Crackdown on illegal Kodi addons is working well, TVAddons ad suggests

[Len]

TVAddons has been on the lookout for a “volunteer anti-piracy compliance officer”, whose job it would be to keep copyright-infringing Kodi addons off its site.

The site is a popular library for Kodi addons, some of which allow users to stream films and TV shows illegally.

TVAddons is currently involved in a lawsuit in the US, where it has been accused of copyright infringement. Its recent appeal for the lawsuit to be dismissed was denied, and it appears that the dispute has convinced TVAddons to try to clean up its act.

“Are you passionate about open source software? Do you feel strongly against illicit online piracy? Do you have any past work experience as a lawyer, paralegal or law enforcement officer? If you feel like you reflect this description, we want to hear from you! The only catch is that this is an unpaid volunteer position,” TVAddons wrote in a blog postthat went up at the end of February, but largely passed under the radar.

It isn’t clear if the role has been filled.

“Since [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] protections are not internationally recognized, in addition to the recent trend of the DMCA being ignored altogether, we are looking to implement protocols in order to ensure that we will never again be liable for the actions of end users, developers, nor the sites they scrape.”

That essentially means that TVAddons doesn’t believe it should be punished, because any illicit Kodi addons that were or are listed on its site were created by other people.

The blog post continues: “We cater to people from all around the world. Addons scraping foreign language sources have been particularly difficult to assess, so bonus points if you’re linguistically gifted.”

The move marked a huge attitude shift for TVAddons. Back in October, the site got involved in a very public Twitter spat with Kodi, after the people running Kodi’s account said they hoped TVAddons got shut down, as it “[brings] nothing but misery to everyone”.

TVAddons hit back by saying Kodi wasn’t “in touch with” its userbase, hinting that most people only use it for illegal streaming. It later posted a link to a blog post that went up in February 2017, explaining the relationship between Kodi and TVAddons.

“Several years ago, the XBMC Foundation took some precautions in order to limit liability, and banned certain add-ons from being discussed or distributed at their web site. It was at that point in time that the foundation was laid for the creation of an unofficial community site for third party XBMC add-on developers called XBMC HUB, which eventually became TV ADDONS, the name we are known by today,” it reads.

“It is very important that the difference between us and them be recognized in order to respect the trademark of the Kodi project. We have a more relaxed addon policy, which is why many developers choose TV ADDONS over the official repo. It has also been made very clear that the official developers do not want their application name to be associated with unofficial plugins.

“It is our goal to provide a welcoming atmosphere for users and developers alike, with very few development restrictions.”

Since then, TVAddons has started delisting a multitude of popular Kodi addons, including Exodus and Covenant, both of which can provide free (and illegal) access to a huge selection of TV shows and films.