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Facebook Bans Kodi Device Sales

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Re: Facebook Bans Kodi Device Sales

#31

"Kodi" is an open source media player. Nothing more or less. The problem comes because people sell boxes preloaded with Kodi and plugins that make one-click piracy possible. Unfortunately the association that people make is now "Kodi = Piracy", which is very wrong.

>Unfortunately the association that people make is now "Kodi = Piracy", which is very wrong.

Why is that association so wrong ? I mean, I would rather people fight fundamental issues like censorship on sales platforms for arbitrary reasons, instead of trying to sugarcoat it with stuff like, "yes, but it's only OSS software". For one, other than music, there is no real mass-market way to download DRM free popular media. Ripping your own DVDS/Blu-rays doesn't count, because that's still piracy (according to the US anyway). So instead of fighting the battle on whether this is piracy, and this isn't piracy, why not just say fuck it, and fight for the right to make and sell whatever device you want to and do whatever the fuck you want to with it.

Re: Facebook Bans Kodi Device Sales

#33

Does anybody think these clowns are actually going to be around in a decade? I can understand the business desire to censor political minorities to please the majority, but how does doing enforcement for the content cartels generate any goodwill from their users? It will be interesting to see what happens when their surveillance archives go off to the highest bidder (and are subsequently leaked).

It's ironic that you accuse FB of banning political minorities after many revelations that they gleefully took lots of money from the US political minority (Republicans) in exchange for tailored marketing services, helping that minority take control of the entire federal govt.

Re: Facebook Bans Kodi Device Sales

#35
post #2

All the fuss about Kodi makes me think I should get a box. Is it worth it?

In short: no. Kodi itself is the environment, the problematic work is done by plugins that look for free movie streams. It all takes longer than Netflix and other paid services. Nothing to get too excited about.

True, but not even including these streaming sideloaded plugins, what percentage of Kodi users are playing legitimate content?

And if more than 0%, where in the world are they getting the DRM free digital files?

Re: Facebook Bans Kodi Device Sales

#36
post #2

All the fuss about Kodi makes me think I should get a box. Is it worth it?

If you want to try it, just get a Raspberry Pi and install it yourself.

Or just set it up on your computer.

I gave it a try, and found it clunky and annoying to use, so I've since built a solution that meets my specific needs.

Re: Facebook Bans Kodi Device Sales

#37
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And BitTorrent is a P2P file sharing program but it doesn't suddenly make the verb 'torrenting' mean anything other than piracy. Kodi is a fantastic piece of software and it's a shame that their brand is being tarnished but c'est la vie when that's the biggest practical use case for your program. There's no sense for anyone other than the XBMC foundation to fight the river on this one. What I would do if I was the pr…

Your recommendations more-or-less came to fruition as the company Plex.

I find the dichotomy quite interesting. Fundamentally, there aren't too many differences between the two, and yet Plex has no stigma associated with it. It's a pretty limited space to work in. Long term, I don't see how Plex's business model works. Since they don't control the media, they don't really control anything. There's only limited appetite for transcoding software.

Re: Facebook Bans Kodi Device Sales

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the piracy users for kodi now far out-strip the non-piracy users and so kodi gets de-facto associated with piracy. Just like mp3 CDs and bit torrent, when the single biggest mass market appeal for your product is piracy then the product gets associated with piracy.

Is WinAmp a piracy player?

If it isn't, where are people getting the DRM free movies?

Re: Facebook Bans Kodi Device Sales

#39
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And BitTorrent is a P2P file sharing program but it doesn't suddenly make the verb 'torrenting' mean anything other than piracy. Kodi is a fantastic piece of software and it's a shame that their brand is being tarnished but c'est la vie when that's the biggest practical use case for your program. There's no sense for anyone other than the XBMC foundation to fight the river on this one. What I would do if I was the pr…

Your recommendations more-or-less came to fruition as the company Plex.

And yet, Plex is still used mainly for watching pirated content.

Re: Facebook Bans Kodi Device Sales

#40
post #2

All the fuss about Kodi makes me think I should get a box. Is it worth it?

Kodi has one of the most arcane UIs I've used in years. Also, you need to find and set up plugins to get streaming going and this is a complicated process. The streams can be good but not worth all the hassle.

That’s because KODI is really just a media player with a plug-in framework.

The plug-ins are NOT part of KODI’s core functionality.

Although it could be argued the native stuff are plugins too, they are built on the same framework but source your media from locally attached storage (USB, SD card, HDD) or network server/stream (RTSP, SMB, FTP).

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