When Amazon removed Kodi from their Android appstore earlier this year, it was likely an attempt to distance the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick from their growing reputation of being good devices for consuming pirated content. That reputation is now being propagated on Amazon’s own site. Over the past few days, an influx of third-party sellers (1) (2) (3) have managed to list Fire TVs and Fire TV Sticks on Amazon.com that come pre-installed with Kodi, as well as several third-party piracy add-ons that illegally stream copyright content. These listings are not shy about advertising the fact that buyers can watch “ALL TV shows, ALL movies and many many PPV events” with “No monthly fee!” Of course, they conveniently fail to mention that using any of these pre-configured devices is illegal under US copyright laws.
Should copyright holders bar Amazon from selling Fire TV devices altogether due to the actions of these third-party sellers? Of course not. I’m sure Amazon is unaware of the true nature of these listings and that they’ll likely be removed now that I’ve brought attention to them. However, it’s hypocritical for Amazon to punish Kodi for the actions of unsanctioned third-party individuals, who are out of Kodi’s control, when Amazon themselves can’t keep these nefarious third-party piracy advocates off of their own website, which is completely within their control. Just as copyright holders should not take down Amazon for the actions of a third-party seller, Amazon should not take down Kodi for the actions of third-party add-ons. #FreeKODI
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It’d only be hypocrisy if Amazon failed to take the listing down when an obvious violation was brought to their attention.
It would be nice if Kodi was in the Amazon store, but it’s far more important that 3rd party content providers continue to play ball with Amazon.
If you were able to push things far enough, who’s to say Amazon wouldn’t follow Sony’s lead with the PS3 and just disallow access to their content when sideloading is enabled?
Fact is content providers want their media to be accessed via their own Apps and portals such as to guarantee profiling and delivery of advertisement. Even Kodi’s ability to replace the UI of the Fire TV is questionable as Amazon’s goal for the product is to sell their content, not help you access your own.
Of course the enthusiast community will push a great device at a great price like the Fire TV as far as we can, but we shouldn’t be surprised when Amazon pushes back. If the product is being sold at a loss, then customers who purchase the product just to run Kodi are costing Amazon money.
If you push too hard, you may not like where things fall.
It doesn’t bother me that kodi isn’t on amazon appstore….just be happy we can sideload it easily. Best to promote the other great legal things about firetv and just speak of kodi as a trivial extra bonus feature.
The issue isn’t so much that it’s not in the App Store, it’s that you have to jump through shifting hoops to launch it. You’ll find out how annoying that can be when you try OS 5.
If Amazon allowed us to tailor a launch screen to our own taste that would be more preferable again.
Hopefully, Fire Starter can be ported to OS 5.
Anyway, I agree it would be nice to have Kodi in the store as an accepted App. It most certainly can be used in legal ways that do not conflict with Amazon’s goals for the product; but it’s up to Kodi’s developers to decide if they want to create a version that meets Amazon’s requirements.
Some resellers are gonna be piiiiiised at you :)
As long as I’m able to continue side-loading kodi, i’ll keep my fire tv updated. I do like being able to watch Prime videos and Netflix on it, but to me that is a bonus, and it’s main purpose (again, to me) is a Kodi box. If at any point they remove ability to sideload, I’ll end up not updating and continue to use it as my Kodi box (which is what I do about 95% of the time with it anyway). If there were another, more “open” android TV box, as cheap and well-made as this one, I’d be happy to keep my AFTV stock, just watch prime on it (and approved apps/netflix/etc), and use the other box for Kodi.
As for Kodi not being in competition, I am not really sure I agree with that. Amazon wants you using prime for music and videos, and they even support photos. For me, i’m using Kodi to play local movies, local music, internet radio streams, and local photo viewing. That seems completely in competition with Amazon’s core products. They have no way of knowing what i’m doing, or showing me (releveant) ads.
WHO CARES? Amazon could do what Amazon wants, if all the pirates out there want to steal free TV and Movies, they will figure out of to sideload Kodi eventually, not being listed in the appstore won’t stop them.