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Google Adds ‘Kodi’ to Autocomplete Piracy Filter


steven36

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Google has banned the term "Kodi" from the autocomplete feature of its search engine. This means that the popular software and related suggestions won't appear unless users type out the full term. Google has previously taken similar measures against "pirate" related terms and confirms that Kodi is targeted because it's "closely associated with copyright infringement."

 

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In recent years entertainment industry groups have repeatedly urged Google to ramp up its anti-piracy efforts.

 

These remarks haven’t fallen on deaf ears and Google has made several changes to its search algorithms to make copyright-infringing material less visible.

 

The company demotes results from domain names for which it receives many DMCA takedown notices, for example, and it has also removed several piracy-related terms from its autocomplete feature.

 

The latter means that when one types “pirate ba” it won’t suggest pirate bay. Instead, people see “pirate bays” or “pirate books” as suggestions. Whether that’s very effective is up for debate, but it’s intentional.

 

“Google has taken steps to prevent terms closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete and Related Search,” the company previously explained.

 

“This is similar to the approach we have taken for a narrow class of terms related to pornography, violence, and hate speech.”

 

When the piracy filter was first implemented, several seemingly neutral terms such as BitTorrent and uTorrent were also targeted. While these were later reinstated, we recently noticed another autocomplete ban that’s rather broad.

 

It turns out that Google has recently removed the term “Kodi” from its autocomplete results. While Kodi can be abused through pirate add-ons, the media player software itself is perfectly legal, which makes it an odd decision.

 

Users who type in “Kod” get a list of suggestions including “Kodak” and “Kodiak,” but not the much more popular search term Kodi.

 

Kodiak?


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Similarly, when typing “addons for k” Google suggests addons for Kokotime and Krypton 17.6. While the latter is a Kodi version, the name of the media player itself doesn’t come up as a suggestion.

 

Once users type the full Kodi term and add a space, plenty of suggestions suddenly appear, which is similar to other banned terms.

 

Kokotime

 

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Ironically enough, the Kokotime app is frequently used by pirates as well. Also, the names of all of the pirate Kodi addons we checked still show up fine in the autosuggest feature.

 

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t document its autocomplete removal decisions, nor does it publish the full list of banned words. However, the search engine confirms that Kodi’s piracy stigma is to blame here.

 

“Since 2011, we have been filtering certain terms closely associated with copyright infringement from Google Autocomplete. This action is consistent with that long-standing strategy,” a spokesperson told us.

 

The Kodi team, operated by the XBMC Foundation, is disappointed with the decision and points out that their software does not cross any lines.

 

“We are surprised and disappointed to discover Kodi has been removed from autocomplete, as Kodi is perfectly legal open source software,” XBMC Foundation President Nathan Betzen told us.

 

The Kodi team has been actively trying to distance itself from pirate elements. They enforce their trademark against sellers of pirate boxes and are in good contact with Hollywood’s industry group, the MPAA.

 

“We have a professional relationship with the MPAA, who have specifically made clear in the past their own position that Kodi is legal software,” Betzen notes.

 

“We hope Google will reconsider this decision in the future, or at a minimum limit their removal to search terms where the legality is actually in dispute.”

 

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I bet there's more piracy using Windows, so The Big G should ban "windows" from auto-complete too :lol:

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What the crap. Filtering an completely legal software. Kodi is such a good media player even for files that are completely legal out there.

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On undefined at 1:48 AM, Karlston said:

I bet there's more piracy using Windows, so The Big G should ban "windows" from auto-complete too :lol:

The problem with any kind of windows piracy  is there is billions of people not doing it , now there is like 4 billion people on the Internet   and M$ is only has like 1.5 billion users of that and thats legal and not legal . I been  using windows since 2001 and I never pirate windows .  Most PCs  come with windows  already activated so the demand for it  is not as great as some may think lol ..  Theres like 6 PCs at my home  and 5 of them have windows  on them. All  that came with the price of the PC and the other one  is just Linux but i can put legal windows 8.1 or 10 on it any time  i like, because it came with the price of the PC. . thats the whole reason I  stay with Linux so don't have to fool with pirating 3rd party apps on windows anymore, most all my software is free  and whats not i pay for . I don't like chasing crack just to stay updated .  But some  Kodi addons are just search engines to help us pirate  videos and music. No kodi  addons are cracked at all. Most  every addon is open-source.  :D

 

Kodi don't discriminate by OS like this, people on Windows  use it , people with xbox use it, people on MAC use  it , people on IOS use it . people on Android use it . people with TV boxes use it .  and people with Linux use it .  Grandpas and Grandmas and  peoples families use it even , people who normally never pirate at all , pirate via Kodi...  It's mainstream and   it's the bees  knees  of streaming piracy.  :tooth: But there lots of legal addons thats good too.  But they should not  ban the software because  of the unofficial addon  scene  they have the apk in there store even ffs . Kodi .tv does not endorse it , Just like Microsoft don't  endorse KMS . Google needs to ban themselves,  its OK for there websites to point to millions of  not so legit videos but its not OK for Kodi to do it.  there hypocrites!   :P

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Google are such hypocrites. 

Why is there so much copyrighted uploads on YouTube that are never deleted? TV episodes, movies, lots of movies... older stuff, sure, but still copyrighted. They decide what's right do they?

Google? That great bastion of moralizing and tax avoidance?

Google can die.

I use startpage or duckduckgo these days... fk'n google. 

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