The developers of open-source media player Kodi are going after sellers of TV boxes that are sold as a legal way to watch unlimited movies and TV series. In reality these boxes use Kodi with additional add-ons to stream pirated content.
While Kodi's stance is that users are free to do with their software whatever they want and that watching pirated content is their own responsibility, they want to stop sellers of these TV boxes. According to Kodi their forum is frequently visited by users who have bought such a TV box asking why the box is broken. This is because the sellers often deliver a bad product with broken piracy add-ons and disappear just as quickly as a new one pops up.
Users are often unaware they are guilty of piracy when using these boxes and blame Kodi for the bad quality of their box. While in reality Kodi has nothing to do with the crappy add-ons and of course even less with the salesmen of these boxes.
And even worse, companies don't want to cooperate with Kodi because they think they are selling pirate boxes and the Kodi app has been removed from an App Store for those reasons.
Some core Kodi developers have threatened to quit in protest but it seems that won't happen as Kodi has another trick up their sleeve. Kodi will use their trademark to sent takedown notices where they think users can get easily confused. Sellers of Kodi powered TV boxes will find that Kodi will do everything possible to take them down.
Therefore Kodi asks users to report sellers of these TV boxes that claim to provide access to unlimited movies and TV shows for free. The developers underline that media boxes with just Kodi on them are fine but that a fully loaded Kodi box is not.
By taking action, the team behind Kodi hopes to stop their core developers from quitting in protest and stop seeing their name dragged through the mud.
