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How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy

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Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy

#71

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

octalmage wrote: post #70
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #66

I wonder how these plugins actually works. With traditional pirate sites, the business model is usually clear cut: webistes get income from ads, uploaders get money from hosting services and the latter get the money from user buying their premium accounts. With torrents, there is some exchange, too - each downloader is a seeder. But in the case of plugins?

They're ripping from sites that are ad supported. So the site doesn't get the ad impressions, and the plugin developer could (if they put ads in the plugins). Site operators hate it, and are constantly blocking them. Basically, they reach out to about 80 sites and scrape for links, then resolve those. It's a pretty insane process, but they've got it working just well enough.

Wouldn't a simple "log in to see the links" approach solve this problem?

Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy

#72

Post by nickysielicki »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #66

I wonder how these plugins actually works. With traditional pirate sites, the business model is usually clear cut: webistes get income from ads, uploaders get money from hosting services and the latter get the money from user buying their premium accounts. With torrents, there is some exchange, too - each downloader is a seeder. But in the case of plugins?

For live sports it's typically just scripts that extract media from the flash player sites like firstrow. They piggyback off the content from the ad-sustained websites, but without showing the ads. The sites like firstrow can't do anything about it because they are not actually hosting the streams themselves, they're just embedding players from various live streaming services.

For movies, etc., my understanding is that it's P2P a la popcorntime.

Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy

#73

Post by kelnos »

rhino369 wrote: post #64
mmanfrin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed: "You don't have to navigate between 15 different services" I pay for Netflix, Prime, and Hulu -- I won't pay for CBS because there are already enough services.

Then don't expect all content. Netflix, Prime, and Hulu have more content than you can watch. Just don't think that justifies pirating whatever you want.

Content isn't fungible. Netflix, Prime, and Hulu put together may have more content than you could ever watch (arguably, even just one of them alone does), but if it doesn't have the show or movie you want, you're boned.

I've had Netflix, Prime, and HBO for years. A couple months ago my gf and I really wanted to watch The Handmaid's Tale, which is only available on Hulu. Hulu charges $12/mo for their no-ad plan (hell if I'm going to pay for a service and still have to suffer through ads). The idea of paying $12/mo for a single show seemed a bit much to me... in the end I signed up for the free trial to watch it because I couldn't find pirated copies on Usenet.

Now Star Trek Discovery has just come out, and CBS wants me to give them $10/mo for the privilege of watching it. No thanks.

It's funny, because we've all jumped at the chance to "cut the cord" and ditch our cable subscriptions, but we've replaced it with the online version of exactly the same thing. We still don't have a la carte pricing for TV shows and movies for the most part. At this point I might be paying more per month than I used to for cable.

Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy

#74

Post by nickysielicki »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #71
octalmage wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're ripping from sites that are ad supported. So the site doesn't get the ad impressions, and the plugin developer could (if they put ads in the plugins). Site operators hate it, and are constantly blocking them. Basically, they reach out to about 80 sites and scrape for links, then resolve those. It's a pretty insane process, but they've got it working just well enough.

Wouldn't a simple "log in to see the links" approach solve this problem?

Better to make some money from the people watching your streams on a computer without an adblocker, than it is to hide the stream and have people hit their back button and find one of the dozens of other sites.

The cost to run one of those sites is being overestimated here. They don't actually serve any of the video streams, just embedding from the dozens and dozens of little-known free live streaming services.

Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy

#75

Post by kelnos »

rhino369 wrote: post #36
microcolonel wrote: post #15

Just think for a second about the hyperbole involved in even calling it piracy. Piracy implies not only theft, which isn't applicable since there is no deprivation, but the pillage of a vessel on the high seas, and the kidnapping (and possibly enslavement, slaughter, rape, or drowning) of its crew. I think that this (and a whole system of) hyperbole has made it impossible to even talk about it. The MPAA and other sim…

>On-demand (Netflix, Hulu, HBO's online thingy, iPlayer, what have you) has been the most effective way to actually recover rights-holder revenues. Are they though? Only 2 out of 49 million HBO subscribers are HBO Now users. And Americans still pirate HBO content in large numbers. People are canceling $100/month revenue cable plans and getting $10 netflix. That's a large loss of revenue. It's not clear to me that str…

> Only 2 out of 49 million HBO subscribers are HBO Now users.

Why would a HBO subscriber be a HBO Now user? Now costs money; HBO subscribers can use HBO Go for free.

Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy

#76

Post by djrogers »

kensey wrote: post #23
microcolonel wrote: post #15

Just think for a second about the hyperbole involved in even calling it piracy. Piracy implies not only theft, which isn't applicable since there is no deprivation, but the pillage of a vessel on the high seas, and the kidnapping (and possibly enslavement, slaughter, rape, or drowning) of its crew. I think that this (and a whole system of) hyperbole has made it impossible to even talk about it. The MPAA and other sim…

> On-demand (Netflix, Hulu, HBO's online thingy, iPlayer, what have you) has been the most effective way to actually recover rights-holder revenues. And yet those same rights-holders seem hell-bent on squandering the opportunity they were given, by splintering their offerings among their own pay services instead of offering them multiple places. I already pay for Netflix. I'm considering paying for Hulu. But there's…

> On-demand (Netflix, Hulu, HBO's online thingy, iPlayer, what have you) has been the most effective way to actually recover rights-holder revenues.

And yet those are the very services being pirated ^h^h^h excuse me, whose revenue models are being bypassed.

Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy

#77

Post by octalmage »

nickysielicki wrote: post #67

Anyone else have fond memories of playing around with a modchipped original Xbox? I know I do. I think I still have that thing somewhere in a box, XECUTER3 and all. I don't think the article makes a big enough point about Kodi being rooted in XBMC, and XBMC being a project that started on the Xbox homebrew scene. Kodi's roots in XBMC are inherently tied to piracy, because every early developer and user had to chip th…

I have very fond memories of those days. I remember the first time I saw the Linux boot loader after a successful exploit using Mech assault, my buddy and I high five'd.

The project has obviously come along way since those days, and could probably not be as successful with Xbox in the name or with the stigma attached to it. Hence the rebrand. Their only chance at making it is to distance themselves as much as possible from the piracy.

The reason it's attractive to (pirate) plugin developers is that it's cross platform (they've already figured out how to get it on AppleTV for example), and a generic enough API. You can write Python to hit a webpage, find a URL, and tell Kodi to play it. Kodi has also solved distribution (repositories) and auto updates. I get it.

Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy

#78

Post by Digit-Al »

snerbles wrote: post #29
retSava wrote: post #4

Argh, this must be so frustrating for the Kodi devs...! There really is a very strong case for running a Kodi-box for ones own legit collection, and now it's just mentioned for the (admittedly, probably) not so slight share of piracy. MPAA and friends has turned their eye on Kodi since a while ago, like Sauron on the little hobbitses. Could this be a submarine piece?

> Could this be a submarine piece? Considering that Wired is a legacy media (Condé Nast) publication, it's not inconceivable.

Who would financially benefit enough to pay for it though? There's no one big seller of the boxes and the software is free.

Edit: For clarification - I'm not saying it's impossible. I just personally can't see any obvious beneficiary. Would welcome any suggestions though.

Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy

#79

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

nickysielicki wrote: post #72
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #66

I wonder how these plugins actually works. With traditional pirate sites, the business model is usually clear cut: webistes get income from ads, uploaders get money from hosting services and the latter get the money from user buying their premium accounts. With torrents, there is some exchange, too - each downloader is a seeder. But in the case of plugins?

For live sports it's typically just scripts that extract media from the flash player sites like firstrow. They piggyback off the content from the ad-sustained websites, but without showing the ads. The sites like firstrow can't do anything about it because they are not actually hosting the streams themselves, they're just embedding players from various live streaming services. For movies, etc., my understanding is th…

OK, so if it's P2P, wouldn't it actually make the plugin users liable for making copyrighted content available (in contrast to simply downloading the stream)?

Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy

#80

Post by Freak_NL »

omg_ketchup wrote: post #40

There's a massive gap between the pirate service and the "legitimate" media service. For one, you can just type something in, and get the movie you want. You don't have to navigate between 15 different services, and then find out the film is only available on mail-order DVD, or in other countries. For television, the networks are HORRIBLE about providing their content to cord-cutters. Want to watch the latest episode…

> CBS hiding Star Trek behind their proprietary $10/month service is going to kill Star Trek, because the intended audience sees it as a bullshit cash grab.

Interestingly, that seems to be US (and I think Canada) only. The rest of us get the new episode on Netflix every Monday. The new one should be ready by now.

Of course, if I want to actually watch it in 1080p I still have to resort to piracy, because Netflix doesn't want to offer anything over 720p if you use a free operating system and browser even if you have the HD-and-two-screens subscription. The reason they don't really give but hint at is that the DRM available on free software isn't good enough, and I might be tempted to go and upload the 1080p video on some pirate site. So to watch it in 1080p I have to go to a pirate site and get it there, where it's already available (of course). Makes sense.

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