Kodi Turmoil Continues as TVAddons Mysteriously Disappears

[Batu69]

TVAddons, the leading library for unofficial Kodi add-ons, has mysteriously disappeared. The site's domain names have become unresponsive after the DNS entries were removed. It's unclear why these drastic actions were taken, but since TVAddons was sued last week, some fear the worst.

 

Last week we broke the news that third-party Kodi add-on ZemTV and the TVAddons library were being sued in a federal court in Texas.

Since then, the ‘pirate’ Kodi community has been in turmoil. Several popular Kodi addons decided to shut down, and now TVAddons itself appears to be in trouble as well.

 

TVAddons is one of the largest repositories of Kodi add-ons, many of which allow users to watch pirated content. The site has grown massively in recent years and reported that nearly 40 million unique users connected to the site’s servers in March.

 

Since yesterday, however, these millions of users can no longer access the site. Without prior warning or a public explanation, TVAddons’ domain name stopped responding. The domain’s DNS entries have been removed which means that it’s no longer accessible to the public.

 

Those who try to access the site either get a browser error message, or are redirected to a page of TVAddons’ domain name registrar Uniregistry.com (in some cases people may still see the site, if the DNS entries are cached).

 

TVAddons.ag can’t be reached
   

For now, it’s unclear who removed the DNS entries and why. The registrar could have taken this action, but TVAddons may have done it themselves too.

TorrentFreak reached out to TVAddons a few times over the past several days but without response. The site’s spokesperson was previously quick to reply, but after the Dish lawsuit became public this changed.

 

In response to our latest email inquiry, we received an error message, suggesting that the site’s official email addresses are no longer functioning due to the domain troubles.

 

TVAddons has also gone quiet on social media, where TVAddons has been very active in the past. However, the last updates on Twitter and Facebook date back more than a week ago. In fact, a few hours ago TVAddons’ Facebook page disappeared completely.

 

Facebook page unavailable
   

Based on the current downtime issues, it’s no surprise that people are getting worried. If TVAddons doesn’t return, the Kodi-addon community has lost what’s arguably its biggest player.

 

The site’s extensive library listed 1,500 different add-ons, of which the community-maintained Exodus addon was one of the most popular. Now that the site is no longer available, people may run into issues while updating these.

 

That said, it’s best not to jump to conclusions without an official explanation from the team. If we find out more, this article will be updated accordingly.

 

Article source

[straycat19]

With other things that are happening around the internet, most without explanation or public awareness, it would see that someone, or rather some entity, has gotten to some of these sites and by use of a non-disclosure agreement deal are letting them off the hook if they just disappear, silently and without fanfare.  Of course failure to honor a non-disclosure agreement can, in itself, result in many years in jail, plus the original charges can be prosecuted also.  I don't think anyone connected with any of the 'illegal' activities on the internet is willing to trade their liberty for any ego boost they might get from running one of these sites.

[Alanon]

@straycat19 I would tend to agree with you, there's just one thing bugging me. In order to be able to exert such control over well-established sites, you would need some immensely strong leverage. Think about it. For one, streaming in itself is not defined as piracy in many, many countries. It's a much less clear case than it was with Kickass or Multiupload. Basically, they could not only put up a fight, they might even win in some cases/countries. And if the servers and whatnot are not in America, then it would have no right to shut them down, only to block their content within their space. Pandora isn't illegal, except where copyright is an issue, and nobody can shut her down. They provide a service where it's legal - so you could say these sites do as well.

 

All this presupposes a legal framework for battle, which in turn tries to balance out these pros and cons. It's mostly failing at it, but that's no reason to just end it. If you're right, then perhaps that is exactly what's happening. I'm hoping we're not at the point when the leverage that is used is the threat of force, but at the moment I just can't think of any other compelling reason... Of course, we could all just be babbling, and the downtime is simply another unannounced and poorly executed site redesign, just like last time. Fingers crossed.

 

[DKT27]

Interesting first comment here. Meanwhile a lot of news sources have jumped and are releasing news and they have closed, which they have not as per many aware about it.