Amazon Bans Sales of “Pirate” Media Players, Will Destroy Them

Merc1138 said:
There's a portion of the argument here that you seem to be missing. This isn't the government banning anything, this is amazon banning it from their store.

If you run the Crosshairs online shopping mall, and decide to ban the sale of... flathead screwdrivers, guess what? It's YOUR online shopping mall and YOU get to dictate what you allow for sale there. Amazon is well within their rights to determine that they do not want products sold through their site, and it should be painfully obvious that the reasoning is they don't want something competing with their own streaming services, which they have every right to make a decision on.
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I'm not missing anything..I never mentioned the government , nor Amazons reasoning for banning it. I simply stated I think its wrong and I think its bullshit.
 
rezerekted said:
http://kodimediacenter.org/

This domain name has been seized by ICE - Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court under the authority of 18 U.S.C 981 and 2323.

Willful copyright infringement is a federal crime that carries penalties for first time offenders of up to five years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine forfeiture and restitution (17 U.S.C 506, 18 U.S.C 2319). Intentionally and knowingly trafficking in counterfeit goods is a federal crime that carries penalties for first time offenders of up to ten years in federal prison, a $2,000,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution (18 U.S.C 2320)

Not sure if April Fool's joke or not.
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Congrats Rezerekted, you made the front page.
 
Crosshairs said:
I'm not missing anything..I never mentioned the government , nor Amazons reasoning for banning it. I simply stated I think its wrong and I think its bullshit.
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From a business perspective, it's not wrong at all. Amazon sells streaming video services, even ignoring the issues of their reliance upon licensing from various entities to be able to stream that content, why would they want to allow the sale of a box marketed as a "buy once and never pay for streaming anything again" product? Might as well say it's bullshit that Coca-Cola doesn't sell Pepsi products in their employee cafeteria.
 
Merc1138 said:
From a business perspective, it's not wrong at all. Amazon sells streaming video services, even ignoring the issues of their reliance upon licensing from various entities to be able to stream that content, why would they want to allow the sale of a box marketed as a "buy once and never pay for streaming anything again" product? Might as well say it's bullshit that Coca-Cola doesn't sell Pepsi products in their employee cafeteria.
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your opinion is noted.
 

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Zarathustra[H] said:
How did you do that? They are still loading as seized domains for me.
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I tried loading the mediacenter link first to see the seizure message. However it just came up as a broken page that's blank. I googled it to try and view the cache but was unable to do so, the link below was for kodi.tv and I just hit that and it loaded up normal.
 
-Strelok- said:
It's back up :)
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Samson4EiT said:
I tried loading the mediacenter link first to see the seizure message. However it just came up as a broken page that's blank. I googled it to try and view the cache but was unable to do so, the link below was for kodi.tv and I just hit that and it loaded up normal.
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That's interesting.

Mine is still loading as the domain seizure page.
 
Maybe it's location based or you are seeing a cached version? I'm on the east coast if the time zone would somehow affect it.
 
Crosshairs said:
So then you agree with me...they are banning it based on what someone MIGHT do with it ...just as I stated .
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Even I can tell they are promoting it. Download all apps for free? How is that not promoting you product to download apps "all apps". It is clearly promoting a product for sale telling buyers they don't have to pay shit for apps. Common now, I can see amazon cracking down on that. why not just sell it without telling people you can download all apps for free.
 
Yeah their FB pages says it was just an April fools joke...
 
Crosshairs said:
Try clearing your cache...I can load it just fine but I imagine the site is getting hammered
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You were correct.

Final update on this one on the front page:

Update 2: It turns out Entertainmentbox.com was right. Not only was this a well executed prank, but they were also right about the site being in maintenance mode. Kodi.tv needed to go down for maintenance and a site upgrade, and took the opportunity to have a little April Fool's fun, and at the same time draw attention to "a constant tidal wave of piracy boxes, trademark infringements and erroneous (or outright misleading) news reports." You can read more about it in their news post.
 
Tiberian said:
Next they'll be banning the sales of hard drives and SSDs and optical media and tape backups 'cause, you know, you can use those for storing pirated media, then networking hardware because that's obviously the biggest contributor to pirated software and content distribution itself - if you have no network access hardware then you of course can't pirate shit online, right? Right?
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Nobody needs a high capacity assault hard drive clip that stores 30GB blurays in 1/2 a sec
 
I think Amazon is taking it's lead from the Kodi developers themselves. They do not want their name dragged through the mud and are themselves going after sellers that use the Kodi name and promote piracy. Example an add that specifies it has Kodi installed and tells people they can watch the latest movies for free would run afoul of both Amazon and the holders of the name Kodi. An add that just specifies it has Kodi installed but does not mention anything about free content is fine and would not run afoul of anyone. Amazon is not trying to stop anybody from selling a competing media player if they were they wouldn't release a Prime video app for Android because these are really just an Android tablet without a screen or battery.
 
Sales of these media players just went through the roof, it was the news article itself that just alerted millions of people to the existence of these devices and kodi.
 
Crosshairs said:
I dont think they should be intervening at all unless the device itself is illegal. Just because something can be used for illegal activities is no reason to stop its sale.
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If it is, I want them to stop selling:

  • Knives (could illegally stab someone)
  • Stun guns (could illegally stun someone)
  • Brass knuckles (could illegally assault someone)
  • Pepper spray (could illegally spray someone)
  • Lockpicks (could illegally break in someplace you don't belong)
  • Spy cameras (could illegally record something you had no right to record)
  • Any sort of sound recorder, analog or digital. (could illegally record something you had no right to record)
  • Computers (you could use them to break into other computers illegally)
  • Butane fuel or lighters (It makes pyromaniacs jobs easier)
  • etc
Sorry but this CONSTANT attribution of malice needs to die in a fire.
 
Megalith said:
Amazon is cracking down on media players that are being sold with pre-installed software that allows their users to quickly and easily acquire pirated material. Many of these devices feature the popular Kodi media center software, which supports third-party add-ons that allow for free streaming of content. I have a hunch that sellers will simply be more clever with their product descriptions going forward.

Streaming piracy is on the rise with popular media player Kodi at the center of attention. While Kodi itself is a neutral platform, millions of people use third-party add-ons to turn it into the ultimate pirate machine. In some cases, the pirate add-ons are put onto the devices by vendors, who sell these “fully-loaded” boxes through their own stores or marketplaces such as Amazon. While Amazon has never explicitly allowed the sale of copyright-infringing devices, they are not hard to find in its store. This is a thorn in the side of major copyright holders, who have repeatedly complained about fully-loaded boxes.
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No sir, best April Fools Day joke ever is the premiere of Rick and Morty Season 3 today!
 
“If you sell these products, we may immediately suspend or terminate your selling privileges and destroy inventory in our fulfillment centers without reimbursement,” Amazon writes.

Ehh i wonder what legal leg do they stand on for that last line... Amazon is not a Law Enforcement Agency and as such it isn't a call that they can make.
 
Well in the exact case of Kodi, any 3rd party seller cannot legitimately sell any hardware with Kodi loaded on it (because they don't own Kodi) and Kodi will not license its product to be sold on any hardware.

This is also the same with RetroPie, which recently has a nasty legal problem of its own when someone in the US has trademarked its name and started sending takedown notices on all sellers with preloaded RetroPie.

Neither RetroPie nor Kodi will recognise anything sold with those 2 preloaded, they only recognise the version that's available on their website. Kodi goes one step further and does not allow anyone to discuss or help anyone with addons that allows you to watch pirated content.
 
When the original site went blank yesterday, it wasn't because it wouldn't load, it was loading html sans displayable content. That may have been done explicitly, without setting up automatic redirects in the page itself:

kodi-source.jpg
 
Their https www subdomain still points to that page, where the naked domain and http www subdomain goes to the normal page. I wonder if they know that? A lot of people are going to still get the block page.
 
Idk why people here would care that amazon banned the kodi boxes on their webstore, it is trivial to install kodi on a wide range of devices.
 
Merc1138 said:
There's a portion of the argument here that you seem to be missing. This isn't the government banning anything, this is amazon banning it from their store.

If you run the Crosshairs online shopping mall, and decide to ban the sale of... flathead screwdrivers, guess what? It's YOUR online shopping mall and YOU get to dictate what you allow for sale there. Amazon is well within their rights to determine that they do not want products sold through their site, and it should be painfully obvious that the reasoning is they don't want something competing with their own streaming services, which they have every right to make a decision on.
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Agreed, sucks but yea that is their decision to make as it will affect their sales and they weighed that out already.

And just trolling but I bought my laptop off amazon and it came with software that allowed me to pirate things :D

What i don't get though is Kodi is a great media player, and by default is not set to grab from 'pirate' sites, it requires an addon. These people really could just leave that last leg up to the user to do, or maybe they are I dunno. I will admit I didn't read the article yet. [H] forums blend in better on my work pc than some websites do
 
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