Google Bans the Term 'Kodi' From Autocomplete

Exavior said:
To maybe 3 people. The average person doesn't care about this stuff, just like how the average person didn't go delete their facebook account.
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I knew facebook was a trove of advert and selling personal information, its completely obvious.. So, I've not had a facebook.. like a boss :D
 
Its too bad that Kodi is feeling the heat from this sort of thing. Really, its not even their fault in any sense of the word. Kodi is an excellent open source media player, especially for TVs, and one of the only media frontends (perhaps backend too) that has a reasonable plugin system. This is what gives it its strength as a central viewing area for content.

For instance, Kodi can play whatever local or networked media files I have just like any other decent media player, but it can also (provided I select proper plugins and they are updated, not broken by content providers intentionally etc..) play streaming content including pay content - Netflix for instance, HBO Go/Now, Amazon Prime Video, Crunchyroll, Twitch.tv, YouTube etc... all from within Kodi. That is a MAJOR strength for even technically adroit users but especially for those less so, but anyone can appreciate going to a single app versus having to load a different app for everything! Sadly too many content providers tend to break compatibility intentionally or otherwise, which is really unfortunate, as - especially the pay content providers - are losing money if people can't get their content the way they wish. I have LibreELEC (which is basically a slimmed down Linux OS that just loads Kodi) running on an older WeTek media player box and it works phenomenally . I've considered looking to Plex or Emby (for those who don't know Emby is sort of an open-source Plex-type media server. ) to see how they compare, but I am unsure if they focus primarily on media server functions and don't have plugins for 3rd party content streams. Thankfully, if I did decide to start up a Plex / Emby server locally, I could use Kodi with plugins for those sources to access content!

The reason that Kodi gets so much heat seems to be twofold, neither of which is their fault. On the software side, Kodi's awesome plugin system means people create plugins to wrap access to pirate streaming sites. This is no real surprise, but the main issue seems to be on the hardware site. There are a ton of China-made media boxes running Kodi or a fork thereof (often changing the name to something company specific) running on inexpensive ARM SOCs (Rockchip and Allwinner I think on the cheaper end, AMLogic on the higher last I checked) , Its trivial to buy these in bulk from AliExpress and pick a name/branding for resale elsewhere in the world. This is not necessarily a bad thing and you can buy them easily on Amazon, usually with poor support if any but hey, its inexpensive. However, most of these boxes use "Kodi" in the name/description somehow which isn't really a good thing (Note there are only very few media boxes that are actually certified by Kodi as partners ; last I checked Minix and WeTek are the only two - you can find them on the Kodi sponsors page) , but the problem is many claim to be "Fully loaded", meaning with pre-installed and configured repos for Kodi addons to support pirate streams. These were even on Amazon for awhile and since they ran afoul of the cardinal piracy rules (ie you can't sell pirated media and you certainly can't bundle it. Otherwise, its up to whatever the user wants to do...) they got a lot of heat. Sadly lots of the blowback from the media cartels came to Kodi which was really unfair. Kodi/XBMC Foundation ensured that no addons for pirate sites were in their official addon repos, so they didn't deserve any of the blame - it should have been exclusively the vendors that pre-fabbed links directly to unauthorized content but Kodi was more visible since it was used as a media engine for all these boxes.

It is sad that Google is getting on the bandwagon and persecuting a really awesome open source software project. It is bad enough that they devs and XBMC Foundation have to get legal aid to deal with the content cartels trying to say their software is to blame, but Google if anyone should know that simply allowing someone to search for or use their software to do "bad things" shouldn't make them culpable. I know Google isnt' refusing to list Kodi's site or anything, but it is still bad form to turn off autocomplete for Kodi terms as it conveys something is "wrong" with Kodi.
 
What was the need for add-ons in the first place? Seems like if add-ons were never allowed there would be no issue. If VLC can play my ripped DVDs without an add-on why couldn't Kodi?
Legit question not trying to be an ass. What was the original purpose for the add-ons?
 
Troz said:
What was the need for add-ons in the first place? Seems like if add-ons were never allowed there would be no issue. If VLC can play my ripped DVDs without an add-on why couldn't Kodi?
Legit question not trying to be an ass. What was the original purpose for the add-ons?
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The add-ons are as I said, modular support for all kinds of things. Look into the official Kodi repo - https://kodi.tv/addons (which only offer "clean" addons, no prefab pirate streaming services etc... as they curate it). Kodi can play DVD rips, Blu-Rays, and even all kinds of other codecs by default, but it is so much more than just a player because of the addons - the addons let them introduce all kinds of new things from support for new audio profiles, to "info-hosts" that grep info about media from TV/Movie/Anime/Music databases online and place it into your library etc... automatically connect to various subtitle sites and automatically or manually download subs matching your particular release, and thousands of other features. As I said before, it can also connect to various media sites online (ie Netflix) through the addon so you can localize all of your access to media in one particular program, organize your media in aesthetically pleasing manners, and well... tons of other things! Thanks to Kodi's open source nature and the add-on open framework, anyone can build in modular support for Kodi so it doesn't need to ship with a bunch of features only a handful of people will ever use (Note: there are addons that handle networking and proxies, stuff built in that most people wont need if just using it as a media player, but LibreELEC for instance can write addons to allow control of the underpinnings of the system from within Kodi, instead of having to go to the CLI or a headless client )

Overall addons are what make it such a fantastic experience that goes beyond just a media player or even a full-featured media library (though most of these functions are enhanced with addons that are actually shipping with the default Kodi install but are addons none the less. Its open source modular philosophy ) but can really be made into something with near limitless flexibility.
 
B00nie said:
Wow this is constitutional. What other things Google sees fit to censor. It seriously is time to stop using Google. It's also partly owned by a russian.
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I can suggest some topics for you to discuss on the free section of [H] to show you how quickly you can get suspended here. I may think it's dumb to not show Kodi, but it's no different than any other free site, including Hard OCP.
 
nilepez said:
I can suggest some topics for you to discuss on the free section of [H] to show you how quickly you can get suspended here. I may think it's dumb to not show Kodi, but it's no different than any other free site, including Hard OCP.
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Actually not. Google has grown so dominant in the search market that it really should be regulated already in order to prevent manipulation. Or then Google needs to be neutered and create competing products which work hopefully better than Bing :D
 
B00nie said:
Actually not. Google has grown so dominant in the search market that it really should be regulated already in order to prevent manipulation. Or then Google needs to be neutered and create competing products which work hopefully better than Bing :D
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Does it really fucking matter if kod completes to kodi? If you type kod media player, Kodi is number 1. If you type Kod media, Kodi is 3 or 4th. If you type codi media player, kodi is number one.
Personaly, I'm not sure why auto complete matters. Maybe it's important for people who can't type. I can and by the time it comes up with the auto complete, I've already finished typing what I want 99% of the time.

As for breaking up google, go use Bing. It works fine and it'll auto complete Kodi for you.
I think you'd have a much better point if they didn't return Kodi at all, but that's not the case.

Again, I think it's stupid to do this, but it's not a big deal. Maybe there will be a case where it matters, but this isn't that case.
 
nilepez said:
Does it really fucking matter if kod completes to kodi? If you type kod media player, Kodi is number 1. If you type Kod media, Kodi is 3 or 4th. If you type codi media player, kodi is number one.
Personaly, I'm not sure why auto complete matters. Maybe it's important for people who can't type. I can and by the time it comes up with the auto complete, I've already finished typing what I want 99% of the time.

As for breaking up google, go use Bing. It works fine and it'll auto complete Kodi for you.
I think you'd have a much better point if they didn't return Kodi at all, but that's not the case.

Again, I think it's stupid to do this, but it's not a big deal. Maybe there will be a case where it matters, but this isn't that case.
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The autocomplete feature is useful when searching for certain things. I was looking for general information on a dac that i couldn't remember the full model number of. +1 for bing.
 
nilepez said:
Does it really fucking matter if kod completes to kodi? If you type kod media player, Kodi is number 1. If you type Kod media, Kodi is 3 or 4th. If you type codi media player, kodi is number one.
Personaly, I'm not sure why auto complete matters. Maybe it's important for people who can't type. I can and by the time it comes up with the auto complete, I've already finished typing what I want 99% of the time.

As for breaking up google, go use Bing. It works fine and it'll auto complete Kodi for you.
I think you'd have a much better point if they didn't return Kodi at all, but that's not the case.

Again, I think it's stupid to do this, but it's not a big deal. Maybe there will be a case where it matters, but this isn't that case.
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You're asking if censorship matters. It FUCKING matters. Bing is so beyond crappy that words do not cover it. It literally doesn't find 90% of search hits.
 
The way media is trying to single Kodi out as some criminal organization really pisses me off. It's a God damn media player/front end FFS, nothing more, nothing less.

Downright ridiculous.

Furthermore, they're never going to be able to stop it as it's open source. If Kodi closed down tomorrow someone else would grab the code base and run with it.
 
Hmmm....if Google doesn’t want me to see this, I’m going to start using it.

And I’ll find Kodi by searching for it on DuckDuckGo...
 
d8lock said:
The autocomplete feature is useful when searching for certain things. I was looking for general information on a dac that i couldn't remember the full model number of. +1 for bing.
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that's a legit use, but not particularly relevant to Kodi. You either know the name of it (or roughly the name, since even https://www.google.com/search?q=cody+media or https://www.google.com/search?q=cody+player gets you kodi (as does XMBC).

I don't get the logic behind what Google is doing, but I don't think it really matters. That said, I'd rather see them just block all the searches for Kodi piracy extensions (and I don't think the developers would complain, given that they'd be pefectly happy if all the users that get it for illegal streaming quit using the software, and they've literally said that to those users).
 
B00nie said:
You're asking if censorship matters. It FUCKING matters. Bing is so beyond crappy that words do not cover it. It literally doesn't find 90% of search hits.
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There company their rules. Don't like, it go create the boonie search engine. And FYI, it's not fucking censorship. You type kodi it shows kodi. you type "Codi Media" "Codi Player" "Codi Program" or "Codi Software" (misspelled to show that even if you don't know how to spell it it works) you get a link to Kodi.

So just stop it. It may be a dumb decision, but it's fairly meaningless and will not affect most searchers.
 
B00nie said:
You're asking if censorship matters. It FUCKING matters. Bing is so beyond crappy that words do not cover it. It literally doesn't find 90% of search hits.
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finds 100% of what i search for.
 
nilepez said:
There company their rules. Don't like, it go create the boonie search engine. And FYI, it's not fucking censorship. You type kodi it shows kodi. you type "Codi Media" "Codi Player" "Codi Program" or "Codi Software" (misspelled to show that even if you don't know how to spell it it works) you get a link to Kodi.

So just stop it. It may be a dumb decision, but it's fairly meaningless and will not affect most searchers.
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They chose to limit the output based on content. That's censorship and there's no defending or reasoning it. You're wrong.
 
B00nie said:
They chose to limit the output based on content. That's censorship and there's no defending or reasoning it. You're wrong.
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Make some posts about blocking ads and watch how fast you're warned, if not suspended or banned. At one time, [H] censored a specific gaming site name/URL (don't recall the name, but pretty sure it had game or gaming in the url).

My friends mother will sensor your ass if you start cursing. First amendment ain't gonna get you anywhere if you're at her house.

It's a private company. You don't like them go elsewhere. I have no problem finding what I want on Google. Then again, I can generally find what I want on Bing too. The main exception is that Google is much better for programming searches.
 
nilepez said:
Make some posts about blocking ads and watch how fast you're warned, if not suspended or banned. At one time, [H] censored a specific gaming site name/URL (don't recall the name, but pretty sure it had game or gaming in the url).

My friends mother will sensor your ass if you start cursing. First amendment ain't gonna get you anywhere if you're at her house.

It's a private company. You don't like them go elsewhere. I have no problem finding what I want on Google. Then again, I can generally find what I want on Bing too. The main exception is that Google is much better for programming searches.
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The whole topic is boycotting them i.e. going somewhere else lol. Your friends mother hardly specifies as a dominant market position for speech. Google does.

Google has grown so big that it becomes a liability. It should be taken into governmental supervision (but then again with your NSA and violations, probably it's only going to make things worse).
 
B00nie said:
The whole topic is boycotting them i.e. going somewhere else lol. Your friends mother hardly specifies as a dominant market position for speech. Google does.
Google has grown so big that it becomes a liability. It should be taken into governmental supervision (but then again with your NSA and violations, probably it's only going to make things worse).
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Fine, go somewhere else. Quit whining about something that the Kodi developers largely (completely?) ignored (unless you count an April fools post). Honestly if more piracy addon types can't find kodi and they quit using Kodi, I'm OK with that and so are Kodi's developers.
 
nilepez said:
Fine, go somewhere else. Quit whining about something that the Kodi developers largely (completely?) ignored (unless you count an April fools post). Honestly if more piracy addon types can't find kodi and they quit using Kodi, I'm OK with that and so are Kodi's developers.
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TBH, it isn't really right that Kodi is being blocked from Google search results, as in itself Kodi does not facilitate piracy any more than VLC facilitates piracy.
 
Mazzspeed said:
TBH, it isn't really right that Kodi is being blocked from Google search results, as in itself Kodi does not facilitate piracy any more than VLC facilitates piracy.
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Anything that's not a direct violation on someones personal safety shouldn't be blocked from any media in general. Once you open the door for censorship, it's a steep slope to start choosing which political articles, which human rights reports you see, which financial fraud news you get displayed...

Probably its already happening. The planet is controlled by a large corporation and they don't even realize it.
 
DejaWiz said:
Their company, their prerogative.

Vote with your keyboard.
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Their company qualifies as a effectively a monopoly and therefore needs to tread carefully. They also make a competing product, chromecast, both the hardware and feature, and therefore are being anti-competitive.

Without competition each monopoly is a little slice of communism and as such needs to be resolved.
 
Mazzspeed said:
TBH, it isn't really right that Kodi is being blocked from Google search results, as in itself Kodi does not facilitate piracy any more than VLC facilitates piracy.
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And I've never denied that, but the idea that this is some sort of censorship that requires intervention against google is silly. It's not the end of the world. If you type Kodi it comes up. If you type kod+player it comes up if you type XBMC it comes up. If you type Codi (or cody) player it comes up.
If this was a google competitor, then I'd be on teh anti-competitive band wagon, but it's not.

Hell, start a petition to get htem to put it back in. Send me the link, and I'll sign it.
 
B00nie said:
Anything that's not a direct violation on someones personal safety shouldn't be blocked from any media in general. Once you open the door for censorship, it's a steep slope to start choosing which political articles, which human rights reports you see, which financial fraud news you get displayed...

Probably its already happening. The planet is controlled by a large corporation and they don't even realize it.
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:rolleyes:
 
nilepez said:
And I've never denied that, but the idea that this is some sort of censorship that requires intervention against google is silly. It's not the end of the world. If you type Kodi it comes up. If you type kod+player it comes up if you type XBMC it comes up. If you type Codi (or cody) player it comes up.
If this was a google competitor, then I'd be on teh anti-competitive band wagon, but it's not.

Hell, start a petition to get htem to put it back in. Send me the link, and I'll sign it.
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Heh you're a naive person.
 
nilepez said:
And I've never denied that, but the idea that this is some sort of censorship that requires intervention against google is silly. It's not the end of the world. If you type Kodi it comes up. If you type kod+player it comes up if you type XBMC it comes up. If you type Codi (or cody) player it comes up.
If this was a google competitor, then I'd be on teh anti-competitive band wagon, but it's not.

Hell, start a petition to get htem to put it back in. Send me the link, and I'll sign it.
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I think the point is that while it's understandable that Google remove search results as a result of a legitimate DMCA copyright request, the fact that someone finds it necessary to pressure Google into removing the term Kodi from auto complete requests is a little concerning and opens up avenues for further exploitation of DMCA requests based on nothing more than what's being presented in the media at the time.

This is the concern, and based around the fact that we're censoring auto complete requests for something that isn't a direct link to piracy is definitely something to be worried about.
 
Mazzspeed said:
I think the point is that while it's understandable that Google remove search results as a result of a legitimate DMCA copyright request, the fact that someone finds it necessary to pressure Google into removing the term Kodi from auto complete requests is a little concerning and opens up avenues for further exploitation of DMCA requests based on nothing more than what's being presented in the media at the time.

This is the concern, and based around the fact that we're censoring auto complete requests for something that isn't a direct link to piracy is definitely something to be worried about.
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I get it, but Google has every right to block search terms and that is not a first amendment issue as certain posters have repeatedly implied. And again, if instead of whining on tech boards, people just ganged up on Google and insisted that it be reinstated, they'd have a far better chance of affecting change, though the arguments certainly couldn't be that Google was censoring or violating the first amendment. Your argument is actually a reasonable one to present to google with a hundred thousand signatures.
 
nilepez said:
I get it, but Google has every right to block search terms and that is not a first amendment issue as certain posters have repeatedly implied. And again, if instead of whining on tech boards, people just ganged up on Google and insisted that it be reinstated, they'd have a far better chance of affecting change, though the arguments certainly couldn't be that Google was censoring or violating the first amendment. Your argument is actually a reasonable one to present to google with a hundred thousand signatures.
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A valid point. The issue is that, personally, I find Google to be the best search engine around, Bing and especially Duck, Duck Go can't touch Google in terms of search effectiveness.

But, you are right, people should vote with their actions and tell Google to stick it.
 
nilepez said:
There company their rules. Don't like, it go create the boonie search engine. And FYI, it's not fucking censorship. You type kodi it shows kodi. you type "Codi Media" "Codi Player" "Codi Program" or "Codi Software" (misspelled to show that even if you don't know how to spell it it works) you get a link to Kodi.

So just stop it. It may be a dumb decision, but it's fairly meaningless and will not affect most searchers.
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Dude, if we do not protest or say anything, even in the slightest of forms, they will begin to "DICTATE" and operate and ban things on a much higher level than ever before without anyone opposing or standing in their way. Laying down and doing nothing is FAR worse, as it will show them how little resistance their really is....

So YOU better wake-up and smell the damn coffee and change your mentality, because it does matter. Google has ALOT of power, and ALOT of muscle, and they can make quite huge changes to how things on the internet are done, and what info goes where. They can ban or 'adopt' many new policies or restrictions that are for the 'better', and can turn around and report to the FBI or NSA literally all that traffic that is directed in any certain direction from you. That is power that scares me.

And don't sit there and say "Well I don't do nothing wrong, so I ain't got noting to worry about..." That statement and mentality is exactly why our freedoms are eroding away at the edges.

It may not be today, it may not be this year, but if even the .5% of people who actually do care about these things also do nothing or say nothing, then google can begin to ban things on a much bigger scale.

Hell its already happening on Youtube, which is owned by Google. They banned tons of videos in different subjects litterally because of someone's point of view. Not that its hate speech, or them doing anything illegal but talking.

I know we are limited in to what we can actually do, but their are always options, ie - google is a public company that is on the stock market;

I'm just saying you do what you want to do, but don't call other people dumb for being resistant to Google banning or restricting something....its their right to hold companies to the fire and want to protest when a company chooses to restrict something it hasn't done so before.
 
natos said:
Dude, if we do not protest or say anything, even in the slightest of forms, they will begin to "DICTATE" and operate and ban things on a much higher level than ever before without anyone opposing or standing in their way. Laying down and doing nothing is FAR worse, as it will show them how little resistance their really is....

So YOU better wake-up and smell the damn coffee and change your mentality, because it does matter. Google has ALOT of power, and ALOT of muscle, and they can make quite huge changes to how things on the internet are done, and what info goes where. They can ban or 'adopt' many new policies or restrictions that are for the 'better', and can turn around and report to the FBI or NSA literally all that traffic that is directed in any certain direction from you. That is power that scares me.

And don't sit there and say "Well I don't do nothing wrong, so I ain't got noting to worry about..." That statement and mentality is exactly why our freedoms are eroding away at the edges.

It may not be today, it may not be this year, but if even the .5% of people who actually do care about these things also do nothing or say nothing, then google can begin to ban things on a much bigger scale.

Hell its already happening on Youtube, which is owned by Google. They banned tons of videos in different subjects litterally because of someone's point of view. Not that its hate speech, or them doing anything illegal but talking.

I know we are limited in to what we can actually do, but their are always options, ie - google is a public company that is on the stock market;

I'm just saying you do what you want to do, but don't call other people dumb for being resistant to Google banning or restricting something....its their right to hold companies to the fire and want to protest when a company chooses to restrict something it hasn't done so before.
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Look, if you're like Boonie and unwilling to leave Google (see bing sucks so he won't use it), then STFU. Picking up your toys and going home is the only recourse you have. It's their platform and they can do what they want with respect to speech. ANd again, Kodi is accessible from google.

Seriously, it's 4 freaking letters. If you don't know those letters, then you're not going to find it, but if you do you will. Also if you type kod media it's the 3rd link
Type kod media player and it's number 1.

I think they should put the auto-complete back in, but given that I rarely rely on auto complete (especially for a 4 letter product), I'm not going to stress over it.
As for YouTube, I'll eave that to someone else. I only use the platform for a music video every now and then or the occasional a video on how to take something apart or fix something.
 
Well I didnt know what Kodi or duckduckgo was before this.

Now Ive switched off of google and on to ducking
 
zuck.jpg
 
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