[HN Gopher] Fire TV: Amazon to block piracy apps in the future
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Fire TV: Amazon to block piracy apps in the future
Author : speckx
Score : 78 points
Date : 2025-10-31 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.heise.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.heise.de)
| ronsor wrote:
| Protecting the margins of media companies...errr I mean users
| from spyware-laden illegal streaming apps!
| freedomben wrote:
| Indeed, the gloves have been off for a while now and the "IP
| owners" have demonstrated that they're willing to turn our
| entire lives into digital prisons in the name of stopping
| "piracy." They've done an incredible job at radicalizing me
| against IP protections by making clear that there is no
| acceptable middle ground to them. I don't believe there is any
| sating them unless/until (and maybe not even then) it's illegal
| (and a heavy prison sentence) to have a "non-attested" device
| in your posession. I wish the big tech cos would push back, but
| unfortunately for us this sort of lock down fully aligns with
| their own goals for platform control, so it's not going to
| happen.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| We're headed for _Max Headroom_ territory, where having an
| off-switch is a capital offense.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Amazon is one of the media companies.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| The website doesn't let me view the article unless I agree to
| accept tracking cookies from "up to 184 partners".
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Can't believe people don't use adblockers in 2025, together
| with enabled "anti-annoyance" lists. Or for the ones who used
| to be able to, but are still using a browser that removed that
| possibility, that you haven't moved to a different respectful
| browser yet.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| Firefox with ublock and I still get the modal.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| I don't. Have you enabled the "annoyances" lists in the
| ublock settings? They aren't on by default.
| arthurtakeda wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that tip, no more annoyances for me!
| plorg wrote:
| I have some pretty aggressive filters on Firefox/uBO, and
| relaxing my dynamic filters as much as I can conveniently
| this page still loads blank. It's not worth digging any
| further to figure out what's getting in the way (I'm assuming
| something in a static filter list)
| rightbyte wrote:
| There is a drawback with using adblockers in that it is not
| as trivial to notice if a site is hostile. It is about the
| only reason to not use it I can imagine.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| uBlock Origin does show a little badge indicating how many
| resources it blocked on the current page. NYT shows a 9 for
| me right now, HN doesn't show any number at all, FoxNews
| shows ~30 but keeps growing every 2-3 seconds.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Fire TV players are repeatedly offered on the internet with
| piracy apps that are supposed to enable free access to IPTV or
| VoD content.
|
| They're so close to getting it. So close. They almost understand
| that this is a response to a completely unusable, expensive and
| user shitty experience.
|
| Build something that integrates all streaming providers and many
| people will already stop pirating. But even then, people are
| still expected to pay rent to n different streaming companies. It
| just doesn't work. They're being too greedy.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| That's basically what an AppleTV box does. However, you still
| have to pay (and search) a large number of services to find
| what you want, and there's no guarantee that it will be ad-free
| no matter how much you pay. The way these people think, the
| more you're willing to pay to avoid ads, the more your eyeballs
| are worth.
|
| As Gabe Newell put it, piracy isn't a legal problem or a
| revenue problem, it's a customer-service problem. Serve the
| customer, or someone else will.
| brookst wrote:
| I use IPTV on an AppleTV box. Works great.
| a4isms wrote:
| OG HN mainstay Joel Spolsky put it incredibly presciently
| back when Napster was a thing in 2001. The music studios were
| all raving about theft, but he pointed out that people
| weren't filesharing mp3s to save a buck, they were
| filesharing mp3s because, his words: _You can type the name
| of a song and listen to it right away_.
|
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-
| architect...
|
| TV still doesn't get this for TV shows. Yes, I can type the
| name of a show. There are two options, one is some streaming
| service, the other is Prime. So I select Prime. Psych! It
| offers me the option to go to that streaming service. And
| subscribe. Which means thinking about the long term, not this
| show I want to watch.
|
| Or I open the lid of my Mac, type the name of a show, and
| _almost_ right away I can watch it on my Apple TV.
| cameldrv wrote:
| I wish Apple TV did that. It has a global search feature. My
| kids push the button on the side of the remote and say what
| they want to watch. Then they get a screen saying you can
| rent it for $6.99 or whatever, and I'm thinking "didn't you
| just watch that the other day, and I didn't have to approve
| any purchase..." Well of course Netflix doesn't appear in the
| Apple search results. You can search in their app separately,
| but it's not integrated into the system. Even if you pay all
| of the services their $15 a month or whatever, you still
| can't just watch what you want because something something
| engagement metrics. It's tiresome.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >Build something that integrates all streaming providers and
| many people will already stop pirating. But even then, people
| are still expected to pay rent to n different streaming
| companies. It just doesn't work. They're being too greedy.
|
| They're not being "too greedy". No single streaming company
| makes you pay multiple subscriptions. Just the one. But you
| like the shows, and lots of companies want to make shows, so
| you end up liking shows from multiple companies. You're the one
| that wants multiple subscriptions, you just dislike the
| cost/inconvenience. Economically speaking, there's no solution
| here that can satisfy you... the cost to negotiate with all of
| them and consolidate on a single platform would be
| extraordinarily expensive, because that's what convenience
| often is: exorbitantly expensive. There's no game theory
| strategy here where you get everything you want, where all the
| production companies get everything they want, and it all
| happens at modest prices.
|
| Personally, I can't even pretend to imagine what goes through
| the heads of people who want to having "streaming
| subscriptions". Even you, you want those too, you just want a
| single everything-in-it subscription that's cheap. It's the
| same thing that people complain about with video games with the
| "why do I have to have internet for a single-player game"
| gripes. In 1985, if I wanted shows, I did have to subscribe to
| cable... the infrastructure for shows was absurdly expensive,
| no individual could have it. Now? The big 12-bay NAS filled
| with hard drives, and I have copies of movies and television
| (and music and software and games and books) that my great-nth-
| grandchildren will be able to enjoy for free (16K ultra-giga-
| mega-gold-bluray re-re-remasters notwithstanding).
| danielbln wrote:
| It works for music. Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music. They
| all have pretty much the full catalog that most people are
| looking for. In the video world however, we have dozens of
| providers. Why is that? Also, it used to work like that in
| the early days of Netflix. But then everyone and their dog
| wanted their own streaming portal (for video) and here we
| are.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Not to mention the amount of stuff that's simply
| unavailable. I remember fondly the original Netflix where
| they mailed you DVDs. They really had almost everything. I
| was watching all kinds of weird art movies and such. Now
| someone will mention some interesting film to me and I
| can't find it streaming anywhere except pirate sites.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Yeah it's pricy to run the services, but it's especially
| expensive to buy the rights to things. Watching tv and movies
| will probably remain as expensive while the legal
| substructure remains the same. That's why the streamers
| asymptomatically approach the business model of cable
| companies. I'm just gonna pirate because fuck all that.
| anjel wrote:
| Not greedy, but delusionally thinking they can still expect the
| same pre-napster rev levels
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Piracy is just the excuse. What they're saying is that Amazon
| will allow a collection of corporations (including Amazon) to
| decide what you're allowed to do with the hardware they pretended
| to let you buy.
| pixelready wrote:
| Anything else would be felony contempt of business model:
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-busine...
| freedomben wrote:
| Indeed. I wonder if in these executive conversations anyone
| ever asks the question, "Music has been purchaseable now
| without DRM for quite a while. Why has music piracy essentially
| died but movies/TV shows/etc is still as hot as ever?"
| iamben wrote:
| To be fair, I think the fractured rights thing is a big thing
| a well. I can subscribe to one music service - Spotify,
| Amazon, Apple, Tidal - and pretty much every new release is
| available on all of them (or risk a terrible opening
| week/zero buzz if you go for the 'exclusive' - but ever then,
| available a week or so later).
|
| The movie/TV companies sell their show to the SVOD platform
| that offers the most in the territory. Or it's developed by
| the service themselves. So if you have to subscribe to a
| handful of services to watch everything your friends
| recommend.
|
| Most of us can afford one music service. If you're forced
| into 5 streaming services a lot of people will just pirate.
| And even for those that do pay - the "we'll show this in the
| UK a week later than the US" means unless you pirate it, it's
| spoiled on social media within a few days.
| babypuncher wrote:
| The economics of shoving the entire output of the
| entertainment industry on a single $15/mo streaming service
| don't work out. It arguably doesn't even work that well for
| music. Ask any musician that doesn't rake in platinum
| records how well Spotify works out for them.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > The economics of shoving the entire output of the
| entertainment industry on a single $15/mo streaming
| service don't work out
|
| The economics work out just fine: the net result would be
| _paying the entertainment industry less_ , which may be
| what people want.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| People can pay less, all they have to do is consume less.
|
| But all the complaints I see are about not wanting to pay
| more for more content.
| someguyiguess wrote:
| Why would people pay less and consume less when they can
| more easily pirate, consume more, and pay nothing?
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Short film SF production house / curated YouTube channel
| DUST has been around for years, and appear to have a
| business model that works for them. And while I do not
| know anything about their finances, and I doubt they make
| blockbuster money, their content is typically more
| enjoyable to watch than most stuff I see streaming
| elsewhere.
| freedomben wrote:
| Certainly there's some, though I would gladly pay for
| downloadable drm free copies. I have no problem paying,
| but I do have a problem renting, which is all the digital
| purchases today are, despite marketing propaganda
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > "Music has been purchaseable now without DRM for quite a
| while. Why has music piracy essentially died but movies/TV
| shows/etc is still as hot as ever?"
|
| If music piracy _hadn 't_ essentially died, how would you
| know?
|
| You can go to several different streaming services right now
| and listen to the music of your choice. They'll send you the
| file and you pinky-swear that you aren't saving a local copy.
| But if you do save a local copy, that will look identical to
| you not saving one.
|
| So we have several things going on:
|
| 1. You can purchase DRM-free mp3s from major vendors;
|
| 2. You can stream the music in a notionally non-lasting way,
| also from major vendors, for free;
|
| 3. If you pirate music directly from the major streaming
| platforms, that doesn't show up in the piracy statistics.
|
| I suggest that points (2) and (3) are more significant than
| point (1). Point (2) depresses piracy because the benefit of
| having a copy of your music is lower when you can use someone
| else's copy for free whenever you want. Point (3)
| artifactually depresses piracy by not counting it when it
| happens.
|
| Point (1)... doesn't do much to depress piracy.
| JambalayaJimbo wrote:
| How many musicians make their living off of recorded music
| anymore?
| mlrtime wrote:
| The real question is how many make a living now vs when
| music piracy was at it's highest.
|
| My guess is it's higher.
| bluescrn wrote:
| The Napster era was the period when I bought the most
| CDs, by a large margin.
|
| It was new+exciting, I was discovering lots of new music.
| But at that point, casual piracy over slow connections
| (low-bitrate often-poorly-encoded MP3s) wasn't quite good
| enough to replace real CDs. And back then, MP3 was still
| a 'nerdy computer thing' and CD players were everywhere -
| and by far the most convenient way to play music on a
| proper hi-fi, in a car, etc.
|
| But these days, there isn't really the same upgrade path
| from a lower-quality pirated copy to an authentic copy.
| Especially with TV/movies, now tied to subscription
| services and encumbered by increasing levels of ads.
| squigz wrote:
| Implication being that piracy reduced the amount of
| people who could make a living off music? Another
| explanation is that simply more people are making music.
| I suspect the actual percentage of musicians who can make
| a living is the same as ever though.
| eikenberry wrote:
| How many did before... my bet is an insignificant number.
| The vast majority of musicians work day jobs to support
| their art. The ones that do make money make it mostly from
| performances. Making money from recordings only was always
| a small niche.
| ge96 wrote:
| The DRM thing is interesting, for a while if I was watching a
| show on PC it would detect a screenshot event and turn the
| show window black. This stopped working. I've seen it used on
| Netflix and Prime. Not sure if it works still now.
| attendant3446 wrote:
| I don't think it's DRM. When you subscribe to a music
| streaming service - you get 90+% of the music you'll ever
| need.
|
| But you can't get the same subscription with movies/TV shows.
| You get a fraction of content with each subscription. When
| there will be a reasonably priced subscription for most of
| the video content - it will change the situation.
|
| So in my opinion, it's not about DRM. It's about convenience.
| m463 wrote:
| remember that piracy competes with amazon.
|
| similarly I used to be able to download my kindle books and
| read them on non-kindle readers. Now you can't do it anymore.
| And some books seem to have further restrictions. I have had
| several phones and the kindle reader app has complained that I
| have reached sort of limit on the number of downloads some
| books have.
| imiric wrote:
| How is that different from an Apple device, and, increasingly,
| one running Windows or Android?
|
| The trend is towards locked down devices where a corporation
| decides what you're allowed to do with it, using excuses like
| piracy, safety, security, privacy, etc. The unfortunate thing
| is that most people don't mind, and keep purchasing them.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Exactly which individual apps are they talking about?
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Part of me wants to be angry at this change but another part of
| me is honestly going "ok whatever".
|
| It's not like FireTV is the only game in town. These days you can
| buy an RPI Zero or next to nothing and program it to basically
| the same thing as a FireTV with zero restrictions and no
| possibility for future restrictions.
| cheeze wrote:
| That sounds like a pain in the ass though. Explaining to my dad
| how to use Downloader on a FireTV is a lot easier than "hey
| dude buy a raspberry pi"
| ls612 wrote:
| I mean even among android tv sticks alone there are plenty of
| no name chinese options out there, these things are dirt
| cheap to make and are basically commodities.
| clueless wrote:
| any you would recommend that would compete with a fire-
| stick 4k Max level of hardware? and is open software, but
| that would also allow the installation of other media apps,
| like netflix, HBO max, etc?
| ls612 wrote:
| I'm not in this market I have a plex server so idk.
| bluescrn wrote:
| If there's a demand, someone will sell them ready to use,
| with preloaded microSD card, case, and cables.
| mindracer wrote:
| How long till they block apps like plex or kodi
| pessimizer wrote:
| Do they even really have a choice about this? When all your
| platforms are locked down and proprietary you can't allow piracy
| apps. I never understood why people buy products like this, but I
| don't have to understand - some people just don't mind if Amazon
| or Google own their televisions, or even every sound made in
| their homes.
|
| And they allowed piracy apps until now, so I was overestimating
| how fast the frog was boiling anyway. Must have been a good deal
| while it lasted.
|
| Weird how people are acting like this is a collapse: everything
| was always locked down until FOSS alternatives came to free you.
| Megacorps invited you back by letting you pirate a bit, for a
| while, and now that the alternatives have been adequately starved
| it's time to get in line again.
|
| Why in the hell would Amazon let you pirate the things it sells
| (rents?), forever? I think a lot of people got caught up in a
| free promotion handing out samples of a zero-marginal cost
| product. It didn't cost them anything to pretend like you were
| going to have any real control over their completely controlled
| device.
| Farbklex wrote:
| The blacklist is easy to circumvent by offering apps with
| randomly generated package IDs and probably also with randomly
| generated signing keys per user.
|
| This is of course more effort than just building and signing the
| app once, but doable.
|
| Of course you can't have any api keys or functionality in the
| app, that is bound to a specific app id or signing key.
| exe34 wrote:
| I gave up on my Chromecast when Google broke it with an update.
| I'm never going to buy a single use computer again anyway. I
| won't buy anything with DRM, thanks.
| dmalik wrote:
| The ads and recommendations on Firetv sticks has been getting
| worse and worse. I tried modifying it to use a custom launcher
| but they keep breaking it.
|
| I think I'm going to just trash it and get a Onn. 4k Pro and
| install projectivy on it.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I bought 2 recently. They're awful. I'll never buy another. I
| was going to put Projectivy on them after I saw how nasty the
| stock launcher has become, but you can't do a complete
| replacement.
| sfRattan wrote:
| I can happily recommend that option from experience. I've used
| Walmart's "Onn" Google/Android TV boxes on both 1080p and 4K
| televisions. They work, and with Projectivity as the launcher
| you can pretty much rid yourself of any and all advertising
| placements. If you want to be super thorough, use adb to remove
| the default launcher once Projectivity is installed and set to
| default.
|
| I now use an NVIDIA Shield in basically the same way.
| Projectivity Launcher set to default and advert-buttons on the
| remote control overridden in software. Jellyfin & SmartTube as
| primary apps for streaming. VLC & FCast Receiver for random
| video thrown around the network. LocalSend to easily sideload
| apps (sadly ending within a few years). Moonlight for game
| streaming from my PC (via gigabit ethernet). HDHomeRun app as a
| backup for any Jellyfin failures with live OTA TV streaming.
| Other apps from Google Play only as absolutely necessary
| (Google Play TV apps include a number of popular VPNs, along
| with tailscale).
|
| It's honestly better than my experience with Apple TV 4K. And
| if Google continues to close down and wall off AOSP, there's
| already at least one community build of Lineage OS with Android
| TV for the Raspberry Pi.
| mlrtime wrote:
| How to block OTA updates on your firewall:
| https://xdaforums.com/t/psa-firetv-ota-update-url-has-change...
| donmcronald wrote:
| Do it before you plug them in. They auto-update out of the box.
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| Don't see a list there. Will they also ban apps like Stremio and
| Kodi?
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| Claimed list of apps affected (nothing I've ever heard of
| before):
|
| Flix Vision
|
| Live Net TV
|
| UK Turks
|
| FileSynced
|
| Blink Streamz
|
| Ocean Streamz
|
| Cinema HQ
|
| https://www.nationalworld.com/culture/television/dodgy-amazo...
| NoSalt wrote:
| And, another use for a RaspberryPi.
| rpdillon wrote:
| > blacklist maintained by the anti-piracy coalition ACE (Alliance
| for Creativity and Entertainment)
|
| Can we see what's on the blacklist? I haven't been able to find
| it despite searching everywhere.
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