TV Addons Should Quit Crying

TV Addons, formally the XBMC Hub, which is currently the subject of two leagal claims, is constantly flailing about, because of what it considers unfair attacks on its intentions within the streaming world.  The latest issue that TV Addons is complaining about is that it was included in the Online Notorious Markets Report. TV Addons regularly claims that it can’t be responsible for every single aspect of the numerous addons that its community members create.

“We have absolutely no control over any of the web sites which are scraped by Kodi addons, nor do we have control over the usage or misusage of addons,” TV Addons

Like a basketball coach with players being paid to join their team, there reaches a point where plausible deniability runs out of steam as a defence. In the case of TV Addons this argument dries up as soon as you take a look at the email correspondence the organization has been sending out for years. The ignorance deffense would be far more efective if TV Addons had not actively pushed piracy addons through its own marketing. We have been monitoring TV addons for years and received a multitude of emails from the organization. And you can see from their own statements that TV Addons was well aware of Piracy Addons. For instance in an email sent  2/29/16 TV Addons featured two addons that were obviously pirate apps. See how TV Addons described the piracy addons below.

Follow The Email Chain

2) Exodus is Released
This addon is taking the community by storm, it’s the latest brainchild from the infamous developer of the Genesis addon, definitely something you need immediately.
Read More: https://www.tvaddons.ag/exodus/

6) Velocity for Kodi
This new addon is very up and coming, offering the power of many sources and site scrapers in one, a great addon by one of our most dedicated developers.
Read More: https://www.tvaddons.ag/velocity-kodi/

While the email also contained tips like an upgrade to Kodi Jarvis and information about VPN services the language used to describe the addons Exodus and Velocity is impossible to ignore. It even claimed that the Velocity developer was one of their developers. See the full email here  Exodus and Velocity were both Piracy addons. Either the organization is outright lying in their defense of allegations about their understanding of the the apps that they endorsed or the people who put this email that was sent out to everybody on their mailing list have a cognition problem that is on the scale of a mentally ill person.

On 5/14/16 we received an email that encouraged using the addon called cCloud. The addon cCloud posted links to content that it had no right to distribute from cable channels around the world. Again we have to ask the question, did TV Addons really have no idea that cCloud was not a legit distributor for ESPN or HBO?

In another email on 7/28/15 the TV Addons community expressed its appreciation for the creator of the website Project Free TV, another piracy website. (links from TV addons email don’t work bc the site was taken down)

Project Free TV Closed – http://forums.tvaddons.ag/threads/34075-Project-Free-TV-Status-*CLOSED-DEAD*
It seems that they have closed their web site, which means the add-on is now effectively dead, please understand that this is out of our control and show appreciation for the support the developer has given to the community for quite some time now.

Many More Emails Where That Came From
I don’t have any interest in sharing a snippet from every single email that I ever received from TV Addons but there is a clear relationship with promoting piracy expressed in the constant endorsement of specific apps including the regular promotion of the TVMC app which was loaded with apps used to grab copyrighted content from a number of sources. TV Addons and their earlier incarnation as The XBMC Hub has been pushing content scraping of copyrighted material since it started. And the fact that there were apps in its repositories that did not take copyrighted content is irrelevant.  TV addons exited to promote pirated content and it was plastered all over their website.

I know cable costs too much
It’s time to stop framing this as a fight to save money. The reason the Streaming Advisor exists is that I came to the conclusion that there are people out there who need substantive information about hardware and services that can be used to cut back expenses associated with pay TV. There are numerous ways to save money and still enjoy TV. This 3rd party addons Kodi obsession will run out of steam at some point and fade back into the shadows. The best hope for consumers is that the incident will help Sheppard a way to make pay TV more equitable to the public or even better spawn legal innovations that move us past where we are today. This story is not meant to praise companies that charge $120.00 so you can have the privilege of watching Ancient Aliens, local news and college football. It is simply to address the weak claims that are being bandied about by the TV Addons community and a number of standardless online publications.