[Gombeek]

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.

Streaming is legal in most parts of the world as it is only playing the content and dumping from the ram not actually saving it to the hard drive. The was an excellent article written in a paper about it, basically once something is uploaded to the internet legally or illegally it becomes public domain and can be viewed but storing the content is illegal. Even the DMCA was quoted as saying (and I'm not going to use quotes because i can't find the original article but this is the jist of it) currently with the law we can't say it is illegal to stream.

The android market is the lions share of the current "piracy" market. yes there are other devices but you have to look at the market share of the devices and the influence they hold. Android easily accounts for 90% of the market. You're right you'll never stop everyone but you can stop the masses.

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.

I completely agree, your responses are very diplomatic and i think a lot of the readers and contributors are getting fearful to post or speak their mind because of sed bans, in fact as i write this i feel like I'm on egg shells, wether that is how it is or not it's the feeling being conveyed in this thread. Im not going to point fingers but as some other members have posted some of the Dev team can be very abrupt I'm their responses, and again i completely understand why, it can be very frustrating responded to the same questions repeatedly when there is policy pages and wikis answering these questions or comments but some tact needs to be employed when dealing with the public. It would be better to not respond at all than some of the abrupt comments. It's very easy to make enemies and very hard to make friends, going about things with the attitude of fingers up to the world we don't need you doesn't help your cause, it only makes it harder. I get it, Kodi doesn't care about popularity, donations, etc... they only want to make their software and thats totally fine, but again this leads back to not being able to have it both ways. The notoriety is from the popularity of Kodi, the popularity comes from the public, the assumptions and associations also come from the public. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

IMHO