Do the XBMC foundations attacks on YouTubers and others hypocritical?

Kodi’s PR defense

Kodi attempts to defend accusations of piracy. In a blog post by Nathan Betzen, Betzen addressed the issue of users and illegal content saying it was up to the user as to what is accessed using the software. Streaming live sports channels or other live events that are subjected to copyrights is illegal. I would rather call this the DVD defense because it is like saying DVD players are not meant for piracy but could be used for it.

Nathan Betzen says that – “Kodi Team maintains an officially neutral stance on what users do with their own software. Kodi is an open source media player software, and as long as the GPL is followed, you are welcome to do with it as you like. So we don’t love this use of Kodi, as long as you know what illegal and dangerous things you are getting yourself into and if you know the fact that the team will not be providing you with any support, then you are welcome to do what you like”.

Kodi has also fought back with controversies from independent writers (Which Kodi heavily promoted on their own social media for maximum distribution) parroting its viewpoint. In an article by Richard Lawler – Senior HD editor of Engadget, explains the fight between Kodi and YouTubers who promote third-party add-ons heavily sourcing the same Kodi blog. From the story that appeared on 2/14/16, Lawler sums up the controversy surrounding Kodi succinctly.

“One look all around YouTube reveals setups touting “The Beast,” “Genesis” and others that promise access to current movies, cable TV and more without the issue of actually paying for any of them. “

Kodi’s Official add-ons do allow users to access copyrighted content without paying for it. Kodi provides a statement that their media center is meant to provide users access to legally digitized copies of a user’s own legitimately purchased media library be it Hollywood, blockbusters, music or personal movies and pictures. For the records, Kodi does perform this function efficiently.

Betzen’s claims that when it comes to how users interact with Kodi as far as third-party add-ons that provide access to copyrighted material is fair enough, Kodi has a hands-off approach on it. After all, I can use my Toshiba Satelite computer to access any number of things that Toshiba does not have anything to do with including torrents, pornography and more. But given such a stance on Kodi’s official blog then we should certainly expect that Kodi’s official add-ons would not provide access to copyrighted material without upfront logins and legitimate portals to the content right? Well, my friends, this is not the case at the moment.

Included with any install of the media center available on Kodi’s official website users have access to a large number of what the foundation would refer to as legit add-ons that do not violate any copyright laws. But the fact is that Kodi’s official addon repository contains access to a number of add-ons that provide copyrighted contents too. But these add-ons are based on the US and international TV stations that provide direct access to programming which in any other case would require authentication from a cable provider in order to access the information.

Does Kodi truly work to prevent its software from being used for Piracy? No!!!

Both of these networks have apps for other platforms. The Roku App for SyFy also requires a cable login to access the full slates of programming. These are the two blatant examples show that Kodi, in fact, delivers copyrighted content to users even when accessing official add-ons. They are not simply scraping content from a website and providing access to content available for free. They instead skirting the basic rules in place for using the content in the first place somehow. If Kodi feels that they are being unfairly targeted by companies like Amazon or that their reputation has been tarnished by unofficial add-ons like 1 Channel, the XBMC foundation had better give an explanation of that evidence. I feel that there is undeniable evidence that Kodi can be used to steal cable content and movies and the XBMC foundation must know it. Those are after all their add-ons. So are hackers and pirates ruining the Kodi’s reputation? Or are they expanding on it? For the record, I have reached out a lot of times to two representatives from The XBMC foundation for a period of over a month before choosing to publish this story. My contacts never returned my phone calls, text messages or skype messages.

Why the XBMC Foundation is known as the creators of Kodi?

On the other hand, if you are wondering why I keep on referring to the XBMC foundation versus say vs say the Kodi Foundation or Corporation it is because the of the group of developers who started Kodi is the XBMC foundation. The term XBMC was a shortened version of the Xbox Media Center which was developed as a modification for the Xbox. Kodi was actually called XBMC for years before it put forth a name change meant to empower Kodi to be able to control how its software was referred to and marketed.