Two developers of popular Kodi add-ons pulled the plug on their projects after being served cease-and-desist letters from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, a global group of video giants established with the goal of fighting online privacy. The developers known as “jsergio123” and “The_Alpha” who authored some well-known Kodi add-ons hosted by the Colussus repository like Bennu and Alpha (independent of each other) both quit earlier this week, with initial reports suggesting the latter was even personally served the legal threat at their residence in the United Kingdom. The British government itself has been ramping up its efforts to crack down on illegal Kodi add-ons over the course of this year, with its intellectual property watchdog recently signaling that such individuals and organizations may soon start facing prosecution in the country. The development comes shortly after a number of other high-profile Kodi add-on developers effectively retired under the pressure of multi-billion dollar lawsuits.
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment was originally formed in June and unites 30 major content creators around the planet, with its members ranging from Disney, Netflix, and HBO to BBC, Amazon, and Warner Brothers. While many of its founding members are based in the United States, the organization has a global focus and seeks to eradicate online piracy that it claims is endangering millions of jobs and over a trillion of dollars in annual revenue. According to its official communication from mid-2017, the group believes that besides being illegal, digital piracy has no more even remotely viable moral justification in this day and age when hundreds of online services are providing consumers with affordable and entirely legitimate options for viewing all kinds of video content around the world.
Kodi itself has been committing more resources to informing the general public and various governments about the difference between its open-source platform and third-party add-ons in recent times, with the extent of its success to do so still appearing to be relatively limited. It’s currently unclear how the aforementioned developers were identified and served with cease-and-desist letters, with some industry watchers speculating that The_Alpha’s identity may have been uncovered after they got themselves involved into one charitable GoFundMe campaign.