XBMC's Piracy Stance: Draft

rogerthis Wrote:Is this a piracy stance or an icefilms stance? It is very disingenuous to only close the icefilms addons and leave the rest open. Either have a piracy stance or an icefilms stance.
I can understand your frustration when icefilms website is down, that one post wonders will post all over the xbmc.org. But you know that this isn't going to stop, unless you change the name of the project to xbmcNOTicefilms.org. Of have stickies on every sub forum, icefilms is banned.

I've closed a number of other non-icefilms threads that were covered under this new policy:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=46868
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=49422
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=94994
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=101594

Looking into Navi-X. There's a kind of "intentional inclusion of pirated content" and "stuff can slip in there that we have no control over". I haven't used Navi-X myself very often (I think last I tried it was in the original xbox days), so I don't know which of those two it is.

yes there is piracy content there, no - it isn't its main goal. It contains what users publish in their playlists. I'm wondering if you're really going to bend your own rule just to get it out of the system.

Edit: Since I'm not sure how deep would you go in analyzing - have in mind that what you see in terms of user submitted playlists/items are just the ones marked as public. There are lots and lots more private playlists available/visible just to the authenticated user - think personal videos, photos etc. uploaded online in one or more of the supported hosts.

Good to see you are sticking to your policy closing down four other addons that aren't active. You didn't even bother to look at the links that I posted. Have the balls and do it properly.

Rule 4B is far too wishy-washy:

Quote: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.]

The way it's worded, it says icefilms could add a bit of legal content, and that would make it ok.


macf1an has a better 4b

Quote:Not designed for piracy but potentially able to serve it along with legal content

But I don't think it's fully right either.


As far as x-navi is concerned it wasn't an external playlist that added icefilms, but it was added by the main dev. That's the main difference between youtube and navi-x.

Just closing the addon threads promoting piracy is not enough. Those threads should actually be deleted in my opinion.

The very fact that threads discussing addons with piracy related intentions were closed, but not deleted by the mod, makes the TEAM-XBMC more liable in some sense for condoning the piracy. I hope you get what I am trying to say...

Don't just close them, delete them. I know it will hurt those addons from the standpoint of people not knowing enough about the new location to go and look for them before the thread gets deleted.

Or at the very least, delete all posts in the thread and keep one deletion message and maybe a redirection. Anyways when people add links to pirated stuff it won't be tolerated, similarly redirecting people from xbmc.org to a different website which will house addons which you could not condone because of piracy, is also problematic.

I would say a month down the line would be enough at which point onwards the threads should just be deleted and all previous re-directions also removed for complete site cleanup.

While not exactly piracy related stuff... but the XBMC FAQ Rule #9

"Don't ask how to get or copy/backup games, videos, music, (even if you own the original)!"

is violated by this thread... http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=52615

I have wondered why nobody has ever objected to it, from the standpoint of the rule in the FAQ....

ndeshmukh Wrote:While not exactly piracy related stuff... but the XBMC FAQ Rule #9

"Don't ask how to get or copy/backup games, videos, music, (even if you own the original)!"

is violated by this thread... http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=52615

I have wondered why nobody has ever objected to it, from the standpoint of the rule in the FAQ....

Maybe because it does not ask just tells you how to do it.

ndesh, I can't speak for the rest of the team on that one, but in my opinion our entire piracy stance is to indicate our complete willingness to support content producers. In my opinion, software to strip DRM is perfectly moral and ethical, and if it weren't, iTunes should be morally wrong as well, given that iTunes enables a person to "rip" a CD. In both situations, the goal is to honestly pay for the original content, and then simply use it as you see fit.

As we know, XBMC is a US Foundation, and so we cannot host an addon like the one in question that rips DRM in our repository, but such software is totally legal and reasonable in numerous nations and ethical in all of them, as far as I am personally concerned.

It is for that reason that we are taking the very narrow stance that we are taking with these forum rules. Our goal is to limit the connection between XBMC and the acquisition of content that a person has not acquired the copyright license to personally use via the development of software, while at the same time doing as little as humanly possible to stifle creativity surrounding XBMC. That's it. We have no desire to limit the actual way in which a person uses his or her content.

Like it or not, the only known purpose of icefilms is to provide direct access to so-called pirated content. Virtually every other addon for XBMC is creative enough to get around being an addon created exclusively for the purpose of providing direct access to pirated content. The lummel addon has absolutely nothing to do with accessing pirated content, and so it's not in any way a part of the discussion.

As for deleting threads: Once again, I speak only for myself, but I simply don't think it's necessary. Once again, I am speaking only for myself, but pretty much the entire goal of this policy is to distance XBMC from the development of piracy software. This is accomplished by telling people, "You will not be developing any more piracy software in our forum." Boom. Done. We point them somewhere where we don't have to be the host anymore, and, with luck, everybody leaves each other alone. Deleting old threads is just beating an already dead horse.

I am choosing to leave this thread open, because I have absolutely no doubt that that there will be quite a lot of people trying to figure out exactly where our line is drawn. Who knows, there may even be some smart people able to draw an even finer line that will allow us to allow yet more creative software in.

tl;dr: Just so long as you understand that the entire goal is to encourage as much creativity as possible, while discouraging actual piracy within an addon, you should see exactly where we are drawing the line. Hopefully that helps.

macf1an Wrote:yes there is piracy content there, no - it isn't its main goal. It contains what users publish in their playlists. I'm wondering if you're really going to bend your own rule just to get it out of the system.

Edit: Since I'm not sure how deep would you go in analyzing - have in mind that what you see in terms of user submitted playlists/items are just the ones marked as public. There are lots and lots more private playlists available/visible just to the authenticated user - think personal videos, photos etc. uploaded online in one or more of the supported hosts.

Sounds basically like Youtube, which is certainly good enough for me.

I, personally, am glad that XBMC is taking this stance.

I can't name how many times I've had to tell NEW users that give Feature Suggestions:

Quote:XBMC walks a thin line. It will play anything, no questions added. However, by promoting this feature, it would be condoning piracy. After that there would be going back to the current status quo.

This keeps idiot/morons from asking for feature or addons that endanger XBMC