[Tolriq]

Since the post was closed and the important part of the discussion was as always forget. I'll finish it here. (Sorry for using sinuous way to have you write all that was needed).
Please take time to fully read the post before jumping to conclusions just because of my name.

The whole point is not against Nate it's about things not being black and white, and that things that some think are fact may in the end not be fact at all. And that should stop being presented as facts.

It's all about opinions and point of views and this discussion is very important because there's wrong information distributed those days.

1) Black and White.

Nate said :

Is there some article out there that is misinforming people about what piracy is? This is at least the second time I've read this remarkably wrong conclusion in the past few days. If there is, here are the simple facts.

Piracy is generally defined as the sharing, copying, or performing of copyrighted content from one person to another person via the internet by people who do not have the legal authority to do so. In most cases, this is illegal, though not in all, as there are several exceptions or situations in which modern law hasn't yet caught up.

That can be resume as Piracy is XXXX, this is a fact, I'll spread the good word.

This is cool Nate is a white knight and trying to do the good.


Then we read GNU web site that says:

Publishers often refer to copying they don't approve of as “piracy.” In this way, they imply that it is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them. Based on such propaganda, they have procured laws in most of the world to forbid copying in most (or sometimes all) circumstances.

They cleary says that the fact that was presented earlier is not a fact, it's propaganda. (Despite what was saying they take a stance, I only had access to French version and could not check the English one).

This now changes the situation a lot.

Nate is no more a white knight spreading the good word, it's a black knight spreading propaganda.

Meaning that with just one more information, something that was good, is now bad.

The question now would be is Nate white knight and good? or is Nate black knight and bad?
Or maybe as I try to explain since I jumped in the other thread, it's a lot more complicated and Nate is just Nate and not white, not black.

This is purely rhetorical and should of course not be discussed here We all know Nate does try to do the good, he just as everyone can be wrong sometimes.

2) All addons in Kodi repo are legal.

Now the most important part is about all the communication that I see about the fact that all the addons in Kodi repo are pefectly safe and legal.
This is what have forced me to get into that discussion, because I think (and with correct information I'm sure more will agree) that this is an important discussion.

For example from Kodi twitter account.

Our Kodi repository only contains completely legal add-ons. In addition they are code checked for vulnerabilities.
http://kodi.tv/addons

Or

For YouTube the official API is used.

Again those sentences are presented as pure facts by people that represent authority here. But the reality is that they are not facts, they are point of views.

Youtube addons, Twitch addons does use the API to get listing of the media so what is presented as a fact is partly true.
But then the addons use hacking techniques to get access to the actual video feed and play it outside of the website term of services. And this change the simple presented facts, to something a lot different.

This means that those plugins makes users that use them violate the contract that they have with Google / Twitch and commit fraud.

Again quoting Nate

Breaking encryption violates laws related to the DMCA (in the US, at least), but does not fulfill the elements of copyright violation. Breaking the terms of service of a website isn't actually breaking the law at all, but rather violates a contract, which is typically not illegal. Impersonating someone else is fraud, though I'm not sure it counts since it's one piece of software tricking another piece of software, but that's the closest comparison.

Breaking a contract is illegal, when I rent a flat I make a contract, if I do not pay I violate the contract, this is illegal in many countries. Whatever your fellings are (Different from facts).
Building a Ponzi scheme is committing fraud, it's illegal too. After all it's just a matter of making things believing other things.

For Nate piracy is illegal access to something that you have no permission to and it's bad, but violating a contract and committing fraud to access something in way you should not is not piracy as it could be access on the website and since it's not piracy it's not wrong.
This is perfectly fine to think like that, and I think like that mostly, but this is personal feelings and opinions, this is not facts at all.

This is all but safe and legal in nearly all country.
Yet users will believe what is said by what they take as authority here.

So to resume as I'm not English native and some love to play with words and not really read what I write as soon as there's my name.

1) I have nothing against Nate he had just posted the perfect example of something that all believe is white being in fact pure black some some others (And others being a well known and respected organization). Changing a simple thing to a complex thing.
2) There's way too much communication about addons being in the Kodi repo, being perfectly safe and legal, and this is just false and misinforming. Users using a large part of those addons are violating contracts and committing frauds without even knowing because of this communication.

I'm sure more will come to talk about different levels of hacking, of good versus bad illegal access. In the end it does not matter, the addons are not perfectly white unlike what is said.

And all users using the Youtube addon https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms risk their account. Those are facts not feelings or point of view.
The addons breaks §5.1 C of the TOS. With the possible consequences §11.3 A. Simple fact and rules.

[natethomas]

Before I get started, the previous discussion was about tvaddons. The "important part of the discussion" as you put it had nothing to do with tvaddons and therefore, by the rules of pretty much every forum on earth, was not an important part of the discussion. With that said...

Tolriq, I think you mean well, but you need to be really careful with this discussion. Saying something is illegal without doing the work of actually making sure it is is pretty immoral all on its own. When you say something is illegal or fraud or similar, you need to first define the elements of the law being broken, and then show how the act could fulfill those elements. For example, fraud alone has nine elements.

(1) a representation of fact; (2) its falsity; (3) its materiality; (4) the representer’s knowledge of its falsity or ignorance of its truth; (5) the representer’s intent that it should be acted upon by the person in the manner reasonably contemplated; (6) the injured party’s ignorance of its falsity; (7) the injured party’s reliance on its truth; (8) the injured party’s right to rely thereon; and (9) the injured party’s consequent and proximate injury.

When I said fraud in the previous thread, I was trying to come up with something even vaguely related to faking a user agent, because to my knowledge there are no laws on that subject. But you should not have taken my words as "this is definitely fraud" unless you actually did the work of comparing a faked user agent to the elements of fraud. If you had done so, you'd have seen that the comparison fails to hold water. A user would rarely, if ever (4) have knowledge of its falsity. And even if they did, there must be some actual person to hear this representation of fact who relies upon it. Again, a faked user agent does not "speak" to anyone. It is one computer interacting with another computer. The last several elements requires there to be an injured party; however, again, there's no evidence one exists. Youtube's API does not serve up ads in the first place, which means a use of that API using a faked user agent would have the same net result as using that API with a non-faked user agent. There is no "harm" in the legally defined sense.

The fact that I offered up the word fraud and instead of reading about it and figuring out whether it actually applied, you decided to simply run with it makes me wonder how honorable your intentions are here. Is your goal to actually figure out what is and is not right, or is your goal to just call me and the team out with as much FUD as you can think of? I honestly don't know now.

Regarding violating a contract, I stand by my statement. There are no laws in the US against breaking a contract. Your example of failing to pay the rent isn't illegal because a contract was violated. It's illegal because it's theft. My "fellings" on this subject are based on having spent several years learning about the law in the US.

I have no idea why you bring up ponzi schemes.

Speaking of FUD, it's amazing to me that you've so completely taken my words defining piracy out of context. I honestly didn't know it was possible. I was attempting to narrow the definition of online piracy from essentially "everything that could possibly be illegal to do with content," a definition another user was pushing, to the more well known "a copyright violation" that's been the accepted definition in most writing and news organizations since the rise of Napster and bit torrent. Yet instead of replying to that user, you ignored his definition and him entirely, and you ignored the past 15 years of common usage of the term, usage so common that wikipedia chooses to include a redirect for it in their post on piracy, and instead act as if I, Nathan, am the only person in the universe other than the MPAA who acknowledges this definition. I am the black knight, spreading propaganda. If you really feel that way, that it's just me and the MPAA (and evidently not even that user that I was replying to who was doing the same thing and more), and you elect not to see the literally thousands of articles, posts, and similar from the past 15 years of discussion on the topic, then I just don't know what to do or say to you.

In fact, if you reply and your reply doesn't acknowledge both that user that I was replying to and the thousands of articles calling copyright violations "online piracy," then I'm done with this conversation. You will have made clear at that point that you are not really trying to get to facts, but instead are going on a witch hunt for me.

Finally, on a clerical note, I'm looking at the TOS you linked to, and there don't appear to be a section 5.1 C or 11.3 A. Those sections don't exist, or I don't see them, so I can't address them. There is a 5C and 11(iii).

[Tolriq]

So you really do not read anything about what I write

I have nothing against you, I have something about false facts being said a lot those days. And you are clearly saying the same. Saying something as a fact without verifying is bad.
The US laws are not the laws of all your users.

I never said you were spreading propaganda, if you actually time to read what I write I wrote that from GNU message on the piracy word you are doing that. Not my feeling, what they wrote.
Meaning and proving seeing how you react, that the issue is more complex that what most wants to write here.

The fact that you, the MPAA and many others says that X is piracy, does not change the fact that GNU says otherwise, so what you present as a fact is finally not really a fact since for the other party this is propaganda.
So what some people see white, others sees black proves that some people here should stop writing things as fact, but as opinions because this is what it is.

There's nothing more here than proving that what some see white, other see black. Again nothing against you, and I do not care at all about piracy definition, just simple demonstration that everything is point of views and not facts and that all this addon thing is much more complicated than black and white.

Now the most important part where you again confirm what I say:

Saying something is illegal without doing the work of actually making sure it is is pretty immoral all on its own.

This is your opinion on what I say.

Now my opinion is exactly the same, with just changing 2 letters.

Saying something is legal without doing the work of actually making sure it is is pretty immoral all on its own.

But with one major difference, if I'm wrong I put myself at risk for diffamation or things like that. If you are wrong you put all your users at risk. There's a subtle difference, but with quite different results.

So when the Team write on it's official account that All Kodi addons on the repository are legal without having done any work to be actually sure is immoral and this is exactly what I'm trying to say since I jumped in the other thread.

You are saying the exact same thing as me

About the TOS, I have no access to the English texts, so only the French ones. But I'm sure the content is the same

§5.1 C says:

vous vous engagez à ne pas accéder au Contenu par quelque moyen que ce soit autre que les pages de lecture vidéo du Site Internet lui-même, le Lecteur YouTube ou tout autre moyen que YouTube peut explicitement désigner à cet effet

Can be translated more or less as you engage yourself to not access the content by any means other than youtube pages, the youtube player or other means that youtube explicitly allows.

§11.3 says:

YouTube peut à tout moment résilier votre contrat si :

vous ne respectez pas l'un quelconque des termes de ces Conditions (ou agissez d'une façon qui montre clairement que vous n'avez pas l'intention ou que vous êtes dans l'incapacité de respecter les termes de ces Conditions) ;

Youtube can revoke your contract if you do not respect any term of this conditions.

This is contract violation made by the users. Of course said users should read the TOS of the services they use and the fault is on them, but writing everything is legal without any form of moderation or country detail or anything is really not good acting.

This is the same for Twitch as I posted in the earlier thread (This time I have English texts)
https://www.twitch.tv/p/developer-agreement Schedule 1 part A:

- Adopt and integrate our embeddable player for all video content. We designed our player for the precise purpose of ensuring others discover and consume the broadcaster content found on Twitch.
- If you have an idea that involves distribution of video content outside the Twitch player, or commercial uses not expressly permitted by Twitch, send us a request and we will consider it (integrationsuccess@twitch.tv). Unless we permit it, don’t do it.
- Don’t modify, replace, interfere with or block (a) functionality of the embeddable player, including advertisements placed by Twitch; and (b) the Twitch Marks.

Those were the 2 addons mentioned in that thread as being perfectly "legal", the justification was even to post the dev site of twitch, but the dev site of twitch is very clear about what is allowed or not.

And to finish about your before I get started, the important part of the discussion was that all tvaddons where bad and it's good they are gone and that all addons on Kodi repo are good and it's cool they are still here.
This is not fully true. And while I do agree that what they did was bad and they were totally aware of that, you can't just reduce that to simple White and Black.

And as always it's easier to kick the messager than face the truth, specially when the messenger is Tolriq

[DJ_Izumi]

At an anime con last month I was at a panel for one of the major producers of anime DVDs. A lot of the discussion was the disruption and market shift as (Legit, not pirate) streaming blew up in popularity. It also turned to talking about weather piracy like torrents or legit streaming put a 'bigger hit' on physical media. At one point I asked the question about content distributors opinions on format shifting. The response was basically 'We have so many bigger concerns beyond weather you ripped your own disc to watch it on your phone.'

[PatK]

@Tolriq

Just a reminder that this is a Kodi related discussion area, not a legal court or discussion regarding legalities. I think the community understands the position that Team Kodi has taken, and it's clear you take exception to some of the terms and language. Language aside, you've made your point, now I'll ask you to leave this discussion to the professionals. We not only are entitled to our views, but it's the way we have crafted the rules and the forum, your argumentative negativity is not helpful to the project. Nate has taken the effort of entertaining your thoughts, and tried to elucidate the issues at length. In the rebuttal it seems that In essence you seem to be disrespecting a team member and the foundation.

Team Kodi is in solid legal territory according to the professionals and if you value your membership, let's curtail this dissuasion with a we agree to disagree.

[Fail$tyle420]

No, actually the important part and only point of that discussion was: TVaddons being sued and possibly setting a precedent. You guys derailed it with this huge drawn out fight over wording. Tolriq, I stand with you on spreading false claims/misinformation. With that being said, I still am completely lost as to who is right/wrong(not that it matters to me), but great information from both of you guys.

[Tolriq]

Well some message where deleted but the point is also about the fact that Kodi could be sued too in the end if we push the concept. But if presented like that would have ended nowhere.

About the deleted message some facts to close this discussion from my end as I hope some will be able to abstract my name from the equation and this will trigger some internal discussions.
1) Kodi did post on June 10th on Twitter

Our Kodi repository only contains completely legal add-ons. In addition they are code checked for vulnerabilities.
http://kodi.tv/addons

2) The Youtube addon does break the TOS, as well as Twitch, and I'm sure many others.
3) TOS is a contract between users and Google that they have to validate / sign before using the service.
4) In my country contracts between people or for services are covered by the law under "Code de la consommation"

I'm not making exception or disrespecting anyone, I'm just pointing some basic facts (yes facts, not language / terms like maybe some others does use to justify opinions).

[DarkHelmet]

Would "Our Kodi repository only contains add-ons to completely legal sources. In addition they are code checked for vulnerabilities." suit you better, Tolriq?

Now if you really want to split hairs, there is no guarantee all content on youtube is legal in terms of copyrights, because no site with user uploaded content can guarantee that.

[Tolriq]

Would "Our Kodi repository only contains add-ons to completely legal sources. In addition they are code checked for vulnerabilities." suit you better, Tolriq?

Now if you really want to split hairs, there is no guarantee all content on youtube is legal in terms of copyrights, because no site with user uploaded content can guarantee that.

I should really take English lessons

This is not about the content at all, this is about making users violating a contract and using impersonation to access things in a way that is not permitted.

Imagine you have an Internet website that serves content with ads. Everything is legal and accessible by everyone.
Then someone makes an addons that displays your site content but without the whole page, so without ads.
You loose income. This is by nature not cool for the website. But not illegal if the data is not shared again to someone else. (At least in some countries)

Now take the same thing with Youtube, this website makes you sign a contract with them before accessing the content, this means that you the users are bound by this contract.
This contract says: do not access the content outside of official ways.
The addons is now not only still grey from moral point of view, but it also makes users violate a contract they have with Google. In some countries this is illegal and could have consequences.
In France Google could ask for all the money lost from non displayed ads for example.

Nothing complicated I'm not trying to play with words, I'm trying to put back the truth about some ideas that are spreading that are not true.
Users using addons are tied to their contract with the providers + local laws.
Saying everything is legal, just because it may be in US is not good way of acting.

In that case piracy is not illegal in many country, so piracy is not illegal everywhere?

I'll now really leave the thread as most posts will only show that for most people TOS, contracts and the fact that something is available on Internet does not implies anything about your rights on those.

[DarkHelmet]

I think I see the point you make (doesn't mean I agree with it). The term "legal" cannot easily be used for things like web services (different laws in different countries for example). So I offered a solution in my sentence that the sources are legal leaving the addons out of the scope of the word "legal". So far I see no solution from your side.

Pardon me for saying it, but so far to me it looks like you are starting an argument for the sake of an argument.