prae5, you've got a bit of a PR problem on your hands here, so please allow me to explain the state of affairs and emotions going on in this thread. I'm not personally making any accusations, I don't know anything about you really, but people here seem to think of you as a hypocrite, and the biggest reason why is because you're being heavy-handed and stubborn with the rules and bans while at the same time ignoring a very valid point that several people in this thread have brought up. Namely, YouTube.
Several posters have cited YouTube's TOS as an example of official plugins that violate these new rules, yet the YouTube plugin still remains in the official repositories. Your silence on this matter hasn't gone unnoticed, as several people have reposted this question. Could you please provide a response to this point? We're nine pages in now and it's beginning to look like you're intentionally ignoring this very valid and well-made point of discussion.
The YouTube plugin violates YouTube's TOS by having unauthorized, third-party software connecting to its network. It also circumvents any commercials, annotations and other revenue-generating annoyances, and to deprive a company of their would-be profits by being clever with technology is often viewed as "piracy" in the United States, where the XBMC foundation is located. Remember how TiVo got sued back in the early days over their commercial-skipping features? Same issue here.
In the interests of retaining the trust and respect of XBMC users and forum members, you would be wise to address this issue immediately. Judging by the tone of several responses here, it seems that your silence on the matter is leading many to suspect you of being weak-kneed and capitulatory towards threat letters while at the same time not only ignoring your own rules regarding video add-ons, but also ignoring the legitimate concerns of your userbase.
If this is not the case, please provide a rational, assertive response, without resorting to telling us where to go if we don't like it. We are simply asking questions and attempting to understand the rationale behind these new rules, which is perfectly reasonable for any community to ask of its leaders. Please get your back down and stop replying to us as if we're just whining about change and trying to undermine your authority. That's not what's going on here. We understand some troll of a lawyer from Dubai got you scared, but that's no reason to tell us to piss off and go talk somewhere else as soon as we point out an obvious incongruency.
I often observe that people in positions of power (even forum moderators) get all pissy when people start asking "why", but perhaps if you understand that we do have legitimate reasons for asking, you could see that we're not trying to piss you off with rhetorical questions. Provide us with a sound answer and I guarantee you that all but the hopelessly stupid and spoiled brats will completely shut up about the issue and move on. Those of us with a brain are bound to understand your reasons, so long as they make sense and don't have any glaring contradictions. If you really aren't being a hypocrite, if you really aren't picking and choosing which plugins are allowed to violate the rules based on who threatens you, then your best defence against these tall accusations is a straight-up, clear answer.
Furthermore, by not addressing this issue, you're encouraging more and more people to talk about the YouTube plugin as an example. This increases the risk of people
from YouTube noticing this discussion. If they send you a cease and desist letter, we can all be certain that if you'll listen to a copyright troll from Dubai, your bowels would just completely empty themselves into your underwear upon being threatened by Google's lawyers. This would inevitably force you to remove a plugin that has enjoyed over 20 million downloads, isolating all of its users in the process. Even though nobody has done anything illegal and the threat would really be meaningless, it seems that those in charge here can't be bothered spending ten minutes learning their rights, probably because kissing ass takes mere seconds by comparison.
You want to know how to deal with threats that come in from site operators when you violate their TOS? Use my form letter if making your own is too much work:
"That's nice, buddy, but I'm not a member of your website. I didn't sign or even so much as click
an agreement to anything, therefore your rules don't apply to me. I just write software that accesses your publicly-available web content in a non-destructive fashion that actually uses less
of your bandwidth than using a browser. You're welcome."
I know you said earlier you don't really give a crap if this results in users jumping ship, but I guarantee the numbers will drop a lot more noticably if people can't get their YouTube anymore, and I doubt your corporate sponsors will like that. The sooner you clean this up, the less you have to worry about that sort of thing happening. If I were you, I'd be worried about jaded, disgruntled, angry, vindictive people on the forums contacting YouTube directly about this, just to spite Team XBMC in the face of everything that's going on here and make things worse for everyone. People can be rather passionate about the software they use.
Also, am I the only one who finds this ridiculous, considering XBMC's roots? XBMC originated as software that required you to violate your XBOX's TOC in order to install and use it. If it weren't for a blatant disregard for terms of service violations and a strong curiosity in reverse-engineering, XBMC wouldn't even exist! This is why underground projects should never "go legit", they quickly lose connection with their roots and core philosophies of development, as can be witnessed here in this thread. XBMC wasn't created by criminals for use by criminals, it was created by good, hard-working hackers who wanted to help everyone expand the capabilities of their hardware. And yes, that involved breaking some rules, which everyone saw as necessary at the time. Why the sudden shift in thinking? Does XBMC's corporate sponsors have the developers by the balls now? "Do as we say or we pull the food off your table", that sort of thing? What is going on here?!
Personally, I need the benefits of the TOS-violating YouTube add-on. My computer is literally too slow to run YouTube in full-screen when accessed with any web browser, due to all the stupid cruft they add to every YouTube page. XBMC is the only way I can see YouTube videos in full-screen on this single-core Atom-powered ancient netbook of mine. YouTube's TOS surely wasn't violated by the plugin authors in some agenda to deprive YouTube of profits and
stick it to the maaaaan, maaaaan, it was violated to ensure interoperability with computers that I and others refuse to accept as being "too old" just because YouTube can't make a scalable website worth a damn. I am on a very small, fixed income. I can't afford to replace this aging system, so I rely on software and OSes like XBMC and Linux to extend its life and functionality. Viewing videos on the Internet shouldn't and doesn't require a beast of a machine, no matter what artificially-inflated system requirements YouTube's HTML would like us to believe.
So again, to summarize:
Why is the YouTube video add-on permitted in the official repositories, despite its clear violation of the rules laid out in this thread's original post?
Team XBMC is making a big mistake by tarring TOS violations with the same brush as piracy. It's not the same thing, and you damn well know it.
For those who may have trouble figuring out what I'm saying, I'm not in any way arguing in favour of piracy. I am, however, arguing in favour of violating the ever-changing TOSes of various private entities, which is in no way "illegal" in any sense of the word. If I were to break this forum's rules, the mods could ban me, but they couldn't call the cops on me. That's the big, fundamental difference between violating some random company or forum's TOS and violating the law. The beauty of violating someone else's TOS via an XBMC plugin is that there isn't much they can do about it, short of spending lots of time rearranging how their site is laid out to try and break third-party plugins, essentially creating a cat-and-mouse game of development and web (re)design. With a dedicated and well-organized team of people working on an add-on, they could keep up with these changes at a decent rate and ensure that outages are very brief.
Strangely, I just realized MythTV has the exact same issue going on here.
They forbid TOS-violating grabbers, yet YouTube is included with MythNetvision. Doesn't anybody have their shit together anymore?!
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