[keith]

That is true. Surely some of the Addons in the official repo do not have explicit permission from the source.

The addons in the official repo, as far as we're aware, get their content directly from the source. IE: SyFy streams from their own website and we're not pulling ripped copies off some janky website.

While we haven't got explicit permission, it typically falls under fair use because of the source.

Much of this boils down to 'intent'. Our addon and their website has the exact same intent: to promote media in a safe and legal way, which views are counted by the respective owners of the content and if they are setup correctly, showing the ads associated, just like on the website. We will not allow addons in our repo that intentionally block ads, or put ads over someone else's content they don't own or stream someone elses content from a weird questionable 3rd party site that has no affiliation with the content owners.

I am actually actively on working on reaching out to the companies who have community addons to build relationships and see if they want to help support an official addon.

As an example, VEVO reached out to us to say our addon didn't support ads. We responded it's a community addon and we're using their published API which does not have ads in it, but we'd love to form a stronger relationship in which we are a '1st party addon ecosystem' using the same API's Roku, Fire TV, Android TV, etc use. They never got back to us.

So while we did not get explicit permission, because we're not damaging their brand and receiving content directly from the source (ie, their api/website/etc) they are fine with it.

If you know of another addon in the repo which does not conform to these rules (and its entirely possible a few out of the 1000+ slipped through the crack) please let us know and we'll quick move to remove it and contact the addon dev.

And even if a company declines to want to help, they've never asked to be removed, out of the 20+ I've contacted so far. Many more to go.