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+--- Thread: XBMC's Piracy Stance: Draft (/showthread.php?tid=117995)
- Ned Scott - 2012-01-05 14:25
RichH Wrote:What would also be worth doing is having a standard legal disclaimer that all add-ons have to accept before they are added to the official repository. Something along the lines of, use of this add-on within XBMC is to be used for the accessing and viewing off material in line with any copyright that is in control of that material. As has been mentioned some add-ons that pull down torrents can be used for legal and illegal material. To expect the XBMC Team to manage the situation of what could potentially be used to obtain any illegal content is almost impossible.
All add-ons must pass these rules to be added to the official repo, so that's more or less already there; http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Official_add-on_repository#Repository_guidelines
- RichH - 2012-01-05 15:15
Ned Scott Wrote:All add-ons must pass these rules to be added to the official repo, so that's more or less already there; http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Official_add-on_repository#Repository_guidelines
I may of badly put it across, it was more at the person who uses the add-on. In the example of an add-on that can download a torrent file. The intended add-on could of been added within XBMC to be used to obtain material that is not copyright protected. But it could be used to obtain material which would break copyright rules. The disclaimer as such was a advisory note to the end user that the add-on was in XBMC only for the use in the obtaining material that is legal and that any copyright should be taken into consideration. You could call it an acceptable use policy for the add-on (in fact have it as a default for all add-ons), even make it that it has to be accepted before it downloads to the XBMC Client.
That would be more of a protection for the XBMC Team, as you accept there is the possibility that the add-on could be used for reasons other than it is intended for and have added a note advising that it should not be. I guess it all depends how much you want to cover your collective rears, should someone want to try and take some form of action against XBMC.
- Robotica - 2012-01-06 03:49
Ned Scott Wrote:http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBMC_manifesto
Some? These are the only policies that the WikiMedia Foundation has made: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Policies
While the Wikipedia community (just on the English Wikipedia) handles 57 policies ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_policy ) and over 150 guidelines ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_guidelines ). The community is by far a self governing system that rarely requires input from the Foundation before making or changing rules.
There's time, but no one wants to do it. It's boring. Still has noting to do with forum rules.
@Ned Scott:
If you want to have a total distrubuted control without central control, GIThub and a forum and a wiki in a country who respect freedom of speech (EU countries like Sweden and the Netherlands) will be sufficient. But the choice was made (by the guys who gained access to millions of dollars via Boxee) to setup this charity Foundation in the US of A.
This (running a community project within a charity foundation) involves a level of co-ordination and process that goes far beyond what you can do at GitHub, whether you like it or not. Proposed piracy policy is a good example of the consequences.
It is nice to see the community put some efforts in drawing the Manifesto and an up to date member page but all policies drawn by teamXBMC (and the community at large) are useless since formally there is no relation between teamXBMC and the XBMC Foundation.
The first thing to understand is that the XBMC Foundation is not only open source projects, frameworks or code libraries. The Foundation is a tax-exempt public charity for a variety of philanthropic reasons. It’s not owning the code; it’s only supporting/empowering it for those philanthropic reasons, supported by it’s mission. Strangely, those are not public (did you actually refer to that GUI manifesto?) while they are used for applying for the tax-exempt status and setting up the Foundation in the first place. Besides, throwing a Foundation at a GPL community created software project means more ways (beside copyright) of controlling a project. Nothing is done to justify that while xbmc codebase is fully legal. Maybe some downsteam projects are in danger in some countries but not xbmc.
What does the GPL means while having a piracy stance like the one proposed? This real discussion is totally avoided and R. Stallmann (and the whole Free / Open Everything Movement) normally are using the word sharing (and more related to the forum: freedom of expression) instead of facilitating piracy. I think about the banned software devs which also are creators. How free are they within this community? Not is as free as stated in teamXBMC manifesto, saying XBMC is based on the ideas of FOSS.
If there is no moral stance overhere?
Also following point:
- How will addons handled that break EULA's?
- Why doesn't this stance become effective once the domain name is transfered to the foundation?
- Doesn't inappropriate use cover a broader definition than piracy? It's not just copyright laws like SOPA you have to apply to. Also calling for racial hatred, video of pedo-pornographic nature, Incitement to violence and any other content that violates the laws) is.
- davilla - 2012-01-06 04:49
@Robotica; getting very off topic now. this thread is about " XBMC's Piracy Stance: Draft" and not a sounding board about XBMC's Foundation.
I've banned you once for taking over threads for your personal sounding board and I'll do it again if you keep it up. You have been warned. Start a new thread and you can discuss this to your hearts content but not here, nor in any thread that does not contain that content already.
- Robotica - 2012-01-06 05:35
How can I go off topic in a discussion about community/forum/discussion rules (or any other form of policies) if there is no description of what this community is? I believe this topic, is off topic and I tried saving it from dwelling away from it's essence. But my point is made and maybe I open another topic.
But what the heck happened with the anti-DRM attitude? Shouldn't that be included in the forum rules?
Take private - ZaPHoN - 2012-01-06 05:58
branlr Wrote:It is unfortunate that we lose this freedom, but necessary.
XBMC is too good and too important to risk aligning itself with piracy.
Take the offending pluggins and support to a safer place http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page and then I'm sure it keeps xbmc in the clear.
Remember, public web is no longer safe for the commons because of corporate manipulation of governments.
Soon a p2pdns system will be available too.
xbmc cannot die and nor can we complain for the devs playing it safe.
- natethomas - 2012-01-06 06:32
Robotica Wrote:But what the heck happened with the anti-DRM attitude? Shouldn't that be included in the forum rules?
Um. No? Why would it be? These rules are entirely about piracy and downloading/uploading. DRM has nothing to do with piracy, downloading, or uploading. If you are going to propose additions or subtractions to the rules, please explain how they affect the title of the rules "XBMC's Official Forum Piracy Stance." If they do not, please refrain from bringing up off topic discussions.
- Ned Scott - 2012-01-06 11:55
@Robotica:
Why would forum policies be useless because there was no typed, framed, formal decree from "the Foundation"? We are saying "if you do this, we warn you then we ban you". It's a statement of fact. You can shout that it's useless or meaningless all you want, and people will still be banned for breaking the rules we set.
I've cut down what I replied to you to stay somewhat on topic to this thread:
Quote:(did you actually refer to that GUI manifesto?)
That is the general XBMC project manifesto. This manifesto was formalized during that whole XBMC/Plex split thing.
Quote:What does the GPL means while having a piracy stance like the one proposed?
Some people seem to think the GPL is a copyright license for software code. Some people think the GPL is a religion. I'm not going to get into that debate, but I honestly don't see "GPL" and "no piracy discussion rule" as conflicting.
Quote:This real discussion is totally avoided and R. Stallmann (and the whole Free / Open Everything Movement) normally are using the word sharing (and more related to the forum: freedom of expression) instead of facilitating piracy. I think about the banned software devs which also are creators. How free are they within this community? Not is as free as stated in teamXBMC manifesto, saying XBMC is based on the ideas of FOSS.
Richard Stallmann actually has a very different view on creative works than he does for software code. While he believes all software code should be free, he thinks it's perfectly justifiable and okay to hold tight/restrictive copyrights on media/creative works. For example, he thinks the code in a video game should be free, but the graphics, sound, character scripts ("cut-scenes") that tell the story, and other creative elements can all be all-rights-reserved-up-the-arse.
No one has been banned (yet). This is no different than when we tell people in the iOS forum that xbmc.org isn't a place to get jailbreaking help. It's always been that certain topics are allowed and certain topics aren't. Are you going to start complaining about open source philosophy because you can't start a thread about Angry Birds on the forums?
Quote:- How will addons handled that break EULA's?
We don't really care about EULAs. If a given EULA has any legal weight then that still would be a separate issue. I believe it's something along the lines of breaking a contract rather than copyright infringement. That being said, most EULAs are not enforceable by law, even if a company claims they are.
Quote:- Why doesn't this stance become effective once the domain name is transfered to the foundation?
Why should it? That's a totally unrelated matter that just appears to be happening at the same time. The discussion about allowing add-on discussion for things like IceFilms has been happening for months, if not years.
Quote:- Doesn't inappropriate use cover a broader definition than piracy? It's not just copyright laws like SOPA you have to apply to. Also calling for racial hatred, video of pedo-pornographic nature, Incitement to violence and any other content that violates the laws) is.
Really not sure where you are going with this one, but I'll take a stab at it:
Again, this has nothing to do with SOPA.
No one is using the term "inappropriate use".
Last time I checked we do not allow racial hatred, pedophiliac content, or incitements to violence. Feel free to link me to the "Rape black babies and smash their heads into walls Add-on" discussion thread and I'll close it.
tl;dr- you can disagree that we have the ability to make rules like this all you want, but it still won't change anything.
- ralob - 2012-01-06 12:45
I understand why the Team needs to draft such a policy; CYA and all that. I have no problem with it.
I only hope that the new site being created by the community (or some other method if that doesn't work out) becomes well-known enough to keep people aware of all the add-ons. It would be a shame if some of the more popular ones died out due to users not knowing about them.
I really can't pass full judgement until we see how all this unfolds. Knowing Team XBMC and having been around here for a long time, I have confidence that everything will work out one way or another.
- Robotica - 2012-01-06 23:17
I recon the GPL by itself is just a license. But when you steward the software from within a charity foundation, there is a moral stance. You can read it in the Foundations mission. While you’re at it, you can also see that board members or any other person involved, are unaccountable for the software; only for operating the Foundation. So when those policies are made by teamXBMC, there is no formal relation between the Foundation and the policies.
That by itself is no problem for me. The shits hits the fan when this happens within a Foundation, representing it’s community, while not being open. In those kind of organizations, the Board is not answerable to the participants, and the participants have no say or control at all over how the organization is managed or evolves; To act on behalf of it’s community, some degree of transparency is needed. And the invitation-only way of being open is self-perpetuating since there are neither a letter of in-cooperation nor bylaws published. Believe it or not, this is an hot topic in FOSS-world. And yes, Wikipedia is an absurd project related to policies but some basics should be covered and be in the open (the apache way is considered the best standard for community driven projects like xbmc).
Now there is a situation where Board-members have control (even by Boxee representatives!) without being accountable to it’s community. The past of xbmc and many other FOSS projects showed what can happen in this scenario.
Community leaders prefer sweeping the dust under the carpet rather than try to be open and solve those problems. Instead of dealing with my concerns, they ban the messenger.