Kodi Fights Piracy By Adding “Low-level” DRM Support

DRM (digital-rights management) is a euphemism for technology and standards that lock down who can view copyrighted content, to ensure it’s only seen by those who have paid for it and not pirates.

What happened?

The popular media-centre software Kodi has hit back at criticism of its new policy of supporting DRM, explaining in a blog post (bit.ly/kodi423) that this is only to allow restricted content to play on its own system.

DRM (digital-rights management) is a euphemism for technology and standards that lock down who can view copyrighted content, to ensure it’s only seen by those who have paid for it and not pirates. Kodi doesn’t have a DRM system built in because the open-source licence it’s released under forbids such a restriction. “Kodi will never, ever require DRM to work, nor will it ever be a locked software”, said the Kodi team.

However, Kodi wants to be able to play Netflix and other paid-for content directly through its software, so you don’t have to switch between apps to watch films and TV shows on your television. To do that, Kodi uses the DRM tools in Android and Chrome, which allow it to stream content without offering its own DRM support. Kodi’s developers argue that supporting DRM in this limited, “low-level” way will change negative perceptions about their software.