Will Kodi go after MLM streambox companies?
A number of streambox MLM companies have launched in the last few months, all marketing on the idea that customers can cancel their cable TV bill and instead access unlicensed content through the internet.
The streambox these companies sell make this possible, with the companies themselves selling the boxes preloaded with the required software and plugins.
Kodi is the software of choice used, with third-party plugins bundled with the streamboxes.
It is these plugins that have landed Kodi in hot water with Amazon, with the retail giant today removing Kodi from their app store.
The official reason cited by Amazon for the removal of Kodi is that the software ‘facilitate(s) the piracy or illegal download of content‘.
In an email sent to the developers of Kodi, Amazon wrote;
In reviewing your app, we determined that it can be used to facilitate the piracy or illegal download of content.
Any facilitation of piracy or illegal downloads is not allowed in our program.
Please do not resubmit this app or similar apps in the future.
What this means for Kodi going forward is unclear, but the company was quick to respond.
Speaking to TorrentFreak, XBMC Foundation board member Nathan Betzen explained that
in recent months the (Kodi) project has worked hard to distance their brand from piracy, so Amazon’s accusation is a huge disappointment.
Within the context of MLM opportunities selling Kodi streamboxes preloaded with the plugins in question (or providing software that automates the downloading of the plugins), what might come next from the Kodi team is of particular interest.
The Kodi team is actively pursuing infringing addons and sellers who abuse the brand, and is also trying to obtain a trademark so they can go after these piracy promoters more effectively.
“Most importantly, we’re working to finalize our trademark filing.
Once our trademark is registered, it becomes dramatically easier to issue takedown requests with the various organizations that provide voice for these groups advertising and selling pirate boxes,” Betzen tells TF.
“We always say we don’t care what our users do with the software, and we stand by that position. But we sure do hate it when companies destroy the name of our software in order to make a profit.”
Indeed some of these companies sell their “pirate boxes” on Amazon, raising somewhat of a conundrum, as Betzen points out;
For Amazon to ban the app is “absurd” according to the Kodi team, because the company is still allowing vendors to sell boxes that are giving the software this bad reputation.
“I assume I don’t have to tell you how absurd it is that Amazon won’t let us into their appstore, but they have no problem selling the boxes that are pushing the reason they won’t let us into their app store,” Betzen says.
Personally I’ve got nothing against Kodi, but I do think if Betzen is being genuine about Kodi’s efforts to combat blatant piracy, then streambox MLM company’s days might be numbered.
The opportunities appear to already be on the radar of the Kodi team, with a thread titled “MLM This seems to be really happening” appearing on the official Kodi forums.
Including two video links to vStreamTV promotional videos, on March 16th Kodi forum user “splatman2” asked:
Wow this is really happening in my area. This guy says directly that every movie and every TV show is available. What a liar.
It’s sad the distributors are not making the real money it’s the Top marketing folks that are let alone not Kodi.tv for the great software (Even donations to them would be cool but I’ll bet it’s not happening).
How do you folks feel?
Piers, a member of Team Kodi, was first to respond:
This looks like you’re advertising a pyramid scheme under disguise of a complaint.
Not sure how this is related to Kodi since it has nothing to do with the actual software.
NateThomas, a “Team Kodi Community Manager”, was a little less neutral:
Well that’s the most infuriating video I’ve seen today.
They didn’t even take the time to reskin it. Or even remove the Kodi logo from the screen. Puke upon puke.
Although available elsewhere for a fraction of the price, MLM companies like vStream TV, uBox, JetStream Direct and NuWayTV sell their respective “piracy boxes” for hundreds of dollars.
Amazon sells thousands of these boxes that promote all free tv and movies.
I saw one box they sell that had thousands of reviews. They are selling more of these boxes than all the mlm companies combined. And they promote the same content.
Is your only issue that the mlm product cost about $100 more. Here is just one link from the amazon site.
(OzEdit: Link removed, can’t tell if there’s an affil link in there or not)
Here is a box sold on Amazon promoting all free PPV and TV and Movies. Its the same thing.
There are also others companies selling boxes for $499 that are not mlm and they also sell thousands of boxes.
(Ozedit: Link removed, can’t tell if there’s an affil link in there or not)
This is too funny as Amazon is selling dozens of FULLY LOADED Android TV Boxes which they themselves ship from their warehouses!
Just search for FULLY LOADED ANDROID TV BOX.
Here is just one of many descriptions on the Amazon website:
One of the boxes has over 2000 reviews!! That means that god knows how many people bought them! Amazon has sold thousands more boxes than all the MLMs put together.
I think a company as big as Amazon would not be selling and shipping these units if they did not feel is was COMPLETELY LEGAL. Which it is.
‘Amazon’ isn’t selling them. People set up their own Amazon Store and sell them.
That may be true, but Amazon is shipping many of them from their warehouses.
Do you really believe Amazon allows people to setup a store to sell illegal products and they ship it for you? Ummmm, I don’t think so.
They even provide the customer service!
Gift wrap available too!! LOL
I’m sure all the warehouse workers do is take item SKU# whatever received from seller X and ship it to an address that bought it.
If you think Amazon personally inspects every single item that gets sold you have no idea how the real world works.
Oh great! Now I can sell some illegal drugs! Awesome!! And let Amazon charge the credit cards, ship it and handle any customer complaints.
if it doesn’t have to go through customs, you probably could.
A more pertinent question would perhaps be:
now that Amazon is aware of the problem and has moved to ban Kodi, how long will it be before it moves against the resellers of Kobi related products.
After all, doing so is hardly likely to affect Amazons’ business in any meaningful way.
@Don
I’m well aware the boxes themselves are still available on Amazon. My issue is that MLM companies are selling purpose-built boxes to facilitate piracy.
Call it being proactive, but I don’t see this ending well for the industry.
Whether Amazon takes any further action against the piracy box sellers remains to be seen.
@Chris
Given the removal of Kodi from their app store and why, that’s a broad assumption to make.
Selling purpose-built piracy boxes is never going to be legal in the US. This is just a niche regulators haven’t caught up in yet.
I suspect negative publicity will spearhead an effort to put a stop the common association of Kodi with piracy from their end. That’s if they’re serious about it.
You say people set up their own store but I purchased one from Amazon recently and Amazon charged my credit card and it was shipped from Amazon.
It was a fully loaded TV box that is no different from mlm versions. It even came with directions on how to use the apps to find the movies, TV and PPV.
Here are the details on the box I purchased from Amazon and it was shipped in an Amazon box.
This box has had thousands of reviews so that means they must have sold 10 times that amount.
Amazon has probably sold tens of thousands more of these boxes than all the mlm companies combined and Amazon has made a ton of money selling these boxes. KODI and the entertainment industry should go after Amazon.
They probably will, to some degree. The future will likely be an implementation of electronic countermeasures in the kodi base moving forward, or digital signing for plugins to be applied.
End user attacks are also likely based on if you purchased the box with the express understanding you would be getting something for nothing.
Oz You say
Amazon must also be selling purpose-built boxes to facilitate piracy and Amazon is probably making the same per box that an mlm company makes. I don’t see how its any different.
Show me an Amazon-branded piracy box?
And you can’t see how Amazon and an MLM business opportunity built around the sale of piracy boxes are different? Please.
Within the context of MLM, the important thing to note is Kodi’s reaction to Amazon’s decision. If other app stores follow suit and Kodi gets its registration, how long before Kodi overtly starts to clean up their reputation by association with piracy?
At some point the MLM opportunities who have built their business models selling piracy boxes are surely going to fall within their crosshairs.
That’s what I’m focusing on. Not whether or not Amazon will take action against non-MLM piracy box sellers using their marketplace.
So if these mlm companies sold one of the same boxes that Amazon sells it would be ok in your opinion?
What part of Amazon not being the same as an MLM opportunity are you not getting there chief?
Show me an Amazon-branded piracy box, or quit telling me they as a company are selling them.
You can argue this notion on both sides ’til you are blue in the face.
The fact remains that at some point there will be an electronic kill switch go out as a result of a court order or voluntarily and all of these boxes will become eerily silent.
This is history. It happened with satellite boxes and it will happen here.
Then all of the people who have been duped by the MLM’s will have a lot of explaining to do with their customers, affiliates and investors.
You said show me an Amazon branded box. It sounded like to me (Ozedit: What you think it sounded like is irrelevant. The statement was made in plain English and meant nothing more than was stated.)
Jray what about all the tens of thousands of people that bought boxes from Amazon. Are they duped also?
This is nothing like satellite boxes. This is the internet. They can’t shut down the internet or police what every person clicks on.
For goodness sake millions of people each day around the world watch streaming content everyday just on Youtube. I can access the same content my box gets on my computer or ipad.
I have seen the amazon fire sticks that can be hacked to do the illegal viewing. i don’t know if this is the same thing.
Not talking about Amazon Fire Stick. Go to amazon and search steaming TV box.
But “they” can prohibit the sale of purpose-built piracy boxes.
The internet or streaming isn’t the problem here, purpose-built piracy boxes are. But nice try.
@Terrence
A product that needs to be hacked isn’t the same as selling a purpose-built piracy box.
So if say UBOX, one of the mlm companies just decided to have a website and not promote the mlm concept and pay commissions for selling boxes and just sold boxes like Amazon then that would be ok?
It is just the fact that they are mlm that is the issue?
Nope, because Amazon don’t sell Amazon-branded piracy boxes. Third-party sellers use Amazon’s platform to market their own products.
Any further strawman arguments built around the notion that Amazon are selling piracy boxes will be marked as spam.
I’d be willing to bet that those third party “lifetime free tv” Kodi boxes being sold by a few dodgy companies using Amazon for fulfillment disappear from Amazon’s product listings soon.
I think you still need to download the Kodi plugins that facilitate piracy directly though they may provide a link: it would be rather dumb for a company to put something so unambiguous about its purpose of illegally copying content in its product.
Offering “lifetime free tv” is pretty dumb on its face so I might be wrong.
The current beef with Kodi in the app store for “facilitating piracy” is a indicator of Amazon’s increasing coziness with content owners as they make deals to be able to provide content for their own streaming service.
I wouldn’t expect that coziness to lead to less concern for copyright, but rather the opposite.
I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone I know to get involved in a company selling anything remotely resembling a piracy box, MLM or otherwise.
Especially when it’s all based on software you can download for free and install to a $50 system-on-a-stick with very little effort.
TIC TOC TIC TOC, it has been more than two years and Amazon is still selling streaming boxes on their site, as is ebay who also threatened to stop sales of these media streaming devices.
KODI is indeed stepping up to stop trade mark violations, but have been streaming for over three years, I can’t see how this cat can be put back in the bag with millions of people already having streaming technologies.
Heck, you can download Kodi on any device, so I can’t see how this technology can be stopped.
They tried to stop it in UK with pressure from their mainstream cable provider, and that attacked little retailers, may have scared a few out of retail locations, but didn’t put a stop to sales which are stronger than ever.
As to MLM deals, they are being scared out of industry by threats from Dish. I have a url which had word dish in it and have been harassed by Dish for two years until I showed them they don’t own trademark dish, but dish network.
I beat Microsoft years ago for using micro in url, same issue, they try to bully the little guys out of business.
As the big boy monopolies are losing subscribers by the thousands every month, of course they will fight back, lobby their politicians to induce action, but nothing has worked to date.
Sales continue to boom more than two years since original post. Looks like many here were dead wrong, but I do see the trend is to move away with pre-loading devices which is another layer of protection, let the buyer download whatever is openly available.
I do see most of the MLM deals are long gone, as well as the high prices now that streaming is better understood. Last search showed only vstream still an MLM, but I see they no longer sell $400. boxes, now it is monthly subsription of $30. and boxes have dropped in price to a mere fraction of what they were being sold for.
They lost thousands of customers when they changed system, and few made any serious money given competition in open market like on Amazon and ebay.
As we have seen the cable and satellite deals are now forced to offer streaming options for all those fed up with monopolies which are forcing you to buy what you don’t watch given so few options.
HBO offers low cost packages, Infinity, and even HULU just announced a TV package along with their access to streaming apps like Netflix as example.
I predict traditional cable and satellite will be forced to drop prices and give customers a menu option, buy what you use, not pay for hundreds of channels you don’t watch.
They shot them in the foot over the years and most hate their cable and satellite companies, so this alone will fuel streaming, never mind the fact most are watching on their smart phones, even tablet sales have dropped as the younger generation is driving the streaming explosion used on smart phones, even big screen TV’s market is dropping like a rock.
Strange but true, the smart phone is becoming the media center of their lives. I watch more movies on my laptop than on big screen, so the trend is underway and away from traditional entertainment.
Time will tell, but streaming is here to stay, and with tens of thousands of apps to access everything you ever wanted to watch and having worldwide streams, only way to stop it is to pull plug on internet, not going to happen, so stream away my friends.
I have saved thousands to date, and watch what I want when I want, and never download or record to sell which is the only law on books against pirating.
FCC stated that whatever is over the air is free to access, no restrictions, so the only weapon the monopolies have is fear factor pushing the little guys out of business for fear of law suit, but like in UK, it didn’t go anywhere.
I don’t think piracy is going anywhere, but as far as the MLM industry goes it’s dead.
I don’t think any of the streambox companies we saw pop up in 2015 are still around.
What you do as a private seller is up to you, but profiting from piracy as an MLM company is not a good look for the industry.