KODI • GETTY
Kodi users may have unwittingly installed an app designed to check for online piracy
Kodi users may have accidentally installed anti-piracy software to their media player.
The software checks whether the add-ons installed with Kodi are legitimate, or whether there are being used to stream paid-for content for free.
Kodi is a neutral media player which can be installed on a wide range of hardware, including desktop computers, servers, smartphones, HDMI streaming dongles.
The media player is capable of streaming content from the internet, a home network or local HDD storage.
But while Kodi itself is perfectly legal, it does allow users to install additional apps, also known as add-ons, that can enable access to copyrighted material – uploaded, shared or streamed from other users across the globe – without permission from the rightsholders.
It is these illicit add-ons that piracy monitoring software KN Addon Caretaker is watching for.
TVADDONS
KN Addon Caretaker will flag-up any illicit streaming software installed on your Kodi Box
KN Addon Caretaker, which is the work of German Kodi developer Birger Jesch, is now bundled with a variety of third-party Kodi skins, including skins like Estuary MOD V2 and Embuary.
If Kodi users want to give their software a lick of paint with the skins in question, they will now have to install the piracy monitoring software KN Addon Caretaker on their device.
The developers behind these popular skins have purportedly tired of their work being used alongside piracy-enabling add-ons.
KN Addon Caretaker works by checking the add-ons installed on a Kodi Box against an online database of illicit software to ensure everything installed is legitimate.
Should the software discover a banned add-on, it will display a warning onscreen that reads: “You have one or more unauthorised repositories installed.
“These repositories may contain harmful addons. It’s highly recommend to clean up your add-on list.”
The decision to include the software was not gone over well with some users, with many taking to the forums to blast KN Addon Caretaker.
“What gives you the right to play Big Brother?” one user posted, promising to delete the skin from their set-up.
The online database used by KN Addon Caretaker to check the validity of add-ons has been criticised by some add-on developers who argue their software is incorrectly listed as illicit.
Kodi recently reaffirmed its neutral position in the crackdown on online piracy.
However, users who download Estuary MOD V2 and Embuary skins are now forced to have a piracy monitoring tool running in the background at all times.
KODI.TV
Kodi 17.5 Krypton supports a huge selection of devices, including Smart TVs, PCs, and HDMI dongles
According to TVAddons, a hugely-popular online repository of Kodi add-ons, the move to bundle anti-piracy software with Kodi skins is an “attack” on the types of illegal software “that made Kodi popular in the first place”
In an online blog post, the site said: “As abusive lawsuits have began to plague the unofficial Kodi community, we’ve noticed an alarming trend in official Kodi developers attacking the unofficial addon community, within the official Kodi forums as well as over social media.
“Many of these attacks are unwarranted considering the fact that once upon a time Kodi itself was home to many of the addons which they now claim to hate.
“We sincerely hope that Kodi will continue to operate based on open source principals, and not allow this trend of vilifying unofficial addon developers to spread further.
“We’re all on the same side and all serve the same users. We strongly believe that end users should always have the right to choose, otherwise what’s the point?”
The news comes as Kodi rolled-out its latest incremental software update, which includes a slew of fixes and tweaks to the media player.
Apple users are likely to see the biggest upgrade when moving to Kodi 17.5, thanks to the support for Retina Displays.
Apple ships so-called Retina Displays on a number of its best-selling products, including iPhone, iPad, MacBook and iMac.
The brand name refers to any panel with a pixel-density that means users cannot discern individual pixels from a normal viewing distance.
It makes text appear much sharper – and should make movie viewing more enjoyable.
It’s worth pointing that while there’s no equivalent brand name, the majority of high-end Windows PCs and Android phones boast high-resolution displays with a similar pixel density.
Apple desktop users running macOS High Sierra should also be able to use IR remotes again, following a fix to the Up and Down buttons.
Elsewhere, Kodi has included a number of fixes – resolving a bug that may have stopped users manually adding content to videolibrary.
Here’s the full list of the improvements in Kodi 17.5 –
- Joysticks: Fix accelerometers preventing screensaver
- More robust way of handling audio output on variety of Android devices
- Fix playback of DVD file over network on Linux
- Update to FFmpeg 3.1.11
- Fix up and down buttons on ir remotes with macOS High Sierra
- Added latest apple devices to allow retina support
- Fix not being able to add content manually to videolibrary
- Fix power message handling for CEC
- Fix jumping timeline while switching channel groups in Guide window
- The latest version of Kodi is available to download from the organisation’s website.
Simply click on the platform of your choice, then select the build you need.
Users can install these build just on top of a current Kodi installation without doing a reinstall or clean-up – all add-ons or installed skins will continue to work as normal.