Kodi, an open-source program formerly known as XMBC, disappeared from the Amazon Appstore last week. When the Kodi team asked for an explanation, Amazon emailed several days later to explain that the app “can be used to facilitate the piracy or illegal download of content,” AFTVnews reports.
This is kind of silly to me because Plex is still on Amazon as an app. Does this news affect any of you? Is Amazon being silly?
Amazon are not being silly. Kodi a competition component to Amazon, getting rid of them allows Amazon to keep a stronger hold of the market. Kodi don't have the resources to fight it where as others like Plex do.
Getting rid of Kodi first puts Amazon and there partners in a stronger position down the line to get rid of others who could potentially challenge them as they now have precedent for removing these types of applications under piracy and "illegal activity" concerns.
edit: on the plus side, Amazon game them a reason. if it was google it wouldn't have been so generic theyd never know why.
You make a lot of very valid points. It has me curious as to what google is going to do with Kodi on the play store. I think google will be more likely to keep it on the play store.
The alternative is its not Amazon but a similar company telling Amazon to remove that app for the exact same reason. As much as its basically speculation, someone somewhere be it Amazon themselves or someone effectively forcing or ordering Amazon to do so on their behalf are removing this app for no other reasons than it removes competition.
Removing it on the grounds of piracy is always ridiculous because the argument is always applied selectively and strategicly. No one is taking down Amazons Fire TV stick, despite the fact that it can be used for piracy.
edit: a word
This ^^^^^^^ if Kodi can be used to facilitate piracy well so can just about any other media content front end including Plex that I use, with that line of thinking every media streaming device, NAS or computer can facilitate piracy and then the 800lb gorilla in the room is the internet itself....better shut it down because without it facilitating piracy there would be no distribution network....(well sneaker net...lol)
I was gonna say BS! I consider Amazon anything to be spyware. :)