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Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter
- nvahalik 9y agobtw, searx.me is a really fantastic search engine
- eco 9y agoTried to search for "kodi" on it. https://i.imgur.com/Eew8wA7.png https://i.imgur.com/Eew8wA7.png
- stagbeetle 9y agoI did too and I got "Kodi | Open Source Home Theater" On https://www.searx.me/ https://www.searx.me/
- Skunkleton 9y agoThis is standard operating procedure for Google, and presumably all other major search engines. They apply the same filtering to other "objectionable" content and are the sole arbitrators of what fits this definition. How is this news? Is there some other way to solve the very real problem that Google is addressing?
- Rebelgecko 9y agoIs there a list of software that search engines won't autocomplete? Bing and DDG gave useful autocompletes when I searched for Kodi, XBMC (still works in Google too), bittorrent, DeCSS, popcorntime, etc.
- greglindahl 9y agoYou could always support other search engines -- but as the former CTO of blekko, I'm not going to ever ship an autocomplete that by default returns nasty stuff for [blacks are] or [why do blacks] or a large number of other phrases which produce terrible, terrible autocomplete results.
- Skunkleton 9y agoYeah, that was my point. Why would google have autocomplete options that give them a bad image? Why should anyone other than google decide what a good image is?
- greglindahl 9y agoAh, I misunderstood your point. Yes, it's an editorial thing, and even as a personal fan of unfiltered results, I can't bring myself to ship horrific autocomplete suggestions. Unfortunately the existence of an autocomplete filtering system does lead to increased pressure to use it for more than just racism and porn.
- AdmiralAsshat 9y ago>Google has banned the term “Kodi” from its autocomplete feature, meaning those who look for information on the set-top box will have to type out the full term in order to search, as reported by TorrentFreak. >While Kodi is a legal set-top box for streaming, it supports a myriad of third-party add-ons that provide access to pirated media. Kodi is not a "set-top box". Kodi is software. A set-top box might be pre-loaded with Kodi, but it is not Kodi, anymore than a phone is an "Android". As far as I'm aware, the Kodi team doesn't even sell or officially endorse any pre-loaded hardware set-top box. This sort of mangling is disappointing from a tech-focused news outlet like The Verge. It also reinforces the implicit association between Kodi and piracy, which is the very thing that caused Google to remove Kodi from search results in the first place.
- kalcode 9y ago> This sort of mangling is disappointing from a tech-focused news outlet like The Verge. It also reinforces the implicit association between Kodi and piracy, which is the very thing that caused Google to remove Kodi from search results in the first place. This sort of mangling is exactly how exaggerated misrepresented news gets spread. Google didn't remove Kodi from their search results. You can type Kodi and it's the first thing that pops up. You can type home theater software and get Kodi in the search results, or open source media player and get Kodi. All they did is remove Kodi from being autocompleted. It still even comes up for autosuggestion.
- SlowRobotAhead 9y agoRight, but... imo google can fuck right off. I’m really not sure who wants corporate interests nudging them like this. Google is allowed to curate thisr autocomplete to remove links to 6degree piracy topics, and even promote a candidate by removing negative results like they did for Clinton - and I’m allowed to consider them actually-evil for doing so.
- solarkraft 9y agoYep. Previously it seemed like they valued their search's integrity over everything else, but they must be so comfortable with their power now that they're not really worried anymore. It's not easy to prove either, so hard to regulate. I wish we could forbid it and it might be something the EU may try in the next few years, but it'd likely involve an external audit of the holiest systems - something they would likely fight against hard. What individual users can do in the mean time is using independent, less corporate services: DuckDuckGo comes to mind. It is however hard to ignore that Google really has a monopoly on good search (well, decliningly so for me). Maybe we should also start to use Bing to fuel competition.
- bubblethink 9y agoHow ironic, given that Kodi is a GSoC project.
- Semaphor 9y agoGoogle punished Chrome before. So I wouldn't call this ironic. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/google-demotes-chrome-in-_n_1184734.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/google-demotes-chr...
- eco 9y agoI feel so bad for the Kodi project. They've done amazing work over the years and their reputation is being destroyed so quickly by people taking their open source work, adding a bunch of piracy addons, and selling a set top box. I have no idea what they can do to combat this. I don't see how they can distance themselves from this any more than they have.
- starsinspace 9y agoEqually sad as the existence of the terrible Kodi piracy boxes is that the legitimate set top box/"smart TV" industry is completely ignoring it. I'm not aware of any TV manufacturer building Kodi into their product, instead they invent their own junk, which is usually much worse. Does anyone know why the consumer electronics industry is ignoring Kodi?
- AdmiralAsshat 9y agoBecause Plex actively courted the Roku's and the Amazon's of the world while Kodi was content to just make great, free software. To boot, Plex began as a fork of XBMC (Kodi's name at the time). Which, given Kodi's GPLv2 license, probably puts Plex out of compliance.
- Rebelgecko 9y agoLooks fine to me: https://github.com/plexinc/plex-home-theater-public https://github.com/plexinc/plex-home-theater-public
- AdmiralAsshat 9y agoMy mistake, I was getting it confused with their use of FFMPEG: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/141186/possible-gpl-violation-ffmpeg https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/141186/possible-gpl-violat... https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/141186/possible-gpl-violation-ffmpeg https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/141186/possible-gpl-violat...
- overcast 9y agokodi with a space still provides relevant search results fyi.
- praneshp 9y agoI think that's expected. Typing "Ko" will not suggest "Kodi" after this announcement.
- TomMckenny 9y agoHow is it that software makers are culpable when their product us used to commit a crime but not gun manufactures? Is it that copyright violation is such a "heinous" crime that special rules apply?
- cryptoz 9y agoNot sure what your point is here. Google went to-the-max apeshit insane in their censoring/blocking of gun-related product searches recently, to the point that Google Products search wouldn't return anything labelled with the color burgundy. Surely Google thinks gun manufacturers are so intensely bad as to have 'punished' them via search controls Far, far more than they have here with Kodi. Aside: Neither of these seems like useful exercises for Google.
- TomMckenny 9y ago"armalite" auto completes and even helpfully suggest the AR15, the exact weapon used in all the most spectacular massacres. I'm not suggesting Google interfere with either. I'm suggesting copyright forces have an unreasonable amount of clout, much of it invisible. More even than a mass movement against school massacres.
- bendbro 9y agoTry searching for "shopping" results for "ar15", "armalite 15", and "ak47". It will show they have explicitly filtered out "ar15" shopping search results
- grawprog 9y agoLol and so? If school shooters had used ak47's, which fire a larger caliber bullet, are extremely available, have higher capacity magazines and will never breakdown. No one would give the slightest fuck, because everyone already knows bad guys use ak's. American's just have their panties.in a knot because the good guy guns are being used by bad guys. Hell you can go buy a semi automatic shotgun with a big enough clip that would leave a classroom splattered with nothing but pieces of children....but yeah....ar15's...Lol.
- chme 9y agoIn other news: "Google removes 'Chrome' from its search autocomplete in anti-piracy effort"
- parliament32 9y agoBeen there, done that: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/google-demotes-chrome-in-_n_1184734 https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/google-demotes-chrome-in...
- solarkraft 9y agoNow that's brilliant. Why do I often feel like one Google doesn't know what the other is doing?
- BuckRogers 9y agoGoogle's talking about piracy, everyone else is talking about privacy. Google can do whatever they want to please their masters within the industry on the piracy front. I moved to DuckDuckGo years ago. If I want to check Google results I get them through the Startpage bang. Google & Facebook belong in the same category of no-go, invasive privacy offenders. Which is piracy in my book. Hopefully their next preventative measure in that regard is to remove google.com.
- x0x 9y agoUnless Google removes Wikipeda too, it really doesn't matter what they remove. Example; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software) All links there =) Anytime official site changes, this pages updated. Wikipedia is your Search Engine, when Google fails.
- zbuttram 9y agoThey only removed it from autocomplete/suggestions, not from indexing.
- m0ngr31 9y agoIn a similar vein, Amazon refused to publish an Alexa skill I wrote to control Kodi (basically a voice remote). They cited piracy as the only reason. When I'd press them on why they allowed one for Plex since they are both just video players, they would just refuse to acknowledge the question and deny me again. It's their right to do so, but it's stupid and defies logic.
- solarkraft 9y agoShould it be their right? They are becoming so prevalent that perhaps they should be regulated like infrastructure ...
- ouid 9y agoI remember when computers were programmable :(.
- otakucode 9y agoThat is frankly one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. I have used Kodi since it was XBMC. And MAYBE back in the day when you had to break DMCA section 1201 to install it on an original Xbox then you could have argued there was something questionable about it. But now it's just a general media player that looks good on a TV. I am sure this is a total coincidence that the ability of Chrome to cast local files was showed off literally yesterday, and they seek and destroy the competitor that makes Chromecasting look like a cavemans solution the following.
- ajharrison 9y ago#open
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y agoGoogle continues in its quest to be completely useless for actually finding what you're looking for.
- gyrgtyn 9y agoYet the results for "black girls" are porn
- ISL 9y agoGoogle's mission statement: https://www.google.com/about/our-company/ https://www.google.com/about/our-company/ “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Since the beginning, our goal has been to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. Not just for some. For everyone. To decrement something would appear to be contrary to making it universally accessible.
- SlowRobotAhead 9y agoAre you just figuring out that google is actually evil?
- Raphmedia 9y agoQuite ironic when you can use YouTube + Chromecast to watch entire episodes of many shows and many full length movies. You can't ban software makers for the illegal use of their software by users when your own users and services are the same... Why don't they remove "full episode" from YouTube's autocomplete? (We all know the answer to that one.)
- M4v3R 9y ago> You can't ban software makers for the illegal use of their software by users when your own users and services are the same.. The sad thing is that yes - they can, and yes - they do. And there's little we can do to stop them from doing that, apart from raising concerns and stopping using their service.
- givinguflac 9y agoWhat a terrible "journalist". Didn't even do the most basic research to understand the topic they're discussing.
- zz32asdf 9y agoAnd human continues the age old struggle: Person A: "NO!" Person B: "YES!" Someone owns a jingle from 1960 or whatever, they are gonna milk that forever. External effects be damned. They are fucking OWED for LIFE.
- cimi_ 9y agoDoing this without any signal to users performing the search seems dishonest to me.
- bootlooped 9y agoHow do you think they should signal users?
- aluhut 9y ago> "Search results for "Kodi" have been removed because you might use it for illegal stuff"
- bandrami 9y agoBut results for "Kodi" haven't been removed. Autocompletion when you type "kod" or "ko" has. I'm trying to think of a non-disruptive way to pop up "we would have completed this term with 'kodi' but oh hey nevermind you went on to type 'koala'" and I'm failing.
- question_that 9y agoGoogle should still show the autocomplete results, but in a different color! Blue for when your query makes them sad, red for when your query has angered them and green when you're looking for information so upsetting they'll turn into the Incredible Hulk.
- utopcell 9y agoI feel that such anti-piracy filtering is counter-intuitive because it promotes awareness. I had no idea what 'kodi' was until today.
- rolodato 9y agoStreisand effect, anyone? I had not heard of Kodi before this.
- hxtk 9y agoFor what it's worth, unfamiliarity might have something to do with the fact Kodi has only existed under that name for a couple years. Prior to that, it was known as XBMC ("XBox Media Center"). Under that title it's been around since 2003.
- zerotolerance 9y agoAt what point do filtering or targeted omissions become considered anti-competitive practices? It is one thing for a government to issue and companies to uphold gags because governments are not in competition.
- supercarsw 9y agoWho would "ban" Google from violating my privacy. I would like to keep my sms and call logs out of google. But, oh no.. I can't. But nice to hear they can ban what ever they feel is right. - Duck Duck GO!
- chatman 9y agoNext, they will detain/arrest Kodi developers at airports.
- lopmotr 9y agoSomehow "sci" still suggests "sci hub". Isn't that even more direct piracy than Kodi?
- blackflame7000 9y agoSo does that mean they should remove all android devices that play Kodi? Oh, that hurts Google bottom line.. oh nevermind then.. let's just villanize Kodi developers.(Who have done a hell of a job I might add since the Xbox original with a modchip). This is grandstanding for show. Google is without a doubt the largest contributer to piracy via their indexing of, well, everything. Android should be worried about why their sandbox security is so terrible it allowed Facebook to gather sexting archives rivaling only that of Snapchat.
- dang 9y agoUrl changed from https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17176894/google-removes-kodi-search-autocomplete-anti-piracy https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17176894/google-removes-k..., which points to this.
- bunnymancer 9y agoAlternative title: Bing expands their market, now your go-to for both porn and piracy. Edit: also note that it's just the autocomplete, not the actual search results
- cJ0th 9y agoThe cynic in me thinks google wants you to watch illegal streams on youtube.