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Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter

torrentfreak.com

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Re: Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter

#101

Post by kyriakos »

untog wrote: post #15
starsinspace wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equally sad as the existence of the terrible Kodi piracy boxes is that the legitimate set top box/"smart TV" industry is completely ignoring it. I'm not aware of any TV manufacturer building Kodi into their product, instead they invent their own junk, which is usually much worse. Does anyone know why the consumer electronics industry is ignoring Kodi?

> Does anyone know why the consumer electronics industry is ignoring Kodi? I really don't think the audience for Kodi is that big. It requires you to have DRM-less, local copies of any TV or movie you want to watch, and how many people - legally - have that? Not many. I know because I'm one of those people, and use Plex, despite its faults. Also, last I used Kodi it was one (very big) codebase. Plex is split out into…

Latest version which is currently in alpha supports drm which could bring the change needed for kodi to go mainstream

Re: Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter

#102

Post by fnulnu »

kalcode wrote: post #43
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

>Google has banned the term “Kodi” from its autocomplete feature, meaning those who look for information on the set-top box will have to type out the full term in order to search, as reported by TorrentFreak. >While Kodi is a legal set-top box for streaming, it supports a myriad of third-party add-ons that provide access to pirated media. Kodi is not a "set-top box". Kodi is software. A set-top box might be pre-loade…

> This sort of mangling is disappointing from a tech-focused news outlet like The Verge. It also reinforces the implicit association between Kodi and piracy, which is the very thing that caused Google to remove Kodi from search results in the first place. This sort of mangling is exactly how exaggerated misrepresented news gets spread. Google didn't remove Kodi from their search results. You can type Kodi and it's th…

It reduces the traffic, when everything Kodi’s doing is completely legal.

Re: Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter

#103

Post by question_that »

cimi_ wrote: post #53

Doing this without any signal to users performing the search seems dishonest to me.

Google should still show the autocomplete results, but in a different color! Blue for when your query makes them sad, red for when your query has angered them and green when you're looking for information so upsetting they'll turn into the Incredible Hulk.

Re: Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter

#104

Post by solarkraft »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #97
kalcode wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sort of mangling is disappointing from a tech-focused news outlet like The Verge. It also reinforces the implicit association between Kodi and piracy, which is the very thing that caused Google to remove Kodi from search results in the first place. This sort of mangling is exactly how exaggerated misrepresented news gets spread. Google didn't remove Kodi from their search results. You can type Kodi and it's th…

Right, but... imo google can fuck right off. I’m really not sure who wants corporate interests nudging them like this. Google is allowed to curate thisr autocomplete to remove links to 6degree piracy topics, and even promote a candidate by removing negative results like they did for Clinton - and I’m allowed to consider them actually-evil for doing so.

Yep. Previously it seemed like they valued their search's integrity over everything else, but they must be so comfortable with their power now that they're not really worried anymore. It's not easy to prove either, so hard to regulate. I wish we could forbid it and it might be something the EU may try in the next few years, but it'd likely involve an external audit of the holiest systems - something they would likely fight against hard.

What individual users can do in the mean time is using independent, less corporate services: DuckDuckGo comes to mind.

It is however hard to ignore that Google really has a monopoly on good search (well, decliningly so for me). Maybe we should also start to use Bing to fuel competition.

Re: Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter

#105

Post by solarkraft »

nodja wrote: post #55
eco wrote: post #8

I feel so bad for the Kodi project. They've done amazing work over the years and their reputation is being destroyed so quickly by people taking their open source work, adding a bunch of piracy addons, and selling a set top box. I have no idea what they can do to combat this. I don't see how they can distance themselves from this any more than they have.

I thought about having the software auto auto-rebrand itself when a non authorized addon is installed. It's a pain I know, now kodi addon developers need to sign addons. But I'm sure they can automate it somehow. Require addons and kodi itself not to hardcode the Kodi name/brand (even in logos/addons titles, etc.), if an unauthorized addon is installed kodi replaces all the kodi brand with a generic name, the harder…

I don't think the box vendors would care. I find your proposal interesting.

Re: Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter

#106

Post by solarkraft »

Mindless2112 wrote: post #90
bdcravens wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clearly, based on the issue at hand, the name change hasn't helped They were only referring to ability to sue over misuse (say I make a KodiBox and sell it). Google omitting from auto-complete isn't relevant. I think main reason wasn't that however, but was to prevent legal activity from Microsoft. (I suspect there were undisclosed related conversations)

> Google omitting from auto-complete isn't relevant. I disagree. They wanted legal control of their name, yet now they have it and Google considers it a piracy search term. Microsoft speculation aside, they didn't gain anything because pirate-box makers don't care about legal action to begin with.

I don't know if they could somehow enforce autocompletion legally, but they probably could've prevented the reason Google is dropping them: With legal control of the name they could have sued people selling piracy boxes. A headache, yes, but it seems that that was exactly why they did change the name (Though it also improves recognizability, imo)

Re: Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter

#107

Post by solarkraft »

m0ngr31 wrote: post #23

In a similar vein, Amazon refused to publish an Alexa skill I wrote to control Kodi (basically a voice remote). They cited piracy as the only reason. When I'd press them on why they allowed one for Plex since they are both just video players, they would just refuse to acknowledge the question and deny me again. It's their right to do so, but it's stupid and defies logic.

Should it be their right? They are becoming so prevalent that perhaps they should be regulated like infrastructure ...

Re: Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter

#108

Post by solarkraft »

parliament32 wrote: post #33
chme wrote: post #14

In other news: "Google removes 'Chrome' from its search autocomplete in anti-piracy effort"

Been there, done that: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/google-demotes-chrome-in...

Now that's brilliant. Why do I often feel like one Google doesn't know what the other is doing?

Re: Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter

#109

Post by teh_klev »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

>Google has banned the term “Kodi” from its autocomplete feature, meaning those who look for information on the set-top box will have to type out the full term in order to search, as reported by TorrentFreak. >While Kodi is a legal set-top box for streaming, it supports a myriad of third-party add-ons that provide access to pirated media. Kodi is not a "set-top box". Kodi is software. A set-top box might be pre-loade…

> Kodi is not a "set-top box". Kodi is software.

They issued a correction:

Correction March 30th, 2018, 1:20AM ET: Article updated to be clear that Kodi is software sometimes loaded onto set-top-boxes, not a set-top box.

Also this is the original source article that The Verge have re-heated:

https://torrentfreak.com/google-adds-kodi-to-autocomplete-pi...

Re: Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter

#110

Post by blackflame7000 »

So does that mean they should remove all android devices that play Kodi? Oh, that hurts Google bottom line.. oh nevermind then.. let's just villanize Kodi developers.(Who have done a hell of a job I might add since the Xbox original with a modchip). This is grandstanding for show. Google is without a doubt the largest contributer to piracy via their indexing of, well, everything. Android should be worried about why their sandbox security is so terrible it allowed Facebook to gather sexting archives rivaling only that of Snapchat.
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