back to article Bezos' bozos swing ban-hammer at media player

Efforts by the Kodi media player's maintainers to keep pirates from sullying its good name haven't been enough to satisfy the copyright cops at Amazon. The app formerly known as XBMC has been pulled from Amazon's app store, on the basis that it facilitates piracy. AFTVnews.com reports that Amazon flicked the kill-switch on …

  1. Tromos

    The Internet facilitates piracy...

    ...but where would Amazon be without it?

    1. Anonymous Custard Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: The Internet facilitates piracy...

      This would be the same Amazon who are quite happy to promote and sell you a dodgy box with an XMBC/kodi install crammed full of the self-same 3rd party crapware add-ons that are used to view the pirated streaming content through their online store?

  2. Dan 55 Silver badge
    FAIL

    Go to Amazon and search the software section for e.g. "DVD Copy" to see 27 pages of results and Amazon happy to charge for them.

    Or go to Amazon and search the app section for "Plex" and see Kodi-based Plex and a whole load of other apps which do similar things and mention "Plex" in their description. Plex has in-app purchases though.

    It'd like to see Amazon really get going with the ban hammer, they'd have work to last them till the end of the year.

    Perhaps what they mean is Kodi is so flexible it reduces revenue-raising opportunities for their Fire TV hardware.

  3. Anonymous Custard Silver badge
    FAIL

    Ultimate stupidity

    So they banhammer Kodi, whose devs and forums go out of their way to not support the piracy add-ons and to do all they can not to promote or support piracy, and yet the Amazon appstore contains loads of older XBMC-forked apps which come pre-loaded with all the piracy shit. For examples iXBMC, XBMC4U, TVMC, ZappoTV, and VidOn (at the risk of publicising them, which I have no desire to do).

    So it's a nice one all-round (not!), they've managed to ban the only one who is actively anti-piracy...

    1. Mark Allen

      Re: Ultimate stupidity

      You could almost argue that Amazon is promoting more piracy through these KODI\XBMC android boxes than KODI themselves. If it wasn't for Amazon and Ebay listing them and making them so easy to find for the average "bloke who wants to watch footie and some films" then no one would know these existed.

      Or are they banning KODI from the Amazon App store to stop it being put on their Amazon Fire sticks?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There are legit uses for addons in Kodi. I use the UK Freeview addon that is geo locked by region to the UK so that I can turn my dumb arse telly in the bedroom into a Freeview enabled device without having to faff about with an aerial connection. All it has is a power cable and an Amazon Fire stick sideloaded with Kodi powered by one of the USB ports on the telly. The picture quality is arguably better than I'd get with an aerial trying to pick up a signal too.

    It's neat and tidy and keeps the Mrs happy.

    1. Mark Allen

      I think you have spotted the real reason behind this ban... "an Amazon Fire stick sideloaded with Kodi". With all the extra features Kodi can bring to an Amazon Fire stick I think Amazon didn't like that.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Then that's just a Dick move! If you can download Kodi from the google play store then all you need is an android device with the apk file on it and fire it off to sideload onto a Firestick. What Amazon has done is just push more people towards learning how to sideload a bunch of android apps onto their own hardware and not bother using legit purchasing of apps from their own app store. I hope this idiotic move bites 'em in the arse.

        1. Anonymous Custard Silver badge

          You don't even need the Play Store, just download it directly from the Kodi website.

          And if all else fails, the Fire stick can just be replaced by an Apple TV 2 or a Pi. Not quite as convenient a form-factor, but both are still very usable for the job (my Kodi runs nicely from a Pi mk 1, as well as on my laptop and Nexus 7).

  5. Law

    Sideloaded kodi?

    My main concern is now they'll actively block kodi from being sideloaded, or run some script to uninstall it every now and then... if that happens we'd need to look at whether we keep amazon prime and the fire boxes.

    Since getting rid of Virgin TV, and refusing to go the Sky route, we bought 2 Fire TV boxes, signed up for Prime and Netflix, and side loaded Kodi for some of the kids TV that we'd ripped from our own DVD collection (for if the Amazon / Netflix / Internet goes down while kids want to watch something).

    It's worked really well so far.. kids love the choice and between the apps and subscriptions we've basically ditched live TV completely and for the most part no longer pirate the shows we used to download (for convenience). They should concentrate more of upping their content offering and improving the UI (better parental controls, single click profile switching etc) on Prime to compete with Netflix.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    not Piracy, Competition

    Let's be real here... this isn't about protecting users or the rights holders, this is 100% about not making Amazon Instant Video / Prime Video look lame. Outside of Plex there are very few general purpose media players on either the FireTV or tablets (no official VLC either) ... because they compete with the paid services Amazon want to attract.

    Someone should ask Jeff how that reflects the worlds most customer centric value he touts...

  7. nick soph

    Ban Windows, OSX, Linux and Android too

    These operating systems (and several others) are favored by pirates who install add-on programs which they then use for infringing copyright - this shirley should not be allowed and Im sure that if we ban the selling and distribution of operating systems we can significantly reduce piracy.

  8. Trigonoceps occipitalis

    WILL THEY NEVER LEARN

    So Kodi has been banned, that means we'll have to look for an alternative. That worked so well for the Kodi iPlayer addon when the BBC pulled the plug. I found an unofficial alternative that is not geolocked.

    Foot, bullet, let me introduce you.

    (Of course the BBC may be happy to let me "pirate" shows just so long as they have plausible deniability, should I actually be streaming from outside the UK.)

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