I'm sure all of these boxes come pre-configured with a VPN Service, but all the standard protocols can still be detected with Deep Packet Inspection, something I've seen AT&T do (and block) pretty effectively. I guess there area always the StealthVPN/Chameleon providers out there that try and mask the signature of "what" is going over the VPN - but enough of that and I'm sure they'll nix those connections as well.
How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy
81–90 of 119 posts
Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)?
I did some digging and I think I was wrong above when I made that distinction about live and recorded content.
P2P can be done for live sports via sopcast/acestream/etc, and (as far as I can tell) this seems more popular than the method I described above (eg: ripping content from live stream websites) for live sports, due to the quality difference.
In addition, P2P addons for movies a la popcorntime do exist, but the biggest addons that I have heard of: Genesis and Exodus, just rip content from file host sites.
But yes, if they're doing P2P, they're definitely liable to get letters. I think people overestimate the frequency of people getting caught for p2p file sharing, especially for live things that appear and disappear quickly.
Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google are granting permanent (to all intents and purposes) ownership of the content to view, whereas a month does not cover time to watch all the episodes of a new season, and goes away the second you stop subscribing, and allows the content to be downloaded. Your theory is comparing apples and oranges.
In practice people usually watch an episode once or twice. They lose access if they lose the account, they do not own the episode. Additionally, Google could compete and make a monthly streaming service too, which they don't except for live tv. Why aren't they competing with a streaming service? Because they have Google Play.
What, in practice people are burned out by twice-to-thrice-a-generation format changes. I have a bunch of TV series in DVD boxes and now have no DVD player.
Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy
#84Argh, 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?
I'd be shocked if the number of "legitimate" Kodi users is even close to the number of those using it to obtain whatever TV/movie content they are interested in not having to pay for.
Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) in the UK commissioned a report claiming as much as a million of them have been sold in the UK alone - while I'd take that number with a large pinch of salt given the source, It's pretty clear these things are being sold preconfigured for piracy in substantial numbers in the UK. Several cases concerning individuals have found the individual sellers to have had revenues well in excess of £100,000.
To be clear, I'm in no way advocating banning Kodi just because it has the potential for questionable use, but I think it's also silly to feel frustrated that people only talk about what is probably its most common use case: watching content you haven’t paid for.
Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy
#85"In the UK, Kodi boxes have garnered more attention from authorities, thanks to stingy soccer fanatics driving an early swell of adoption" This is very unfair. I don't own a Kodi box, but in the UK it's against the law to show football games on TV on Saturday between 2:45pm and 5:15pm [1]. So it's not "stingy" football fans, it's fans that have no other way to watch a 3pm kick off without actually going to the game i…
The FA Laws have this regulation for a reason. To see a football match between 2:45pm and 5:15pm, go to one of them! Live! It is much more fun and entertaining the TV, with 91[1] clubs in the football league and many more football matches in non-League. It is easy and cheap to see a live football match. It not all about the Premiership. Without supporting the lower league clubs, the top teams, do do have the talent c…
I genuinely wonder if you're not being paid to write this comment
Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy
#86I'm sure all of these boxes come pre-configured with a VPN Service, but all the standard protocols can still be detected with Deep Packet Inspection, something I've seen AT&T do (and block) pretty effectively. I guess there area always the StealthVPN/Chameleon providers out there that try and mask the signature of "what" is going over the VPN - but enough of that and I'm sure they'll nix those connections as well.
DPI is a sham, most of those specialized HW (sold by pseudo IT security gurus) just assume that any VPN connection "is bad" and procced to block them, there is no way to detect a pattern on a (decently-configured) VPN, there is a reason China (the biggest investor on that this type of tech) is mandating Apple and Google to delete all the VPN apps on their stores.
Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy
#87Anyone 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 modded my original Xbox for XBMP/XBMC. I never played Xbox games on it though I did play emulated classics. Not sure if that is typical or not..
Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy
#88I 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?
Well there are subscription based "pirate content" providers, most of them are listed (even with reviews) on reddit.com/r/IPTV/ and almost all of them work as a Kodi-Addon and even some have on-deman high-quality content.
Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy
#89Well most of my friend that have one those Kodi-boxes used to paid subscriptions for pirate-content IPTV providers for Roku but since Roku started to fightback and ban the most popular pirate content providers it was only matter of time before they find someone willing to sell them an alternative.
Re: How the Kodi Box Took Over Piracy
#90This fight will end with Kodi removing addon support on the next version and some fork taking over the work.