, but we don't want brand confusion with the box sellers, the manufs, the youtubers and especially people who literally have our name in their domain, twitter, fb, or use our logo/brand to sell their boxes that the sole purpose is 'free movies, tv, fully loaded'.

This was never a problem with the xbox scene.

[misa]

Can I sell these boxes fully loaded?

https://www.facebook.com/kodibox/videos/...974214930/

[DJ_Izumi]

So the pirates streaming sites are so mad at Kodi that they're going to DDOS the main site, further discouraging developers from even being involved in Kodi, and maybe leading to the software's development to stagnate? Seems like a good, solid, well thought out plan.

[harlekin]

@keith: Confront as in "We feel their reasoning is a front, this is an attack against openness on the internet. Our mails arent getting returned..." That kind of stuff. Words. You had press attention starting to pull traction around the real issue (in Germany all tech sites opened essentially with "Amazon is stepping over a line here") - and you dindnt do anything with it. You decided not to print a T-Shirt, thats not exactly crisis management - and you started to describe the actions you take against the missuse of your brand - and that at the time you were in a legal battle -- that was too passive -

but we can leave all this in the past - I and some other folks did our best to get it through to public opinion, that Amazon essentially pulled a fast one here.

But look at your press release now - we are sorry, Amazon probably was right, yes you could see us as enablers, we are trying our best, please help us in the effort - those damn ebay seller essentially "got to us".

Major wtf moment here. Have the discussion internally that you will be seen as unwanted competition by probably every "boxed entertainment solution" currently on the market - that you are on the forefront with usability for example, when all the other plays in the market are decided by "who owns what content license" and interface is an afterthought. (Boxee, who is Boxee?) Extendability is prohibited. Storefront is forced... You know - the real issues. Not "Amazon doesnt like us - we are sorry and would like to work it over".

Kodi is now actively promoting Amazons public position, that they removed it from the store, because they thought it was a piracy enabling device.

Not even a thought went into the validity of the argument, or if it was true or not ("they didnt return our emails, so it must be right..:") - you simply went with it, because it allowed you to tell a story where Kodi was simply a victim, Amazon of course was just mistaken - and its all the fault of "insert bad guy".

Then you asked for public support to rally behind you.
-

As for the second part - people asking for "where can I get free" on the forums - we are in agreement on how to handle it. But your position is "and they didnt know what they are doing" while mine is, they know - and they dont care. They spent money, because they wanted to get something in return, and now that it doesnt work - they want free support for it. And they dont care from whom or from where. Now why cant we say, that thats also entirely their responsibility?

Because Kodi gets a bad reputation for being broken? It is not - we know better. But we now are protecting the people who payed for piracy boxes, who in addition demand free support - and pinning the cause of the issue on those (//$&*§) sellers? Thats jumping motivations, cause and effect chains.. Hold them responsible for their actions. Let them learn from it.

[TheGame1986]

So the pirates streaming sites are so mad at Kodi that they're going to DDOS the main site, further discouraging developers from even being involved in Kodi, and maybe leading to the software's development to stagnate? Seems like a good, solid, well thought out plan.

It could be anyone doing the attack. I'd wager it's the YouTubers over the 3rd-party sites, since only the YouTubers seem to be crying about Kodi protecting their Trademarks.

But, whoever is doing it, is pathetic.

[da-anda]

Can I sell these boxes fully loaded?

https://www.facebook.com/kodibox/videos/...974214930/

sure, go for it

[natethomas]

Can I sell these boxes fully loaded?

https://www.facebook.com/kodibox/videos/...974214930/

sure, go for it

I love this.

[keith]

@harlekin, you make a ton of assumptions, broadly worded statements. Kodi's never been in a legal battle.

You seem to be obsessed with the past too. Unless you have a time machine to change the past, we can't change it, so obsessing over it seems pointless.

We never said everyone doesn't know, some don't. We get emails/tweets/forum posts everyday 'is this legal?'.

And everyday we get 'why is kodi broken?' messages as well so our experiences are different than your assumptions. We need to fix the problem at it's core, box sellers ripping off not only their customers, but everyone else too. The only person that benefits from a 'fully loaded' device is the person who's making the markup on it, and the manuf who sold it. Everyone else loses.

Frankly, we can't care who uses our software. That's the power of open source. But we can do something about who uses our brand, which we are.

[halikus]

Can I sell these boxes fully loaded?

https://www.facebook.com/kodibox/videos/...974214930/

*claps*


I've been using Kodi long enough that i'm pretty sure these 2 features aren't included; Fresh start (reset to default settings) and a simple "info" disclaimer msg inside settings. A simple button in settings that when clicked displays info about your trademark stance, your feelings about people infringing your trademarks and a screenshot of what a default Kodi homescreen looks like. Also, a button that will wipe your addon data and addons folder that basically returns you to a default fresh install. I have bought boxes that come pre loaded with garbage and i always wished there was a simple way to remove it. You could also add the equivalent of an "install from untrusted sources" button that enables outside repos distancing yourselves a little more from "them". It's what i would do with 16 so close to final. Heck, i already have a standalone .py for fresh start if you need it.