XBMC's Piracy Stance: Draft

natethomas Wrote:Hi forum users. Here's a note from your friendly neighborhood community manager. Up until now, we here at XBMC haven't really had a formal stance on how to deal with piracy discussion on the forum, other than to delete direct links to pirated content. Because we've decided that creates too much confusion for you, the user, we've decided to draft some more specific forum rules. While the decisions for how to police the forum ultimately lie with the admins and moderators, I wanted to give you users a chance to look through the proposed rules. If you have any useful suggestions or comments, feel free to list them below.

Our ultimate goal is to try to inhibit creativity as little as possible, while also being as morally respectful of the rights of content owners and creators as we can. So with that said, here are the proposed rules. We will let them stew for 24 to 48 hours. After that time, we will try to incorporate the best suggestions and revisions, and we'll go ahead and make them official.

XBMC's Official Forum Piracy Stance

1. All discussions dealing directly with or linking to add-ons, websites, or services that violate US copyright laws (pirated content) will be closed when a forum moderator has been made aware of them.

2. Discussions for add-ons that link directly to pirated content and enables the user to access that content through the add-on will be shut down.

3. All links to pirated content will be removed.

4. This typically does not include the following (to be determined on a case-by-case basis if nessesary):
A. The add-on does not actually perform the act of accessing pirated content ("mistaken identitiy")
B. The add-on has the potential to access pirated content, but is potentially useful for downloading legal content as well. For example, an add-on that downloads torrents is not, itself, a problem, since a torrent can cover a wide variety content, including legally distrubuted videos.
C. The add-on links/accesses content in a similar way to a normal web browser. This is done under the assumption that if the content owner did not want the content streamed, the owner should have not made the content available to be streamed in their site.
D. The add-on accesses content with permission of the content owner, the content is "copyleft" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft), or or the add-on accesses content without the clear disapproval of the content owner. XBMC will do its best to comply with DMCA-related takedown requests.

Thread originators or add-on developers may petition Forum Moderators to re-open a thread that was closed but believes one of the above exceptions applies to them.

5. Fair use excemptions apply for issues such as small video samples for testing and debugging.

I find this whole stance some what funny.. what the point of xbmc if it not to allow the delivery of content..now the question become what legal content and what not..to that question i say for xbmc and this forum it a non issue.. because most of the content on the web is there with the hope of the person putting it there to gain some kind of income from it.they do that in many ways but the main one being advertising revenue .. what almost all the addon in xbmc do is scrape the content without the ad in most cases.. so you see for the admin of this forum to be in true compliance he have to shut the forum down completely..otherwise he setting himself as the judge of what legal content and what not..now I will admit i pay for most of the content i consume and there is some i watch for free by way of xbmc..do anybody really think the movie studio is not aware of icefilm.. or megavideo.. what you think the SOPA is about .But if we leave it to SOPA soon a family movie with your kids will become illegal cause it may show music or cloths label that some companies claim they lost money cause your family video went viral and it display the label they was lic to advertise..it time we the people decide what a fair price to pay to keep the internet free of resticting laws.. my thinking once you post it or sell you should have limited rights to after.. but that wishfull thinking..

darkscout Wrote:Watch out for artwork too. I suspect that fanart is off the radar for now. But if some TV company decides that "all images and likenesses of said TV characters."

TV Logos definitely because they almost always use the copyrighted / trade marked fonts, images etc.

Also, the only people that can be sued under US law by at Ice Films is Icefilms / Mega Upload. To date no one has ever been sued in the US for downloading anything.

Yuppers, this went down with tv tunes as well. If interested, I am beginning a project known as XBMC HUB to try to bridge the gap for the situation at hand.

Our Thread

Our Site

It is nice to see XBMC is aware of the point I brought up (I am positive it was thought about well before I said anything). Smart to change the registrars and nameservers. No matter what direction is taken, it is probably best no matter what to be out of US jurisdiction for the safety of the project. Cheers. Here's to XBMC. Happy New Year.

Death-Axe Wrote:So to get this right: are you going to try and stop users from installing addons that access "illegal" content? like code XBMC in apple style by having only approved "apps"? Or am I reading the rules wrong?

WE WILL NEVER DO THIS. EVER.

Quote:Seriously though guys, whether you want to deny it or not: without piracy no one would be using XBMC in the first place. Reality says hi.

Tell that to my parents and my sister's family, whom I've set up XBMC boxes for that only access things like Hulu and ripped DVDs that they own. And if Crunchyroll keeps getting more shows like they have been, you can add me to that list too.

darkscout Wrote:Watch out for artwork too. I suspect that fanart is off the radar for now. But if some TV company decides that "all images and likenesses of said TV characters."

TV Logos definitely because they almost always use the copyrighted / trade marked fonts, images etc.

Trademarks mean nothing in our context. The vast majority of TV Logos are ineligible for copyright. Fun fact, Walt Disney's signature isn't copyrightable. The Walt Disney Company might pretend otherwise, and try to bully people who use it, but you simply can't copyright a signature. Same with most logos that consist of basic fonts and shapes. Another great example, the Star Wars logo. Trademarked only, and trademarks only restrict certain situations. I can't make a movie and use the Star Wars logo, but I can use it on my media center and Lucas Film can't do squat about it even if they wanted to. (case in point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Star_Wars_Logo.svg . notice that doesn't even say "fair use" anywhere. Believe me when I say they discussed the hell out of that too.)

Quote:Also, the only people that can be sued under US law by at Ice Films is Icefilms / Mega Upload. To date no one has ever been sued in the US for downloading anything.

Entirely not true. Not only have people been sued for downloading stuff, but I would not doubt the ability of someone suing the XBMC Foundation for "enabling" (as much BS as that would be, it can still happen).

IceFilms might not even be a real problem right now, but the popularity of the site and the XBMC add-on(s) is exploding.

However, this is a combination of issues, only one of them being potential legal action. A lot of Team-XBMC is tired of the "piracy" assumption that comes with HTPCs and media centers. There's also the fact that we are getting waaaay to many IceFilms support posts when the issue has nothing to do with XBMC (or even the add-ons, for that matter).

We want to focus on giving XBMC a good name, reducing the support forum work load, and giving it some needed protection. All while at the same time allowing users to still do whatever they want and install whatever they want.

htpc guy Wrote:So, if SOPA doesn't pass (crosses fingers) will it be business as usual with no changes from what currently is allowed on the forums?

SOPA actually has very little to do with this. It's been a long time coming.

Ned Scott Wrote:Trademarks mean nothing in our context. The vast majority of TV Logos are ineligible for copyright.

And Universal got MegaUploads 100% legal video pulled from youtube. I didn't say they were in the right. I said if SOPA passed they could claim what ever they wanted.

Quote:Entirely not true. Not only have people been sued for downloading stuff

Care to link to a lawsuit?

Ned Scott Wrote:Entirely not true. Not only have people been sued for downloading stuff, but I would not doubt the ability of someone suing the XBMC Foundation for "enabling" (as much BS as that would be, it can still happen).

IceFilms might not even be a real problem right now, but the popularity of the site and the XBMC add-on(s) is exploding.

I'd also like to see a link to a case of someone being sued for downloading. It is not illegal to download, it's the sharing or uploading part of it that is illegal. As a union member in the film industry I have attended seminars on online piracy and have spoken with several FBI agents from the online piracy department regarding Icefilms specifically, only to be told that it is not in fact illegal to watch movies on Icefilms. It's the people who post them to Megaupload who are breaking the law. However, as someone who works in the business I would not want someone to rely solely on Icefilms for their entertainment and stop using premium services such as cable, rentals, theaters and dvds/blu-rays. Although, I don't have a problem with them using it as a sort of "try before you buy" service as I do. (650+ dvds/blurays and counting)

darkscout Wrote:Care to link to a lawsuit?

bigbully Wrote:I'd also like to see a link to a case of someone being sued for downloading. It is not illegal to download, it's the sharing or uploading part of it that is illegal. As a union member in the film industry I have attended seminars on online piracy and have spoken with several FBI agents from the online piracy department regarding Icefilms specifically, only to be told that it is not in fact illegal to watch movies on Icefilms. It's the people who post them to Megaupload who are breaking the law. However, as someone who works in the business I would not want someone to rely solely on Icefilms for their entertainment and stop using premium services such as cable, rentals, theaters and dvds/blu-rays. Although, I don't have a problem with them using it as a sort of "try before you buy" service as I do. (650+ dvds/blurays and counting)

Just one?

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/bittorrent/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20006314-261.html

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/0...coming.ars

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-5081098-1.html

No distribution required. These are suits for downloaded content.

Quote:...only to be told that it is not in fact illegal to watch movies on Icefilms.

I'm guessing none of those people were lawyers, because that's 100% false. These are copyright LAWS. When you break the LAW it is considered illegal. The notion that downloading pirated movies is not illegal is so laughably absurd that I wonder if you guys are just making a bad joke.

Well there's really two points here. Firstly the issues with the icefilms addon and other copywrong content. A piracy stance is really the best option. Addons like ice are big enough for someone with balls to host independently and probably run quite a successful site.

Secondly is the whole SOPA issue. It's a shit storm waiting to happen and big sites, esp open source apps with a foot firmly in the history books of piracy should be staying out of it's grasp. not only for safety's sake but really out of principle. 2012 is going to be a big year for on-line rights,censorship etc. Big business and our governbents are really having a hard time trying to keep a lid on it and as a community we should be making this as difficult for them as possible.