[Mnementh]

Had to start a new thread as the original has been locked, sorry for airing this in public though if this is the direction the Kodi forum is going to take it also might be worth a discussion.

I don't normally like to criticise the mods but I think you might have been a bit overzealous here PatK, you've closed and binned this thread stating that sharing movies between friends is considered piracy by the industry? I have to admit I know the "industry" have done some weird things in the past but I don't think even they would try to go this far

How can anybody legitimately expect everybody living in the same house to go out and buy their own copy of everything and not share a thing? Do they have to turn their music down low in case anybody else hears it and they fall foul of the PRS (or the equivalent in the readers country)?

Could this stance be clarified please.

Regards,

Mnementh

[TheGame1986]

I think PatK misunderstood your question, maybe, and thought you and your friend wanted to share a server from different locations, not understanding that you're living in the same house. If doing this is piracy, then no one should allow their family members to watch something they rip on their server, since it's the same thing.

For clarification, PatK, what Mnementh is asking is:

They have their movies on their server, their friend (who lives in the same house) has their movies on their server. They want to combine the servers for the household to share, but don't want movies duplicating in Kodi if they both happen to have them...

I would suggest you sit together and figure out what movies you both have and then one of you moving those movies to a different a location, and not scanning that location into your library. I don't think there is a built in function to check for duplicates.

[trogggy]

It wasn't Mnementh's thread. FWIW I had similar thoughts to him after reading it.

[PatK]

I was reluctant to trash the original thread but the idea of defining a friendship, sharing becomes the whole world to some, how far do we stretch this, sharing in dorms comes to mind. If the original post was couched in such a way as to consider the issue at hand technically, instead of a temporary accommodation to meld libraries, I might have seen it differently. @RayW1986 suggestion was close to what I would offer, given the overall situation, deletion of the extra/dups wouldn't be in the cards if in-eventuality there is a split and collections would be maintained.

The industry wants to put web cams in your living room and charge according to the people watching!

The Orginal thread https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=319897 for those who wish to open a can of worms.

[Lunatixz]

I was reluctant to trash the original thread but the idea of defining a friendship, sharing becomes the whole world to some, how far do we stretch this, sharing in dorms comes to mind. If the original post was couched in such a way as to consider the issue at hand technically, instead of a temporary accommodation to meld libraries, I might have seen it differently. @RayW1986 suggestion was close to what I would offer, given the overall situation, deletion of the extra/dups wouldn't be in the cards if in-eventuality there is a split and collections would be maintained.

The industry wants to put web cams in your living room and charge according to the people watching!

My only gripe was this your opinion or Team Kodis? This forum is heavily moderated, sometimes beyond the scope of banned and illegal content. I think it's important moderators bare the responsibility to not impart their morality on others... and simply adhere to the defined rules of the forum.

[metalkettle]

Too quick to pull the trigger I guess. That said, in some countries it probably is illegal. Ripping the content In the first place is against copyright in some regions, so sharing even over a Lan would be also.

[Mnementh]

@RayW1986 sorry should have made it a bit clearer that it isn't my thread that was closed and I have no vested interest in it, I just feel calling sharing files in the same house "Piracy" is a bit strong and don't think the thread should have been binned for it.

I'm pretty sure if everyone reads back over my threads you'll see I'm rather vocal against piracy and don't condone it in any way shape or form, I just honestly don't think this can be called piracy and shouldn't be considered as such.

The binned threads OP was asking a legitimate question that he wants some help and advice with, he's not asking for help to pirate films/tv or how to access any streams of content etc, he's asking about what we parrot Kodi as being for to everyone, "playing local content" and how to prevent duplicates showing up in the library. Personally I think it was a fair question, and I honestly believe that PatK (as good a job as he does normally ) has jumped the gun on this one.

[PatK]

In effect, piracy becomes closeness of friends. Should this be considered piracy if the sharing is across the street or just connected to the same lan? I'll have to admit "A friend and me move together soon" slipped by quickly and was interpreted by me as to be sharing advice. The rules of the forum are not static, and in this case quite a few people have voiced some concern and I do see the implications, but looking over the spirit of the post, I felt that a strong stand against sharing would be best and any clarification should come from the user. This was a personal decision and not reflective of the forum; any of the mods are always welcome to overturn a bin.

[trogggy]

Nobody would be accused of piracy* for borrowing - as opposed to copying - a book / film / cd from a friend or family member. If that's true for physical media then it remains at least morally true for electronic media - technical issues notwithstanding.
There was a time when I understood - and agreed with - the positions taken here.


* by a reasonable person sitting on a Clapham omnibus.

[nickr]

You can't read the book or watch the DVD while your friend has it, whereby opening your digital movie collection to others allows many to watch. The analogy is therefore not applicable.

To copy the movie at all it must come within fair use. I don't think sharing over the internet comes within that.

[Lunatixz]

You can't read the book or watch the DVD while your friend has it, whereby opening your digital movie collection to others allows many to watch. The analogy is therefore not applicable.

To copy the movie at all it must come within fair use. I don't think sharing over the internet comes within that.

So @nickr you are saying its Team Kodis stance that any discussion of sharing your legal content over lan or wan is banned from this forum?

[trogggy]

You can't read the book or watch the DVD while your friend has it, whereby opening your digital movie collection to others allows many to watch. The analogy is therefore not applicable.

To copy the movie at all it must come within fair use. I don't think sharing over the internet comes within that.

The internet doesn't come into this. Read the original post - it's about housemates. And I've no idea what 'opening your digital movie collection to others allows many to watch' is supposed to convey - or what it has to do with the situation in the deleted thread.

[Lunatixz]

Even if the internet comes into play, server software like serviio, plex, emby... cough Kodi allow you to share your content over the web as a personal server... not counting music servers like subsonic. Can we stick to the forum rules and leave personal opinions out of it?

[natethomas]

I think we may have come down a bit harshly here, particularly as the originally requested feature is quite literally being worked on as we speak in the form of Montellese's Media importing project. https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=224794

The correct move, in my opinion, is to unbin the thread, and leave a link for Montellese's most recent test builds. With a note saying, "I am not sure if Montellese's project successfully handles duplicate entries, but I know that's certainly been discussed in the past and is very much a desired feature," or something like that. I'm certainly not going to do that myself, because I'm a big believer in not unilaterally altering other mods' decisions.

Regarding this larger discussion of sharing, I frankly think we might be getting a bit over-zealous. It sounds like we might be going down the slippery slope road that ends in the NFL suing people for having Super Bowl watch parties. I don't think we should support all the various piracy addons, and I don't think it's very bright to support sharing content with strangers, but I see absolutely nothing wrong with sharing libraries among actual friends. Particularly ones living in the same house. Heck, I wouldn't oppose a "Party play" feature, where you and a buddy watch the same video at the same time in different houses, so you can chat about it, even if only one of you has the video.

I also wouldn't have issue with something like Plex's sync feature, that copies a file to a mobile device so that you can play it on that device or on a friend's local machine.

I genuinely don't care if all of this stuff or even more happens among friends. I think all of it can and should be labeled fair use, even over the internet. Where it gets sketchy, in my opinion, is when it happens among strangers.

In a more broad sense, I've disliked the movement of the law in the past 20 years. It seems like "over the internet" for some reason has some special meaning that somehow makes people think the fair use rights that existed in the 80s and 90s shouldn't exist today. It's perfectly legal to buy a copy of a movie and lend that physical copy of the movie out to every single one of your friends, one at a time, because of fair use. But people seem to think it's not fair use to buy a copy of the movie online and lend that copy of the movie out to every one of your friends, one at a time. Why not? The internet isn't some magic that strips rights away. Yet for some reason, people think it is.

[rmrector]

@natethomas Thank you so much for such reasonable thoughts on this matter from someone that is a part of Team Kodi. We've needed it for quite a while, IMHO, because this atmosphere has very much silenced any of us outsiders on the matter of Team Kodi and moderators being "over-zealous" for fear of having discussions binned or our accounts banned outright. It's a borderline witch hunt, and while we obviously don't fear for our lives in this case, the fear of banishment is very real and not at all unwarranted; most of us wouldn't be able to express our thoughts on this so eloquently, making it more likely that our words are taken the wrong way and thus judged too harshly.