[Fire TV General] harlekinrains:
But, what if you dont care about prolonging the life of certain plugins, by actively "pulling heat off of them".

What if you are a Kodi developer and you come to work tomorrow, launching your project files and have this strange feeling in your stomach - that you are now one of the bad guys, because you dont have submitted to corporate forces to include DRM in your software that will only allow certain extensions to work.

By what mode of thinking do you not pronounce this world crazy - because google does none of that on youtube, and only recently has pulled in extension distribution on Chrome in house, because of the profit motive (officially it is to "protect our users from rogue apps and viruses"). Because Calibre, the most commonly used tool to convert eBooks to Amazons azw format - even for submitting them to Amazon themselves, also has a plugin infrastructure and scraping built in. No one even cares to think to declare it "facilitating illegal use" because of it - in fact it is facilitating Amazon eBook creation for commercial use, if anything.

Amazon has closed down Fire TVs to a point, where there is only one viable distribution channel on it to get programs from for most people. Now they start to ban general purpose software on it, whenever it gets popular enough to compete with their own product offerings declaring it "facilitating illegal use" and not giving any explanation?

Heck, all Amazon products could be declared to be illegal tomorrow, when we are following the explaination that is taking form here - if Amazon would be forced to release a statement as to why they consider general purpose software illegal, we could then take this definition and apply it to them to see if they are adhering to the same standards, when it fits their business interests. This is what this whole episode is about.

You cant declare something "facilitating illegal use" and not give out any reasoning. You cant start banning media players from your distribution channels, and believe, that the world tomorrow will go on the same way it has before.

Just remove all CD burning software, all flashdrives, all MP3 Players, all eReaders, even the Fire TV itself - from your storefront, while you are at it, because you just engaged in a serious example of fostering double standards - when you think, that you can get away with it, without too much publicity.

What about, the prospect, that as a Kodi developer you care about the "muggles" - and you dont care so much about the dumb pirates who will always shout out "it costs too much", regardless what you throw at them? But you also care about open access - and dont believe that every content that can be played back by your software should have to be vetted by you first.

What if you dont believe in putting in DRM hooks into your software project, so it can be considered "marketable" in the minds of whoever currently is promoting his digital agenda?

Amazon is no more legal than Kodi. In none of what they are doing, selling, promoting or declaring. They just are better at promoting double standards. And when they speak out a ban, most journalists headlines follow their messaging - not even stopping for one second to question what is happening here.

What if you are a Kodi developer that was encouraged to do this work through being sought out as a participant in Googles "Summer of Code" programs year, after year, after year - and all of a sudden your work is being dragged through the gutter - once your featureset has been copied and no one sees any use for your position not to be willing to pronounce what is considered "officially too naughty for an Apple Appstore". Which by the way - also contains political satire, because the mid west likes his ways.

If you are under 30, why all of a sudden are you thinking like your dad?