[Dangelus]

Slightly Off-Topic. I don't know exactly how the popular illegal addons work. Don't they also take away the business of the filehosts and the streaming sites by bypassing their ads? I wonder why these guys have apparently not done anything. I would guess since it's a shady business model that they might use some "unorthodox methods" to get to the guys behind the addons or maybe even kodi itself.

You know, I was thinking the very same thing. The sheer popularity of these piracy boxes must be having a dramatic effect on the original web served (and ad revenue dependent) streaming sites. You'd think they would make it a priority to "hide" their streaming links better. It would certainly do us a favour

[MrsAngelD]

Slightly Off-Topic. I don't know exactly how the popular illegal addons work. Don't they also take away the business of the filehosts and the streaming sites by bypassing their ads? I wonder why these guys have apparently not done anything. I would guess since it's a shady business model that they might use some "unorthodox methods" to get to the guys behind the addons or maybe even kodi itself.

Slightly Off-Topic. I don't know exactly how the popular illegal addons work. Don't they also take away the business of the filehosts and the streaming sites by bypassing their ads? I wonder why these guys have apparently not done anything. I would guess since it's a shady business model that they might use some "unorthodox methods" to get to the guys behind the addons or maybe even kodi itself.

You know, I was thinking the very same thing. The sheer popularity of these piracy boxes must be having a dramatic effect on the original web served (and ad revenue dependent) streaming sites. You'd think they would make it a priority to "hide" their streaming links better. It would certainly do us a favour

I'm not completely positive but I do believe that some of the sites pay uploaders based on how many times their files are accessed, the uploaders then in turn pay for premium accounts. So they make their money of the uploaders really, and don't care about the streaming so much. At least this was my understanding of it.

[kduser35]

as long as the videos don't endorse piracy or give how to's for that and are in no other way misleading we're usually fine with people creating youtube tutorials etc. We're also not against third party add-ons in general, as there are plenty of non-piracy ones out there which are fine.

Therein lies the problem, its almost impossible to separate the piracy from the non-piracy add-ons because I suspect many add-ons have elements for both. For example, national broadcasters in Europe make their live content freely available through their websites. Many add-ons include these channels but may embed others which are dubious. Too difficult to sort out. In any case, I'm one of the small-time YouTubers that made instructional videos. While others in this forum dispute the trademark, I don't, its yours and your entitled to enforce as you see fit. I deleted several hundreds of kopi videos (basically all my videos) as a result, and plan to use a fork once it becomes available. Thank you for giving us sufficient warning for us to take action before shutting down YouTube channels.

[DarkHelmet]

So site pays uploaders and then uploaders pay site? I'm not sure that's a well thought through business model...

[phate89]

For what I know sites pay uploaders per view or give a little sum for every premium from their referral link. The site earns with ads and mainly with premium accounts that removes ads/bandwith/captcha/waiting time limit.
The paradox of this is that a lot of people actually pay to stream/download better but they pay the website and the uploader and not the copyright holder..

[harlekin]

Slightly Off-Topic. I don't know exactly how the popular illegal addons work. Don't they also take away the business of the filehosts and the streaming sites by bypassing their ads? I wonder why these guys have apparently not done anything. I would guess since it's a shady business model that they might use some "unorthodox methods" to get to the guys behind the addons or maybe even kodi itself.

You know, I was thinking the very same thing. The sheer popularity of these piracy boxes must be having a dramatic effect on the original web served (and ad revenue dependent) streaming sites. You'd think they would make it a priority to "hide" their streaming links better. It would certainly do us a favour

The same goes for all media outlets, youtube, ... Whats their revenue stream, if I may ask? Just start serving ads in Kodi and forward all the proceedings to the respective sites - there, problem solved and still neutral.

Ha - there, I made myself laugh...

And maybe let me try to take another jab at the ethics around here. (It starts to become a real problem when project leads begin to believe in their own PR.)

What we want is a agnostic content aggregation platform, that serves as a device independent interface, that of course strips out ads and that knows what its battles are (html5 having hooks for DRM for example, or getting grants from google to have students write code to transcode video files into iPad compatible formats - oh, thats Plex' business model - my mistake. (But the grant was cashed in never the less..)).

As for the "why" part -

- because discovery of content on big screens cant be handed over to storefronts - not when you have 10.000 channels and five rotating "top spots" every week - and the user is certainly not allowed to curate "his experience"
- because licensing agreements are still killing accessibility of content all over the world (Netflix vs VPN is a prominent case, but far from the only one)
- because the "cordcutting is replacing one monthly payment with five smaller ones" model isnt especially attractive to anyone outside the US ("welcome to our Plethora of walled gardens, subscription style - its the future, you know"), remember - we are already paying half of what you do
- because there is still the communal and promotional value of "free" - and for the purpose of this argument I am not talking about piracy, but about ad free.

Or to sum it up in one paragraph -

There is no "html" equivalent for video content. Even html itself has turned out to be no valid html equivalent for video content (because they let DRM enter the playing field - on a base level, not on a plugin level, the plugin level would have been fine). The closest thing we have as a "framework" for video content that can be somewhat freely aggregated and is openly accessible (a priori) is youtube. And then Kodi.

Kodi has always been the more aggressive one - as it fosters a "scraping" approach. Also - I'm all for it, because - as Apple would say it, the TV industry (lets use it as a broad term) hadn't had to innovate at the same pace as the rest of online media.

Also - If you are wondering what the big upload havens on the net have done to mitigate the popularity spike of Kodi - they have reduced bandwidth. Sub 100kbit audiotracks and 0.5Mbit video have become the new standard in 2016. Their calculation still is the same - they have a conversion rate, they have a contact surface - and if the audience increases and their name is still getting recognized, they are happy.

Now official media outlets on the other hand usually dont have a name recognition problem and also are ad supported...

[harlekin]

Let me repeat Kodis official stance in the face of this once more: We don't want Amazons Fire TV management to see us as enabling piracy - because we think that being looked at that way is a big problem facing the future -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lgLYGBbDNs

- and also, actually we cant support all those people who "paid for FREE" and now want product support from "that random geeky guy on the internet" without paying again. And without ever having to learn for themselves how an information economy works. We also think this is mainly because of piracy.

First you pay far too much money for a box. You know, like piracy.

Then you watch a youtube video for an ad impression. (That youtuber, so cwol - omg, and its so easay...)

Then when something breaks, or doesnt work as advertised, you go on XDA or this forum (hey - google, like) and produce a bunch of ad impressions. But at the same time drive out the "old guard" because - holy hockeysticks, arent you demanding without even the capacity to give back anything at all ("It broke, It broooke...") - hipsters,


http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/android-...-1.3455524

- gladly paying money once for shortcuts in life and the flair of something being free and a bit borderline legal - grown up on a facebook culture of hearsay advice and life help in tweet, no, app form - or was it a channel you subscribed to (How to make best selfie and post it on platform; Best make up tips for the month of march.)?

For open source projects this is a culture shock.

You were scammed, and so were we. Lets acknowledge and part ways. You keep watching "Big Bang Theory" - maybe even paying for it, we keep doing slightly different stuff.

And those youtubers better find a way to say Kodi without Kodi. Fast. Yeah, just fork it, and then still have no support for "that" in the end. Thats the way to go. Let's see how popular your " Coti-Fork: How to fix problem 1823 - your ISP is engaging in false advertising without your knowledge", "Coti-Fork: How to fix problem 18234 - how to recognize a dead video host and learn to live with having payed for it", "Coti-Fork: How to fix problem 18235: So your Box seller isnt returning your calls.. It could be you. Or them. What is it?", "Coti-Fork: How to fix problem 18236: You dont know what a filesystem is or how to copy anything - unix basics for the Smartphone Generation", "Coti-Fork: How to fix problem 18237: So you want to stream your smartphone to your TV - three easy ways of... oh forget it, I quit..." videos are. Your premise is - you do it once - then profit from the long tail.

Ha - there, I made myself laugh - again.

[natethomas]

Then when something breaks, or doesnt work as advertised, you go on XDA or this forum (hey - google, like) and produce a bunch of ad impressions.

Let me say, following your extremely long rants is very difficult for a few reasons. First, they aren't super well planned out, so they come off as just a random collection of ideas that can't be followed, and we're left forced to guess at whatever point you were trying to make. I genuinely have no idea what's making you laugh, I think because you are leaving out the conclusion/punch line? In fact, that might be the perfect description of your various rants. You write a couple sentences as if leading to some kind of idea, but then move on to the next argument before you can write the conclusion to your idea. Everything is just an implication that has to be guessed at.

And second, your rants have a tendency to make unfounded assumptions or rewrite the facts to better set up a strawman argument, so that you can more easily break that argument down.

Case in point, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Kodi doesn't have ads in the forum. Or on the website. Or the wiki. Or anywhere else. We do have sponsorship links, but impressions have absolutely no effect on whether we keep sponsors or how much we receive from them. So your strawman argument, which (while super hard to follow) was to somehow link us into the chain of people profiting from the pirate boxes (I think?), falls on its face.

As mentioned elsewhere, beyond being able to say "Hey neat, look at all the users," there's literally no benefit for the Kodi organization to get more users based on content aggregating piracy addons. We haven't seen a big rise in shirt sales or donations. We haven't seen an increase in the number of PRs or devs. We don't sell page ads. Content providers have not, so far, been impressed with our numbers enough to make official addons, because they perceive those numbers as being fairly valueless. And we don't accept sponsorships from hardware companies that push the piracy angle.

[Memphiz]

Take your meds Harlekin - noone wants to read your stupid text walls. I really can't understand why people with serious health issues keep posting in forums when they were told that noone can follow their minds.

[Ned Scott]

Take your meds Harlekin - noone wants to read your stupid text walls. I really can't understand why people with serious health issues keep posting in forums when they were told that noone can follow their minds.

I don't agree with Harlekin either, but that's very rude to say. When it breaks down into personal insults, then that's the time to walk away from the discussion.

[Memphiz]

I gave his posts to my psychologist. He could be bipolar, autistic, or having ADHD or is schizophrenic or he takes the wrong dose of the wrong meds - might be even drugs involved. The personal insults are done by him multiple times by what he wrote about the people involved in this whole project. I am serious!
People who are unable to participate in a forum in a sane way should simply not do it.
I didn't really insult him. I am really sure he would need some meds or treatment - doesn't matter if he already realised his problem or not...

[Ned Scott]

I'm not sure if I would go that far, but fair point. I'm sorry I assumed it was an insult ;)

[sarbes]

I'd like to comment only on this proposal:

remove the ability of adding source and zips in the final release of jarvis.
job done.

This would be the death of a lot of legal add-ons. I could not provide a way to test new changes, push small updates or host some slightly incomplete add-ons. Disable external repos and a lot of add-on devs would cease to work.

Kodi box sellers on the other hand, could patch this restriction with ease. In the end, this would only hurt the normal devs.

[DJ_Izumi]

I gave his posts to my psychologist. He could be bipolar, autistic, or having ADHD or is schizophrenic or he takes the wrong dose of the wrong meds - might be even drugs involved.

Er, yeah, you are either bullshitting or you spoke to a doctor who got their medical degree off a breakfast cereal box if ADHD somehow made that list of internet diagnosis...

[christoofar]

Having switched over to a Raspberry Pi2+OSMC this weekend, this morning I tried to do a Google search on "best official Kodi addons", just to get some ideas on what else to add. But virtually every single link was to lists of pirate addons. Yet another problem faced trying to separate Kodi from this crap.