Over the last couple of years, Kodi has gained popularity as a tool for piracy, and as you might expect, the XBMC Foundation doesn"t care for it very much. The company has already begun going after sellers of set-top boxes that come pre-loaded with the app and unauthorized add-ons, but it"s considering another strategy to defeat pirates: DRM support.
XBMC Foundation President Nathan Betzen hopes that by adding support for "low-level DRM", it will provide an incentive for legitimate content providers to offer their videos "in a protected environment".
If you"re not familiar with Kodi, it"s an open-source media player app with support for third-party add-ons. A number of add-ons have been developed as a means for piracy, and not only does Team Kodi not like it, but rights-holders have approached the team about it, and some of them aren"t so understanding that this isn"t the intended use of the app.
Betzen explains that removing support for installing third-party add-ons from repos wouldn"t be a solution, since Kodi is open-source and it can be easily modified. Blocking certain add-ons would be a tedious task as well, since the developers of them would simply modify their add-ons.
Ultimately, the XBMC Foundation is aiming to please copyright holders. It"s hoping that by offering legitimate content through its Kodi application, there would be less incentive for users to resort to piracy.
Do you think that users will be less likely to access illegal content if legal content is readily available on the platform? Let us know in the comments.
Source: TorrentFreak