Technology

Back at CES in January, Google put on a big show with the launch of a new product category designed to take on AmazonEcho Show and Spot. Three companies — LG, Lenovo and JBL — were waiting in the wings with their own take on the screen-powered smart speaker.

Google itself, on the other hand, was conspicuously absent. The company seemed content to rely on third-party hardware makers to do the heavy lifting in taking on Amazon. According to a new report from Nikkei Asian Review, however, the company is planning a screen sporting Home device before yearend.

LenovoSmart Display — the best looking of the original trio — launched late last month. Google, meanwhile, has been actively courting hardware makers to develop their own take on the product. At I/O, the company even handed out prototyping kits to attendees.

The strategy seemed a bit surprising, given the success Google has had with its own Home line. A recent report from Canalys shows a 449 percent year over year growth in global shipments, putting the company comfortably ahead of Amazon. If nothing else, however, letting manufacturers go first here was a vote of confidence that Google would continue to support third-party use of Google Assistant, even as it expands its own Home line.

Given the expected launch of the Pixel 3 in October, Google could well have the perfect platform to showcase new Home products just in time for the holidays.

According to recentreports, Facebook has updated its Commerce Policy to specifically ban the sale of Kodi boxes on its site & that is, devices that come with pre-installed Kodi software, which are often used for illegally streaming digital content. However, the ban is not a new one & Facebook confirms its policy on Kodi box sales hasn&t changed since last summer, and its external Policy Page & the one being cited as evidence of the new ban & was updated in December.

Ittrue that the changes have flown under the radar until now, though.

The policy change was first reported by Cord Cutters News, and later linked to by TorrentFreak and Techdirt.

The original report claims that Facebook added a new rule on its list of &Digital Media and Electronic Devices& under &Prohibited Content,& which specifically calls out Kodi boxes. It says that Facebook posts &may not promote the sale of devices that facilitate or encourage streaming digital content in an authorized manner or interfering with the functionality of electronic devices.&

The Policy page lists a few examples of what this means, including wiretapping devices, jamming or descrambling devices, jailbroken or loaded devices, and, then&promoting the sale or use of streaming devices with Kodi installed.&(The only permitted items are &add-on equipment for Kodi devices, such as keyboards and remotes.&)

But this ban on Kodi boxes, Facebook says, is not a recently implemented policy.

According to a Facebook spokesperson, it launched a new policy last summer that prohibited the sale of electronic devices that facilitate or are intended for unauthorized streaming or access to digital content & including Kodi boxes. This policy has not changed since last summer, but its external Policy Page & this one being cited by the various reported & was updated in December 2017 to offer additional illustrative examples and more detailed information on all its policies, including the one related to unauthorized streaming devices.

In other words, Facebook has been banning Kodi boxes since it decided to crackdown on unauthorized streaming devices last year. Itjust now being noticed.

The ban affects all posts on Marketplace, Buy and Sell Groups, and Shop Sections on Pages.

Facebook explains it takes a very strong enforcement approach when &Kodi& is mentioned with a product for sale.

As Techdirt pointed out, thatproblematic because the Kodi software itself is actually legal.

However, device makers like Dragon Box or SetTV have been using the open-source Kodi platform and other add-ons to make copyright infringement easier for consumers.

Facebook does seem to understand that Kodi software isn&t illegal, but it knows that when &Kodi& is mentioned in a product (e.g. a device) listing, itvery often a product designed to circumvent copyright. The company tells us that its intent is not to ban Kodi software altogether, however, and itin the process of reviewing its guidelines and these examples to more closely target devices that encourage unauthorized streaming.

That could mean it will, at some point, not outright ban a device that includes Kodi software, but focus more on other terms used in the sale, like &fully loaded& or some sort of description of the illegal access the box provides, perhaps. (Facebook didn&t say what might change.)

As for Kodi, the company says Facebookmove doesn&t affect them.

&It doesn&t impact us, since we don&t sell devices,& saysKeith Herrington, who handlesBusiness Relations at the XBMC Foundation (Kodi).

He said his organization would love to talk to someone at Facebook & since they&ve never been in touch & in order to ensure that devices that are in compliance with Koditrademark policy are not banned. Both Amazon and eBay have worked with Kodi on similar policies, he added.

&We&vegotten thousands of devices which were in violation of our trademark policy removed from eBay,& Herrington said.

Itunclear how well-enforced Facebookban really is & I&m in Facebook groups myself where people talk about how to jailbreak &Fire sticks& and include posts from those who sell them pre-jailbroken. (Itfor research purposes. Ahem.)

Industry crackdowns go beyond Facebook

Facebook isn&t the only company thatattempting to crack down on these devices. Netflix, Amazon and the major studios are suing Dragon Boxfor facilitating piracy by making it easy for consumers to access illegal streams of movies and TV shows.

InJanuary 2018, a U.S. District Court judge handed down a preliminary injunction against TickBox TV, a Georgia-based set-top box maker that was sued by the major studios, along with streaming services Netflix and Amazon, for profiting from the sale of &Kodi boxes.&

Google hasremoved the word &kodi& from the autocomplete feature of Search, along with other piracy-related terms.

And more recently, theFCC asked Amazon and eBay to stop selling fake pay TV boxes.It said these boxes often falsely bear the FCC logo to give them the appearance of legitimacy, but are actually used to perpetuate &intellectual property theft and consumer fraud,& the FCC said in letters to AmazonCEO Jeff Bezos and eBay CEO Devin Wenig.

Why Streaming Piracy is Growing

Therea reasonKodi devices are so popular, and itnot just because everyone is being cheap about paying for access to content.

For starters, therea lack of consequence for consumers who do illegally stream media & itnot like back in the day when the RIAA was suing individuals for pirating music. While there has been some activity & Comcast several years ago issued copyright infringement notices to Kodi users, for example & you can today basically get away with illegal streaming. The copyright holders are currently focused on cutting off piracy at the source & box makers and the platforms that enable their sale & not at the individual level.

The rise of cord cutting has also contributed to the issue by creating a highly fragmented streaming ecosystem. Shows that used to be available under a single (if pricey) cable or satellite TV subscription, are now spread out across services like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Sling TV, HBO NOW, and others used by cord cutters.

Customers are clearly willing to pay for some of these services (largely, Netflix and maybe one or two others), but most can&t afford a subscription for each one. And they definitely don&t want to when all they&re after is access to a single show from a network. Thatanother reason they then turn to piracy.

Finally, there is the fact that film distributors have forever withheld their movies from streaming services for months, creating a demand for illegal downloads and streams. Though the release window has shrunk some in more recent years, the studios haven&t yet fully bought into the idea of much smaller windows to cater to the audience who will never go to the theater to watch their movie. And when this audience is cut out the market, they also turn to piracy.

Eventually, the record industry adapted to consumers& desire for streaming, and services like Spotify and Apple Music emerged. Eventually, streaming services may be able to make piracy less attractive, too. Amazon Channels, could become a key player here if it expands to include more add-ons. Today, itthe only true a la carte TV service available. And that perhaps & not skinny bundles & is what people really want.

Four days after admitting that it continues to track users even after the Location History tracking has been disabled, Google has updated its website to more accurately reflect the nature of its location policy.

&This setting does not affect other location services on your device, like Google Location Services and Find My Device,& the updated Google Account Help page now reads. &Some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other services, like Search and Maps. When you turn off Location History for your Google Account, itoff for all devices associated with that Google Account.&

The update was noted by the Associated Press, which first brought the tracking issue to light earlier this week in a report. Google initially denied its own inaccurate reporting, but later backtracked, adding that it had added clarifying language.

The company told TechCrunch earlier this week,

Location History is a Google product that is entirely opt in, and users have the controls to edit, delete, or turn it off at any time. As the story notes, we make sure Location History users know that when they disable the product, we continue to use location to improve the Google experience when they do things like perform a Google search or use Google for driving directions.

Google further clarified that it had tweaked the language to offer more insight into continued tracking. The company told AP, &We have been updating the explanatory language about Location History to make it more consistent and clear across our platforms and help centers.&

Of course, fixing the language on a Help page isn&t the same as addressing the issue of continued tracking. Nor does it fully clarify the companytracking policy. And letbe honest, most users will never see the Help page with that information listed. Transparency on the issues goes a long way when it comes to maintaining consumer trust.