XBMC Foundation has ‘pirate add-on’ ads removed from eBay

The XBMC Foundation, responsible for developing the XBMC media player software, has filed takedown requests with eBay. These are advertisers who promote XBMC-enabled hardware with pre-installed add-ons that give access to illegal content.

There are thousands of advertisements on eBay promoting XBMC media players that come standard with add-ons to watch illegal movies, TV series and sports channels, among other things. That turns out to be against the sore leg of the XBMC Foundation, TorrentFreak reports. The organization behind the XBMC media player software has submitted requests to eBay to remove such ads from the auction site.

According to the XBMC Foundation, advertisers are infringing XBMC’s trademark rights by providing the software with “illegal” add-ons by default. The organization does not target the creators of these add-ons, as they do not infringe any trademark rights and the organization says it wants to remain neutral in the public debate about piracy. By the way, companies are allowed to offer XBMC versions with ‘pirate add-ons’ if they offer the open source software under a different name. This is possible because the open source software is freely available on the basis of a gpl v2 license.

Ebay has since removed ads. However, a simple search shows that there are still many providers on eBay that sell XBMC installations on mostly Android media players with third-party add-ons preinstalled. It is therefore unclear whether the takedown requests have any effect. The XBMC Foundation has announced that it will also actively protect the Kodi brand name, which will be used in the next XBMC release.