The makers of the Kodi media software have called for the TVAddons repository to be shut down, accusing the developers of causing “misery.”

The third-party TVAddons extensions can be installed on top of Kodi. That enables some users to illegally stream TV shows and movies.

This has been much to the chagrin of Kodi, which often receives the mainstream media blame for enabling piracy. The company has always claimed its purpose is to help users organise and stream media from legitimate sources.

In a Twitter spat (via Inquirer), Kodi has accused TVAddons of bringing “nothing but misery to everyone.”

TVAddons was quick to respond to the slight, claiming Kodi had lost touch with its user base.

On its Twitter account, it wrote: “Nice thing to say, whoever is running your social media profile @KodiTV is definitely not in touch with your userbase…”

Related: What is Kodi and is it legal?

The war of words continued with Kodi later responding: “We love 3rd party add-ons. Not the piracy variety you’re referring to though. Popularity? Not bothered. Dead? No, just a nice small userbase.”

Not liable?

The duo were responding to a tweet from TorrentFreak featuring a report on “abusive lawsuits” being filed against TVAddons.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation says: “The lawsuit against TVAddons seeks to skirt that important [safe harbor] protection by arguing that by merely hosting, distributing and promoting Kodi add-ons, the TVAddons administrator is liable for inducing or authorizing copyright infringements later committed using those add-ons.”

The open source nature of the Kodi platform makes it difficult for the makers of the software to halt the emergence of add-ons that enable piracy.

Do you think TVAddons should be shutdown? Do you use Kodi for things other than streaming TV and movies? Drop us a line @TrustedReviews on Twitter.

Chris Smith is a freelance technology journalist for a host of UK tech publications, including Trusted Reviews. He's based in South Florida, USA. …