[Jakkaddy]

Hopefully this is the appropriate place to place this.

I've herd the news about google removing your name off of their autocomplete just because it is associated with "piracy".

What's your thoughts on this?

Mine is: This is the stupidest move against a legitimate software, treating it like a pirating tool. Why can't google just ban the words "Kodi addons" or, even better, remove search results that leads to infringing kodi boxes? The fact that this is slightly similar to SOPA, but instead of taking down the DNS to a website, it takes down the suggestions. If they keep doing that, might as well remove such brand names like OBS because it records stuff. Yes, there are scammers, fraudsters and other criminals out there hurting not only the unsuspecting consumer, but the movie industry, and Kodi itself. Blame actual pirates, not stuff intended for legitimate purposes used by pirates.

[da-anda]

my thought? "Thanks effing piracy community ". Sad thing is, that TVaddons (and alike) as well as the braindead youtubers still don't get that they harm the project. All they care about is to leech money from our non-profit project. Those idiots reflect nothing the core of this project stands for.

[nickr]

+1

[Atreyu]

Well said

[natethomas]

Just to be clear, Kodi has not been removed from search results. While google won't autocomplete Kodi anymore, all the search results remain the same. Beyond that, I'm mostly just disappointed and wish that google provided the same open way of defending yourself that the gov't does, rather than just having this shadowy decision making process that you only learn about after the fact.

[Jakkaddy]

Thanks for replying.

I'm mean, plagiarizing (claiming) kodi itself (on top of scamming the consumers) is the salt on an open wound, not just distorting the information. Thank god that media companies, including the MPAA, despite they supported the controversial SOPA/PIPA/<any copyright-related liability expansion enforcement>, didn't go after Kodi but mainly the infringing add-ons. Just hope this stays true perpetually and they don't suddenly aim their guns to this community.

So far, gladly that most news sites also acknowledged that Kodi isn't a pirating tool, and that add-ons are the culprit, or that actual pirates configured it. Google seeing this being associated with piracy and removing it from their search term is nothing more than to further convince people that kodi is a pirating tool. If they keep acting like this, might as well try banning search terms like "recording", since they are also in the same situation as kodi, and homebrew for gaming console could also be in its filters if this all happened before now.

And they didn't even do it good, typing "Kodi Addons" gives you after that text "2018", "reddit", "sports". Wow, so much for anti-piracy efforts on its autocomplete.

(I wonder if plagiarism violates the GPL license, it did mention that you must give credit.)