Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be

http://movies.io/

by nddrylliog • 14 years ago

550 485 14 years ago

movies.io

xal• 14 years ago

I want this except with paying to get an actual license.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

We really want, too. We'll try to make it happen. In the meantime, don't dl movies you don't own.

Oh, and the watchlist functionality is pretty cool too.

citricsquid• 14 years ago

How do you plan on staying online?

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

- Not based in the US: check

- Not hosting any infringing content: check

- DMCA-compliant: check

- Not selling anything: check

- Not doing ads, not tracking you [1]: check

- Not trying to sell your data elsewhere: check

Lawyers will handle the rest. We're not interested in piracy, just very very good UI/UX. Stay tuned.

[1] We use Gaug.es and Piwik with IP fuzzing. They provide enough high-level metrics so that we can improve the interface while letting you guys off the hook.

kcbanner• 14 years ago

...but it's called movies.io.

b2hack• 14 years ago

I liked the very very good UI/UX, good job!

What are the technologies involved ?

Kudos2• 14 years ago

Vastly superior UX at http://torrentbutler.eu/

bengl• 14 years ago

I'm confused. If you're not located in the US, why do you need to be DMCA-compliant?

white_devil• 14 years ago

> Not doing ads, tracking you, trying to sell your data elsewhere: check

With the absence of a "not" there, it's not quite clear whether you're telling the truth or not, but a http request to "track.gif" could be construed as, you know, tracking us.

http://secure.gaug.es/track.gif?h[site_id]=4fb448ea613f5d5be...

> We're not interested in piracy

Sure you are. You're directly helping people perform it. I'm not saying what you're doing should be illegal, but let's be honest here. You are "interested" in piracy. One could argue you're even involved in it.

mahyarm• 14 years ago

How are the movie screenshots and posters not infringing content?

lucaspiller3• 14 years ago

What is your revenue model, how do you plan on paying said layers?

kurtvarner• 14 years ago

I've always wondered why all torrent sites look like ass. Nice job with this.

rplnt3• 14 years ago

It's tracker sites that often look like ass.

jsprinkles2• 14 years ago

Gazelle is awful, and far too many private trackers use it.

mikemarotti• 14 years ago

I sure as hell ain't downloading any movies from mystery trackers.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Look again: there are only magnet links on there.

Trust the DHT :)

ben0x539• 14 years ago

As someone not too familiar with p2p technologies: What difference does that make for the user?

trueluk2• 14 years ago

Warning to those at work, there's at least one NSFW image in rotation on the landing page.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Yup, sorry about that. The NSFW filter is off on our TMDb requests but apparently some go through regardless.

The rotation is random from all movies in the db btw, not featured or anything.

saraid2163• 14 years ago

If you just run the randomizer and get the first unique 100 or 200 and cull for NSFW, the effect would be the same without the peril.

espadagroup• 14 years ago

Nice job, the first thing I would like to see is a tag for CAMS and TeleSyncs.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Thanks for the feedback!

The initial version had a lot more tags, but we've learned that lambda users even go so far as to ignore what 720p/1080p means.

It's a nice UI/UX challenge to accomodate for both beginners and power users. We have a few power users in our ranks and since we scratch an itch we'd definitely like to address our own needs as well.

Consider this version an MVP, good enough for most people.

phoboslab• 14 years ago

It certainly looks nice, but it's not really accurate. E.g. the page for Moon links to Twilight torrents: http://movies.io/m/9t

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Our algorithm tries to things: to flag the bad torrents so they're not displayed, and to not penalize the rare torrents you get for old/unpopular movies.

Moon has bad results because the title is only one word, and Twilight's sorry excuse for a movie happens to be the same year.

We'll definitely look to improve that, thanks for the feedback.

joejohnson• 14 years ago

When you click on the Genre labels (like on the Moon page, for example), they don't take you anywhere. Is this feature in the works? I was expecting to be taken to a page listing all Thrillers or Dramas. The Genre titles look like links, too.

seanieb• 14 years ago

http://torrentbutler.eu/ seems to have a better UI.

wingerlang• 14 years ago

Came here to say this. I love the wall of movies, no need for searching.

rplnt3• 14 years ago

I miss the time when torrentz.com (now https://torrentz.eu/ ) used to have magnet links. Now I have to click through to piratebay (or worse).

Although I don't plan on using this, nice job. One point - I don't think you should move the search bar around. It would be better if it was in the same place all the time, whether there are results or not.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Fair point about the search bar, we'll try to think of it in the redesign.

Do you have any idea why torrentz pulled magnet links? Seems insane that linking to sites with .torrent files is easier to defend (legally) than having directly magnet links.

rplnt3• 14 years ago

Maybe someone got scared? I don't know.. but my guess would be a better CTR on sponsored links that are shown alongside trackers.

petitmiam2• 14 years ago

rplnt, you should try using a magnet link extension (or greasemonkey script) for your browser.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dmknbldjfdgmfecaai...

stfu• 14 years ago

At least in Opera the search function is not really working. Neither pressing Enter no clicking on the magnifying glass does the trick.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Reported, we don't really test on Opera, but we should.

(Do you have JavaScript disabled btw? That could be it: the magnifying glass doesn't do anything except change to a loading icon when it's fetching suggestions)

fbuilesv• 14 years ago

Same thing happens sporadically in Chrome too.

ecaroth• 14 years ago

NICE! It would be nice if I knew the rip quality of the trackers though, I'm not gonna blindly download a crappy telesync without knowing

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Hover over the 'download' link and you'll see the full release name :)

jack-r-abbit4• 14 years ago

Oh nice tip.

pault2• 14 years ago

The only reason I still use tpb is the comments will usually let you know if a torrent is of poor quality, passworded, etc. Consider adding peer ratings for video and audio quality.

jack-r-abbit4• 14 years ago

I like the UI and the execution. I don't know why it is limited to movies. The UI could easily be used for music too.

nestlequ1k• 14 years ago

Focus is a good thing. Having it just be movies means he can make a much richer experience.

jack-r-abbit4• 14 years ago

True. But sometimes I like the "one stop shopping" things. When I want to look for a torrent, I go to my "go to" site regardless of what type of thing I'm looking for. I would love to see a UI like this that scaled to other stuff.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

We bought http://shows.io/, which is the logical next step for us. Music is a lot trickier, I don't think we're going to attack it.

As for 'why it's limited': gotta focus on one thing at a time. We want to improve this one as much as possible, serve the community, improve content discovery/suggestion (that is personalized from your friends, not from some oracle rating stuff from 1 to 10)

jack-r-abbit4• 14 years ago

I can't argue with that. I'll certainly keep this one in my mind when I am looking for a movie. Good job. Stay focused.

archivator• 14 years ago

http://www.coda.fm gets many things right when it comes to music.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Agreed! But http://www.take.fm/ leaves things to be desired, hence our attempt.

denzil_correa3• 14 years ago

A lot of torrent movie downloaders check for the "type of" print available - CamRip, Blue Ray RIP, DV RIP etc. It would be great if you could display these after the search goes through. It would make the movie download decision 1-click.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

cf. http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4054667

Displaying by default would confuse lambda users. How would you solve it UX-wise?

Terretta• 14 years ago

I notice you are trying to display quality, like HD1080 on this movie[1]. But doesn't this HD1080 label seem a little inconsistent with the file size?

1. http://movies.io/m/37

Another example[2], variously tagged HD720 and HD1080, with the latter clearly wrong.

2. http://movies.io/m/4o

Estragon2• 14 years ago

Where does this term "lambda users" come from?

denzil_correa3• 14 years ago

I think you have almost already solved it [1]. You may think of having a pin tag with a small cross (while the mouse hovers). If you see, people clicking the crosses often it's a good feedback that the tag may be wrong. It can help you correct these tags if not appropriate.

In addition, you should also think about adding tags for CAM RIP, BR RIP, DVD RIP etc. Movie torrent downloaders do care about such information.

Disclaimer - I am a UI/UX autodidact.

[1] http://movies.io/m/4o

girlparts• 14 years ago

I ran into the same problem and I just moused-over the "Download" link. Scene releases almost always include basic info like TS, resolution, etc. in the .torrent filename.

CyberThijs• 14 years ago

I'd like to be able to set a minimum quality for torrents that appear in the RSS of my watchlist. This allows me to add it to the watchlist when it's widely promoted when it launches, and watch it when eventually a good torrent appears of the movie.

I've been looking for an aggregator that does this for a long time, but still haven't found it.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Definitely, definitely, very strongly on our TODO list.

Consider this a first step :)

sboak• 14 years ago

It needs to be able to distinguish the different types (DVDRIP, TS, etc...)

Tmmrn2• 14 years ago

Not working in konqueror and midori. In opera I had to hit enter twice - but only once, then it worked normally.

Background images that are even bigger than 700 KB and every single click on a link has a new one? Is that really necessary?

While the search is all nice and stuff, what about browsing available stuff? Is that an intentionally lacking feature because you say "please don't download content that you haven't bought" anyway?

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Konqueror and Midori are not on our radar (although we know of them). We'll try to keep them in mind also admittedly that's not priority #1.

About backgrounds: the randomness is part of what attracts people to the website (bored? just reload N times). That said, for logged on users, there could be an option 'disable random background' or something like that.

Why is page size a problem btw? Are you browsing on mobile? We'll have a mobile-friendly website without random backgrounds.

As for browsing available stuff: there's top50, and you can share public watchlists. For other queries such as Year/Genre, etc. you're better served with a search on IMDb or similar and then come back to movies.io. It takes time to do it right and we didn't want to release something half-assed.

We'll look a lot more into recommending content (from your 'peers'), there's a whole social aspect of the website which isn't there yet (mostly because some people don't care about it, and just want a search engine).

Tmmrn2• 14 years ago

Not all people have fast internet connections. Seeing a background image loading 2+ seconds just isn't a good impression.

There are file specific things where imdb wouldn't help me:

What if I want to browse all 720p or better h.264 science fiction movies with a german audio track?

Stuff like that.

notaddicted• 14 years ago

Pretty.

I searched for the film 8 1/2 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056801/)

Two things:

1. The director's first name is wrong.

2. No results (maybe due to the ½ symbol.)

EDIT: here http://movies.io/m/fI

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Entirely agree, I suggest you edit the TMDb entry to make it better :) http://www.themoviedb.org/movie/422

We don't yet update our stuff from TMDb once cached, but will do soon.

pooriaazimi5• 14 years ago

BUG:

- Resource interpreted as Font but transferred with MIME type text/plain: "http://movies.io/assets/Lato-Reg-webfont-6690edfe4c4ab548613...

- Resource interpreted as Font but transferred with MIME type text/plain: "http://movies.io/assets/Lato-Lig-webfont-653131606c56b81c0ae...

(Safari 5.2 beta, OS X Lion 10.7.3, though that is clearly irrelevant!)

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Aw fuck, missing mime-type in the nginx config.

I clearly suck at sysadmining.

hhimanshu• 14 years ago

is it legal to download movies from these torrents? I believe no, correct me if I am wrong

http://techland.time.com/2011/08/30/expendables-piracy-lawsu...

smartendone• 14 years ago

No, it's not legal. But only non-MPAA-affiliated films are the subject of torrent lawsuits. The MPAA gave up that tactic a while ago. Movies like The Expendables and The Hurt Locker aren't MPAA-affiliated. Those lawsuits are being pushed by independent lawyers trying to get rich quick through mass settlements. Of course, that doesn't prevent them from suing in the future.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Also, legislation differs depending on the country you live.

Get informed!

pooriaazimi5• 14 years ago

Feature request: The background images look very nice. I'd like to be able to easily hide all the text and just view the background (But, please don't 1) dim the text - completely hide it, 2) use one of those stupid LightBox thingies)

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

We hate lightbox as much as you do. No, more!

Yes, the backdrops are awesome (thank the amazing guys at http://www.themoviedb.org/ !), we'd like to find a cool way to let you show them without crowding the interface.

wavephorm• 14 years ago

Tmdb and their API is awesome. But I wish they would provide a dump of their database. I wonder how did you get a copy of all their data, did you build scraper and grab every movie?

darkstalker• 14 years ago

right click on background -> show background image

rsingel• 14 years ago

That's mighty purty.

Bug: if you try to type in something that doesn't exist, say an actor's name like Walter Matthau, it autocorrects so aggressively you can't finish typing

Feature requests: If it's available on Netflix/other streaming services, show a link.

Oh, and this seems like a very bad place to actually log-in.

tensafefrogs• 14 years ago

According to the Netflix terms for their affiliate program[1], they won't let you participate in their program if your site includes "illegal activities."

Seems understandable, but maybe if they allowed torrent sites to direct users to them they could help prevent some piracy AND everyone would make some money.

[1] https://signup.netflix.com/Affiliates

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Yup, that seems to be a stupid policy.

Anyway, linking to Netflix/others is nice in theory but clutters the interface. Until we find a good solution for that, we won't do it.

edw519• 14 years ago

I don't know which I feel saddest about:

1. Whether or not this is actually illegal, it is clearly unethical and not in the spirit of good clean business and technology practices we should all be aspire to.

2. That it quickly made it to #1 on Hacker News.

3. That I seem to be one of the few who cares while most others nit on details.

spinlock• 14 years ago

Jobs and Wozniak started by building freaking boxes.

there• 14 years ago

"phreaking"

EricR23• 14 years ago

Ahem. That's "phreaking"... As in phone phreaking. -- coming from an ex-phone phreak ;)

sgricci• 14 years ago

I believe you mean "phreaking" boxes.

railsjedi• 14 years ago

friggin phreaking boxes ;)

JoachimSchipper• 14 years ago

Wait, what Steve Jobs does determines your morality? He was obviously a great CEO, but not exactly a saint...

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Totally understand your position.

Hesitated a lot about this, and finally thought "fuck it, let's do it".

I think it's like people working in porn: they don't necessarily enjoy the industry, but at one point they thought "man, there's really something that needs to be done".

I'd much prefer a legal solution. I'd much prefer content owners to expose APIs for the licensing of their content, and have them let us create the front-ends.

CJefferson2• 14 years ago

For much of this content there are 'APIs'.

Why not link people to an Amazon link, or netflix, or iTunes, for films which are available at those places?

geargrinder• 14 years ago

How do you feel about sharing all the code that you created for this site so we can use it for some projects we might have in mind?

quinndupont2• 14 years ago

Who let the MPAA in here?

Seriously, unless you are a massive copyright holder, attempting to exploit every red penny out of your brainwashed masses, I don't see how any user would have a problem with this. Maybe the movie industry should try to out-innovate?

CJefferson2• 14 years ago

It's very difficult to out-innovate 'taking things someone else made and giving them away completely for free', when you have to make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to break even.

mthreat• 14 years ago

I wish the MPAA would engage in a discussion here. Who knows what might come out of it.

sukuriant3• 14 years ago

How does any of what he said sound like it's from the MPAA? I don't like piracy one bit and I try very hard to find legal solutions to my media wants (not needs): Netflix, Amazon Prime, CrunchyRoll, Zune, Vudu, Red Box, Hulu, iTunes, Sony's Video Unlimited (not completely out yet?)

What is so bad about honestly getting permission to watch things you want to watch?

[edit: added more to the list]

TylerE2• 14 years ago

It's very simple. As a creative person, who produces creative work, I desire a world in which it is possible for me to make a living doing that.

To put it in terms HN might be more comfortable with - how would you feel, if you operated a subscription website, if someone came along, and swiped your code and content, and put it up for free. Would you support that?

laughinghan11• 14 years ago

1. If you click his name, you will see edw519 is a long-time respected member of the HN community, who generally posts insightful comments, submits excellent articles, and writes riveting blog posts. This is no throwaway shill for the MPAA.

2. Do you believe no one in the world besides "massive copyright holders, attempting to exploit every red penny out of your brainwashed masses" dislikes piracy? That's a very simplistic and naive view. I hope you find these discussions illuminating.

bmelton6• 14 years ago

By your same argument, I shouldn't object to people who rape women because I'm not one?

biot2• 14 years ago

The real shame is that this could have been a good money-maker had it been built to link to instant purchase options on iTunes, Amazon, and so on using affiliate links.

Or even taken a "pirate with a conscience" strategy and offered purchase links alongside the torrent links. That way, everybody who claims they only download movies from torrents because the experience is better can both purchase a legit copy and have the better download/viewing experience they desire.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

I hear http://www.dexy.tv/ is pretty good at that - dude just contacted me, we'll work together to bring that info over to movies.io for legal alternatives.

Zirro2• 14 years ago

I think the film-industry should be inspired by this. If they offered something which is as easy to use and as good-looking as this, piracy will certainly decrease.

Just put a "Pay here"-button before giving the user their download-link. Skip the DRM and the restrictions for different parts of the world and they'd have a killer-platform for selling their products.

I am not saying that piracy isn't "unethical", but that there are many ways it could be resolved without resorting to harsh laws.

MatthewPhillips• 14 years ago

If Hollywood made this exact same product but with pay buttons, why would I as a user choose it over movies.io.

alecbenzer3• 14 years ago

I'm honestly pretty bad at pirating. I'd _love_ it if HBO threw up paid streaming for Game of Thrones. If they charged something like $3/episode I think it might actually even be cheaper than the time I spent trying to pirate it (granted, most people are probably better than I am at pirating).

shmerl4• 14 years ago

Exactly. Eventually they'll learn, but it takes them a long time.

disappointment• 14 years ago

There are plenty of easy ways to legally buy and download movies - certainly a lot easier than torrenting. See Netflix, iTunes, Google Play etc.

It would be both nice and pragmatic if they would drop the DRM that is clearly doing nothing to combat piracy. This is not going to achieve that.

kvnn• 14 years ago

"...and not in the spirit of good clean business and technology practices we should all be aspire to"

Its not a business.

rmc7• 14 years ago

Breaking silly rules if it makes things better is part of the hacker ethic.

laughinghan11• 14 years ago

I'll bite.

Why do you think this "clearly unethical"? I don't think it's clear at all.

Everyone I know pirates movies, TV shows, and music. Everyone I know also jaywalks. I also know people who use drugs illegally, as well as participate in or facilitate underage drinking, and I don't have a problem with any of it. Are these unethical? Someone clearly thought so. Do I care?

You know what the truth is, for me, and everyone I know, at least? The truth is, we don't care about "other" people's opinions on ethics (where "other" people=people on the internet, in the government, in anti-piracy ads, etc). The fact is, it's socially acceptable, among my social circles, to pirate, to use drugs, and to {participate in,facilitate} underage drinking. So I have no qualms with people I know doing so, nor if I were to do so myself.

You don't pirate, ever? Because it's "clearly unethical"? Do everyone in your social circles hold similar opinions? Do you jaywalk? Have you ever used drugs, or facilitated illegal drinking?

Those aren't rhetorical questions, I'm genuinely curious.

I guess my point is, I don't think ethics matter. I don't think about whether what I do is ethical. I don't hurt people, and I don't steal (physical things), because I have empathy. I guess you could say I have ethics in that if you asked me why I don't, I'd say "it's wrong", but I'd never say something is "clearly unethical" and try to argue why. I'd say it's wrong because it's hurtful, and I don't like being hurt.

Is this just me?

jellicle2• 14 years ago

I would say it's clearly ethical, even required, to share knowledge and information with other people. That's pretty much the highest impulse a human has, right up there with "protect your offspring".

As Rick Falkvinge is so eloquent in saying, this is our culture, and permitting monopolies on it is just disastrously bad policy.

Copyright is a subsidy to distributors, not artists. And the distributors know it. There's no need to protect the business model of content distributors in a world that has the Internet.

Tycho6• 14 years ago

It's parasitical. And dishonours the intentions of the content creators.

watsix4• 14 years ago

Using drugs, "facilitating underage drinking" and even jaywalking are quite a bit different than stealing. You say you "don't steal (physical things)" as if that makes it ok, but you are stealing. It's a different form of stealing, but you do steal, you lack empathy for the act, and you are usually hurting the creators of that material in one way or another.

Even today, there are societies where it is "socially acceptable" to beat and murder women, to stone people for being heretics, etc. etc. "Socially acceptable" does not provide justification for unethical acts. Saying "it's wrong" and going no further than that makes you thoughtless, not humble. You do steal, and you do hurt people. You just don't care, because people around you are doing the same.

mistermann• 14 years ago

So if someone produces a work in digital form, and it is explicitly their intent to earn a living from people paying them money to view this work, can you think of anything even remotely unethical about the release and downloading of the work on a torrent site?

ma2rten3• 14 years ago

Since you asked, I shall explain. Here is my working definition of something that immoral:

  Violating the written or unwritten rules of the society one
  lives in, in a way that is directly harmful to another person or
  group of people, though ones actions.

So taking drugs is fine, since you are not harming another person. Downloading a film is also fine for the same reason. With selling drugs and jaywalking it depends.

Building a torrent site is different though, because under the rules of our society someone who made a movie can decide who sees that movie and who does not. You are taking that right away from them by distributing that movie. If the rules make sense or does not really matter (within reason), it is a rule that we as a society agreed upon.

EDIT: I don't think morality can ever be subject to loopholes and technicalities, it's governed by common sense.

However, the counter-argument that would let count is good intentions: if OP truly believes that the world might become a better place as the result of his action and he has no selfish motivations at all, I might consider it moral (at least from his point of view).

J3L24047• 14 years ago

HN is dead.

paulhauggis• 14 years ago

"Everyone I know pirates movies, TV shows, and music. Everyone I know also jaywalks. I also know people who use drugs illegally, as well as participate in or facilitate underage drinking, and I don't have a problem with any of it. Are these unethical? Someone clearly thought so. Do I care?"

I love discussions like this, because something like this is not clearly unethical, but when GNU code is used without following the license (like in the thesis Wordpress theme debacle awhile back, people cry "theft".

"I don't hurt people, and I don't steal (physical things)"

This is a nice way of trying to legitimize piracy. As a business owner, should I really feel bad if I outsource to China and put 100 people in the US out of work? or how about if I automate people out of jobs?

dorian-graph5• 14 years ago

I don't feel think something being 'socially acceptable' in a group is a good way to measure if it's good.

If the existence or state of things is determined by groupthink in different circumstances the world is in a lot of trouble and doesn't have a strong foundation.

We live in a strangely retarded relativistic and selfish world where everything is everyone's and nothing is anyone's. A world with no measuring sticks yet many measurements.

I suppose that's a difference between a lot of people, there are those who think things are simply determined by who they're standing around whereas there are those who hold to more definite and progressive concepts of things that don't change as if a wave driven by the winds of the sea and tossed about.

Then again, I avoid jaywalking, which is seen as madness by some and is often trailed by some silly rant about police making money. It's viewed differently by others and those are generally the ones I prefer to be around as they're a little more uplifting and less vulgar.

I avoid cheating too, for example, classes at university finished yesterday for this semester and I had one last, small piece of assessment to hand in and I had done it incorrectly and I asking a friend how she went about solving it—it turns out my calculations and the like were correct, there was just something wrong with my logic—she said to just copy her answer verbatim which I couldn't do despite her arguments that it's not worth much, it's the last day or 'everyone does it' which sounded like a puppet talking.

No, it's not just you, everyone has accomplices.

koko7753• 14 years ago

Disclaimer: I work at a legal online video streaming site.

Jaywalking, doing drugs, and underage drinking are fundamentally acts against rules, not acts against entities. A risk is being taken and the burden of failure is on the risk-taker.

Selling alcohol to minors is unethical. Do I need to get into that? Acquiring media in an unauthorized fashion is an act against the creator and their licensed distributor. That makes it unethical.

You can separate whether an action is justified, and whether it's ethical. There are clearly reasons to pirate - valid or not^, the act itself is not ethical. And I think it's clearly so.

^ personal opinion: mostly not

There's also the separate but related issue that many believe that entertainment is a right, or that it should be available in all mediums. While I do believe that it should be available anywhere at any time, pirating should not at all be considered an ethical recourse to acquiring it through other means. Art doesn't exist absent the influence of money. Entertainment is commercial art but that doesn't mean that its artistic value excuses the viewer from participating in the artist's (creator's) intentions for distribution.

halayli• 14 years ago

Pirating movies is stealing. There is no other way of putting it. I'll let you decide whether you find stealing ethical or not. It might depend on your social circle.

If you were a member of a gang, you'll find it socially acceptable among your social circles to kill people and sell drugs probably.

dusanbab2• 14 years ago

laughinghan, I don't buy your physical / virtual goods distinction. Your argument is inconsistent - if you were prepared to shoplift the same movie from a store I wouldn't agree with your ethics, but you would at least be acting consistently.

Good point RE social stigma attached to this, but IMO it's simply a reflection of the penalty most territories attach to physical theft compared to virtual. The latter is also a lot easier to perpetrate.

I can't cite evidence immediately, but it's fairly accepted that length of jail terms influence per-capita crime rates of most crime types.

superuser2• 14 years ago

You are declaring yourself entitled to other people's creative output. They go to work every day and practice their crafts. You benefit from their work, but refuse to pay the craftsmen.

Car theft is a stupid analogy because that deprives someone of a car.

The better analogy is that an electrician came and rewired your house. (The lighting rig for a single scene is probably thirty times as complex.) You paid for parts and gas, but decided not to pay for the labor listed in the quote you accepted. You've valued his labor at $0, which is fine, but not if you expect him to perform it.

I don't like making distributors rich either. I would love to see a nonprofit HBO-like studio selling online subscriptions. But the market hasn't yet created one capable of producing content I want. Sounds like a brilliant startup opportunity.

lightyrs• 14 years ago

It tickles me to see a post on Hacker News decrying the ethical issues of creating a UI for a torrent tracker. If this attitude had prevailed 50 years ago, we wouldn't have Apple. This is Hacker News.

thebdmethod2• 14 years ago

Yea, if Steve Jobs hadn't played around with Blue Boxes, where would we be?

J3L24047• 14 years ago

Well we can all thank pg for the new tone of HN. Kill Hollywood? Might as well have Henry Ford saying kill horses. When a viable alternative exists it will gradually replace Hollywood, just like every other industry.

But don't worry, the Internet is still the wild west, the sherrif has to follow the laws but hired guns don't have to. Good for the goose good for the gander. Enter torrent malware.

tptacek2• 14 years ago

You said something a long time ago that has stuck with me:

If you're willing to compromise your morals on something small, where will you ever draw the line?

I agree, this is sad.

hughw• 14 years ago

I draw the line at something big.

spindritf• 14 years ago

Firstly, morals differ a little, as illustrated by the discussion around. Secondly, appreciating craftsmanship does not necessarily imply approving of purpose.

mistercow2• 14 years ago

"Where do you draw the line?" is almost always a trivial rephrasing of the slippery slope fallacy. We live in a world where there are no lines, and we draw them in arbitrary places so that we can make the world work. If that bothers you, you are just going to have to adjust your worldview to be compatible with the reality you were born into.

losvedir• 14 years ago

I agree with others that this sounds a bit like a slippery slope fallacy. However, thought of a bit differently, that practicing on the smaller things helps you on the larger, makes more sense to me.

That said, I'm not sure if there's data to support that. Does being meticulous in your speech and not telling white lies make you less likely to cheat on your wife, say?

yason• 14 years ago

Conversely, I would say that (within current laws) it is clearly illegal but it remains unclear as to why would it be unethical.

I kind of correlate bits with thoughts. Contrary to what some shady associations try to claim, you can't possibly cause conclusive harm to anyone by merely copying bits any more than by thinking about illegal things.

Digital copies also obey the same law that thoughts do: you either keep them to yourself or let it out to the whole world. There's no middle point where you could selectively share your thoughts with certain people but prevent them from sharing them further. And last I checked, "ideas are worthless"; it's the execution (into a physical realm) that matters. Ditto with digital copies.

I've been arguing for a while that the best internet breakthrough and source of income for MAFIAA would be to pay Piratebay to add a "Pay" button to their service. And to others' torrent search engines. Just sell licenses to movies and music and let people get their data in whatever format they feel like.

res0nat0r3• 14 years ago

If we are now trying to equate downloading a movie or tv show with some type of thought crime I think we've clearly run out of ways to try and justify our behavior.

krzyk5• 14 years ago

I don't know where it is "clearl illegal" but it must be a very strange law.

Would anyone sane make illegal someone that says: "You can download Game of Thrones from www.example.com".

That's basically what the torrents are, just a hint where to find the data you seek.

pooriaazimi5• 14 years ago

I don't consider it unethical one bit. I live in a country that has no business relationships with the west, and I couldn't buy a movie, even if I paid 10 times the price (and I also have to change my ip to be able to buy it from any western store). I don't watch movies (except for Kubrick's, who is dead) and specially hate Hollywood movies, so I'm not really the target audience of this site.

Ethics is not a set of rules fixed in stone. Killing is bad, but killing an animal beaten by a car is hundreds of times more ethical than letting it spend hours in pain and then die. Pirating/stealing is bad, but you should never fault a poor kid, or someone who is technically unable to purchase that in the first place.

watsix4• 14 years ago

Here's hoping your current position as comment #1 means you're not the only one who cares. You certainly aren't! But this kind of stuff has become religion here: I'm seeing perfectly valid comments being downvoted if they take the side that these things are unethical, and admittedly I get pretty hot when I hear the roar of "piracy is a-ok!" that now seems to drown out any contradiction.

I think the MPAA and groups like it bear the brunt of the responsibility for the creation of this mentality, though. I don't think they really understand how many enemies they made due to SOPA and things like it, or the level of bad will they're generating by consistently refusing to embrace better distribution models, or how much they undercut their own arguments by refusing to behave in an ethical manner while they demand ethics of others. And the worse it gets, the more they dig in to absurd positions.

Their behavior seems to have led many to conclude--fairly--that they're simply a mafioso organization and that there is no validity to any of their concerns. And so copyright ceases to exist, and it's hard to discuss, even here, without being accused of being an MPAA shill. But it started with the copyright organizations: they started calling fans thieves and demanding they all be put in jail or fined into bankruptcy, and then they started demanding that the Internet be locked down and controlled without due process, and now people are firing back with equal vitriol, and often an equivlaent unwillingness to listen to the other side. Sad indeed.

melvinmt• 14 years ago

I'm confused, wasn't this what pg meant with 'Disrupt Hollywood'? /srcsm

J3L24047• 14 years ago

>That I seem to be one of the few that cares.

Clearly many do care, but arguing is like facing an onslaught of Orcs.

bmelton6• 14 years ago

I think that the crowd here is growing more pro-piracy of late. I've been in a number of lengthy arguments here about this issue in the past year arguing the 'morality' of piracy or how 'justified' it is because of whatever, whereas earlier discussions I've had on HN were all more academic in nature -- "If Hollywood can't figure out digital distribution, of course there will be more users who pirate."

Even worse, the entitlement is much greater, and nobody seems to care that it's wrong, so I end up getting drawn into a million "can't copy a car" type of arguments and "I can't legally purchase" rebuttals.

Worse than that, I've felt like I'm in the minority on how I feel about piracy and as such, have pretty much quit rehashing the same old arguments.

So, while I hate that you're going through the same nonsense I did, at least you can save yourself some frustration by not being baited into the same frustrating arguments that deliberately "miss the point".

tikhonj5• 14 years ago

It's not that "nobody cares that it's wrong", it's that they reasonably disagree with that: not everybody thinks it's wrong!

It seems the fact that copyright infringement is "wrong" is an axiom for you. Going from that position, I could see why the discussion seems poor: other people have different axioms! Of course, if people are arguing about something, treating it as an axiom is not productive.

Also, there are people who hold the exact opposite stance: it's not piracy that's wrong, it's copyright.

Take a look at the free software movement--not only do they believe you shouldn't legally limit people from distributing software, they actually go farther and believe you shouldn't even make it difficult to modify and reuse code! There are some very intelligent people in the FSF, and they've contributed immensely to the software world, all on the opposite premise: it's not infringement that's wrong, it's copyright.

Now, I could see how you would disagree with them. An unfortunate proportion of HN seems to--look at any thread about MIT/BSD licensing. But you shouldn't just dismiss their philosophy out of hand and implicitly believe that spreading information in spite of copyright is wrong.

Ultimately, it's not that "piracy" is justified, it's that it doesn't need to be justified in the first place. What needs to be justified is restricting distribution in the first place.

JoyxBen• 14 years ago

My rule is simple: anything I can get through iTunes I don't pirate.

I also have a cable subscription.

Yet living in a non-english speaking country MOST content I'm interested in is not available through these legal channels (No TV shows available through iTunes, also missing many new release movies (don't mean delayed release which I put up with, I mean released only to Blu-ray and never iTunes), most older movies, most documentaries, etc).

Funny how I don't have that problem with, say, iOS apps (e.g. have never needed to jailbreak my devices because something I want is only available in the US App Store). If only all content was this easy...

For profits publishers need to relax their control obsession and get on the ball.

hxa72416• 14 years ago

People really ought to stop and examine this idea that copying information is somehow underneath unethical -- and that the special word 'unethical' can be uttered and that will tell people to behave.

Information is a nonrival good: it is an abundance with respect to access -- how on earth, in any rational conception of morality, can free access to an abundant good be construed as intrinsically immoral?

It is unethical only pragmatically: only in that (it is proposed) the economy will function better with some restrictions on copying -- which is the main purpose of the law. That is: it is unethical no further than it is illegal.

ryanwaggoner• 14 years ago

Agreed. I have a hobby of collecting different snippets of people's personal info, just for entertainment purposes. Please send me your name, contact info, and banking information. I'd like to have it on file.

option_greek• 14 years ago

I would not consider it immoral as long as there is no other way to access the same content without committing an illegal act. As a non-US citizen, I can't even watch half the content even if I would want to pay.

The fact that people had to pay multiple times for watching the same content in different formats and that it is considered perfectly legal is more immoral to me than any thing else.

dusanbab2• 14 years ago

Why can't you use a US iTunes account? How is that illegal? It may well be a violation of the Apple/iTunes TOS but that is different to being illegal.

nl2• 14 years ago

I agree, and I hate this.

Even more though, I'm sad that people are forced into a position where they have to run unethical services if they want to build services like this.

It is time content owners were forced to provide statutory licenses for streaming video content, just as they are forced to provide licenses for streaming audio.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Dear god yes, that is the whole point I've been trying to make. Thank you for that.

franzus2• 14 years ago

It is time for home owners to give up their ownership and hand over their property to the people.

tluyben24• 14 years ago

I'm in the camp (which might be naive) that if there are alternatives people wouldn't download illegally (as much). I never illegally copy Indie games or movies simply as they are easy to buy. The perceived pressure of 'pirating' might get people in the EU streaming content at the same time the US gets it within our lifetime. Without that pressure, there is no incentive for this. All people I know would never download/watch illegally if they could watch legally. This is simply not the case and so pressure needs to build in order to force the issue.

moe• 14 years ago

That I seem to be one of the few who cares while most others nit on details.

For me it's you who is nitting on details.

The question whether filesharing is "ethical" or not is irrelevant.

Because regardless of the answer: The cat is not going back into the bag. No matter how many rivers are cried.

You could just as well complain that the job of the farrier has nearly disappeared because most people don't ride horses anymore.

A much more interesting discussion could be based on the following questions:

  * What distribution and compensation model will emerge as the successor
    to the current "pay-per-consumption" or "pay-per-physical-copy" approach?

  * What are the consequences for artists and content-producers?
    Are million-dollar blockbuster movies still possible in the future?
    Will "making a living" as a musician still be possible?

I.e. please discuss under the premise that the current model is dead, because that's what it is. We do have horseless carriage now, and the raw numbers tell you that most people consider the advantages to outweigh the disadvantages by far.

samstr• 14 years ago

Everyone pirates everything and no one feels sad.

bennomadic2• 14 years ago

I don't know which I feel saddest about: 1. Someone calling this "clearly unethical" 2. On a site named "hacker" news 3. That comment being top 1.

silentscope• 14 years ago

you incite the wrath of the gods. hope you know a lawyer.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Several!

notatoad• 14 years ago

it's pretty, but it's a worse experience than legal alternatives like netflix because you have to take the gamble deciding which copy to download. I value piracy for pushing the user experience forward (without the competition it provides, i doubt we would have netflix instant streaming now), but nothing here seems different than anything before it, just prettier.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

The first result should be reasonably good. We're working on that to improve the algorithms and find the best possible torrent.

sandropadin• 14 years ago

Looks nice. There seems to be a bug with the movie titles though. I clicked the top 50 and most of the torrent links for the movie Safe were actually for the movie Safe House.

Dirlewanger• 14 years ago

Very nice. Very slick. A little too slick though for my tastes concerning movie torrents. I'd like to have some info on A/V codecs, bitrate, etc. before I even think of downloading.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Understood. Real power users aren't well served by the current version.

We might go further in that direction, but we'll weigh our legal options first.

radley• 14 years ago

Needs better search logic & display results.

Clicked on #2 "Safe" and 4 out of 5 were for "Safe House".

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Yup, short film names currently give not-so-good torrent results. One guy in the team is working on much better algorithms for the following:

  - Torrent ranking for a given movie

  - Better heuristic to detect the quality of release, language, and 'advanced' tags: there's a lot you can guess from the release name without having to download/cache the files yourself.

  - Movie recommendation (stuff like "3 of your friends want to watch the same kind of movies, why not watch them together?")

  - Hell, who knows, matchmaking? "You and X would probably get along well, since you're both hardcore Tarantino fans"

In any way, clean design is not the only way we try to differenciate ourselves.

hardik988• 14 years ago

I'm not too familiar with the inner workings of P2P technologies of torrent and magnets, but is "snooping" possible with magnet downloads ? Like in the case of torrents, MPAA often hops on to a tracker, doesn't send/receive any data, but all it does is log the public IPs of all peers on the tracker. Is this a problem with magnet downloads as well ?

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Definitely. See http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4055215.

Magnet links don't protect you, they're just a simple and standard way to refer to a torrent.

Thankfully, an IP address can't identify a person: http://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-cant-even-identify-a-stat...

larholm• 14 years ago

Magnet links are just a shortcut for getting the .torrent file, everything else still applies.

dclaysmith• 14 years ago

I'd like to hear some talk about how the post went to the frontpage very quickly, generated some very interesting comments and then got buried (atleast temporarily)?

Was this a result of people flagging the post due to the (some would argue) unethical function of the site?

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

if you hear more about this, let me know: I'm as curious as you.

lbo• 14 years ago

I built a somewhat similar product http://www.dexy.tv but it only links to 'legit' content (netflix, hulu, amazon, etc).

nddrylliog, send me an email if you're interested in potentially collaborating so you can list both kinds of content. Really like what you've done on the UI side.

cpeterso• 14 years ago

Do any torrent sites have affiliate links to legit content like Amazon? That seems like a good opportunity. If someone searches for a movie torrent, the movie might be available on Amazon (DVD or streaming) even if no torrents are found. And, more interestingly, someone might search for a movie torrent but see they can stream it from Amazon right now for just $5 without waiting for a torrent download.

stevengg• 14 years ago

you should add collections like can be found on whatcd and passthepopcorn[1] that users can link to and search

[1] http://i.imgur.com/PXFRE.jpg

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Actually, we have our own watchlists, but they seem to be inferior in features to what you can find on whatcd/ptpc. We'll keep working on that. Thanks for the tip!

rdegges• 14 years ago

This is beautiful. Thanks! <3

guynamedloren3• 14 years ago

YES! Thank you! I have been thinking about building this forever, but have never actually implemented it due to the fuzzy legal issues (read: it's totally illegal) and imminent shut down.

Love the interface. Love the simplicity. Love the graphics. Love the lack of [unnecessary] technical details and inclusion of details about the actual movie (rating, genre, summary, cover photo, etc).

Only thing I can think of to improve this is including a trailer on the download page. Yeah, IMDB is linked and that has trailers, but not quite as cool :) Also, related movies would be awesome.

calloc• 14 years ago

There is nothing illegal about this. It provides magnet links, so it is not even linking to the files themselves, they aren't hosting infringing content...

guynamedloren3• 14 years ago

I wish you were right, but I don't think Johnny Law agrees with you.

proksoup• 14 years ago

Better trailers yes. Like maybe youtube search for movie_title + ' trailer' and embed the top result...

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

TMDb link to some trailers, but the quality is quite poor. We want a good solution or none at all.

guard-of-terra• 14 years ago

Why? torrentz.eu is more generic and works better on fuzzy searches. And I don't care that you parsed wikipedia.

I've tried searching for some anime and it's not pretty, suggest offers you some transliterated or authentic japan which is confusing.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

We're not good at niches (japanese movies, etc.), yet! But we're working on better international support: Japanese, German, Italian, French movies have often confusing results, we'll display alternative titles and offer torrent search in multiple results.

Torrentz.eu works better for everything else, obviously :)

b2spirit• 14 years ago

Off-the-charts awesome!

franzus2• 14 years ago

Wow, top voted submission. I'm rather disappointed with the HN community. I guess it's time to stop visiting this site.

FredericJ• 14 years ago

Oh. It's not possible to down vote such a comment. I guess it's time to stop visiting this site.

lmarinho• 14 years ago

I like the high resolution background image, maybe you could find a more graceful way of introducing it. Try fading it in after it has finished loading, like bing.com, instead of making the user watch it "build down".

staunch2• 14 years ago

☑ Massive market opportunity

☑ Tons of room for product innovation

☑ Potential for significant revenue

☐ Ability to do business without being sued out of existence.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

And that's why it's not a business. Just a temporary solution for movie lovers until content owners get their stuff straight.

In the meantime, it's still a great product building experience for us, even if we make $0 out of it.

staunch2• 14 years ago

The problem is that you might not get to walk away scot-free from this even when you want to.

One thing I can gaurantee will help you: make no attempt whatsoever to profit from this. Don't put up any ads. Don't have any affiliate links. Profiting from a (potential) crime or infringement makes it 100x more dangerous.

programmer_babu2• 14 years ago

Respect. You should totally allow people to download your databases (including those wallpaperesque backgrounds for each movie). Probably as a torrent. :)

Eeko• 14 years ago

You can't even pay for this if you live in Europe.

There's a reason Pirate Bay originated from Sweden...

runn1ng2• 14 years ago

I don't like it that much.

Yes, it's deadly simple, but what I actually like on sites like PirateBay or demonoid is the discussion below the torrent. Yes, it is sometimes idiotic and distracting, but if it's bad quality/a different movie/contains a virus, someone will mention that.

With your website, I have no clue at all what I am downloading. What is the format? How is the quality? Is it nuked? Is it DVDrip/camrip/webrip/...?

I don't know any of that from your site. I see just a link and filesize. Who knows what the file actually is. I personally find the quality more important than the number of seeders/leechers.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Power users are not well served with this version of movies.io

Results are usually "pretty good", but that's nowhere satisfying for a connoisseur such as yourself.

We're working on that though, but we'd much rather have people talking about the movie than about the torrent. A movie is art, it's emotions, stories, parts of our childhood. Much more interesting than a bitrate, a codec, a PSNR level.

runn1ng2• 14 years ago

That last part is true - and it's evident from your application that you give more weight to the movie than to the technical details. And it's good, in a way.

But in my opinion, even to a less powered user, it's still important to know if he is going to watch a DVD-rip or a russian-dubbed camrip.

tomp5• 14 years ago

Also, I'd really like to see the full filename of the movies I download. They include a lot of useful information, such as resolution (720, 1080, ...), filetype (mp4, mkv, ...), source (DVD, DVDrip, TC, SCR, ...), and release (eztv, ettv, ...). That is crucial especially for movie torrents.

veridies3• 14 years ago

This is beautifully done and rather well integrated. But it needs a few things to be better; I need to be able to see the codec, instantly. If I'm stuck with a DVD rip, there's a huge difference between 600MB DivX and 600MB H264.

As for discussions, unless you have some new way to find movies (which would be really cool), it's more important to see the quality of the files we're downloading. Even allowing user ratings of the specific torrents would help.

darrenoc• 14 years ago

There are other places for discussing the movie as a whole: a torrent discussion should focus on the torrent IMO.

koala_advert• 14 years ago

This is the reason I won't be using it. I have a TPB Firefox search bar that I can type a movie title into, then press enter and get results that are sorted by most seeders. I then open a few of the top torrents and read the comments on them. Movies.io is pretty but I need to know what I'm downloading.

dr_• 14 years ago

"please don't download content that you haven't bought"

It's kind of hard to purchase The Avengers (2012) given that it's currently still running in theaters.

phusion• 14 years ago

Very nice, I love how clean the iface is. Adding imdb info to search results is very classy as well. Thank you!

thebdmethod2• 14 years ago

I like the 1080p indicator! It would be cool to add similar ones for other formats (CAM, SCREENER, 720, etc)

easymode• 14 years ago

I really like what you've done. Torrent sites never had a clean look, and you are making it first. You are trying to make the world suck less, and i dig that. keep up the good work, and I really hope you can establish a legitimate business model based on this.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Thanks a lot. I plan to make a living out of my programming & product building abilities but not in this domain, it's too messy.

However, I hope we can reach an agreement with content distributors at least in some countries and replace the torrents by available legal sources.

Thanks a lot for the positive feedback, got a lot of hate uncalled for here, that's refreshing :)

waterlesscloud2• 14 years ago

You will, of course, be making all code and all data you produce in your career publicly available as a torrent?

If not, why not?

mikecane• 14 years ago

What metadata are you using to distinguish movies from other videos (and other things)?

I did a test search for two European TV shows: Forbrydelsen (aka The Killing) and Braquo. The second didn't even try for an imperfect recommendation.

thatusertwo• 14 years ago

Pretty site, it sure is a nice way to 'share' torrents, although its pretty illegal.

dabockster• 14 years ago

Oh great... Now the MPAA will overreact and ICE will shut down YCombinator in the name of "national security".

veridies3• 14 years ago

I want to see something like this for music; I hate how badly sorted most public music trackers and search engines are. What.cd is fantastic, but I hate that they're private and don't use them.

hristov• 14 years ago

How do you choose the splash screen for the different movies? It seems that for each movie I tried you have a very good screen-cap that is obviously not something random, and yet it is also not the official poster.

Did someone select these screens by hand?

geuis• 14 years ago

Your torrent results are absolute crap. Downloaded 3, won't say which, but they all turned out to be crap for lovelymovies.com which is a spam site.

hk_kh• 14 years ago

My only tip: for the rating of the movie, while giving a decimal grade is good and acceptable, using 10 stars is distracting and breaks with the overall good UX.

Would go better with just 5 stars, or just ditch them and think on something else.

For instance, if the grade you are showing is a derivative of multiple sources, why not try to derive something on the line of: "5 of 10 reviewers found this movie good".

By the way, always cite your information sources, where does the rating come from? Users? Review sites?

necenzurat• 14 years ago

heh, i watched http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html i don't ever care about copyright anymore

cantbecool• 14 years ago

What torrent sites are you scraping with nokogiri?

domwood• 14 years ago

I torrent stuff, like a substantial portion of humanity. Except music (Spotify) and games less than five years old. Movies I torrent without a care, unless they're indie or similar. Anyway, I digress, I'm just saying I'm not going to hypocritically pontificate, just comment on the product.

On the actual site: I like the straightforward process you've gone for. A search for 'Dracula' returns multiple, relevant results with the year of release where it's available. It's very easy to find what movie I want. A downside is the download options, all I'm presented with is some links with the filesizes, that's not enough information in my opinion, but I suppose there's not actually much you can do about that. It's a downside because it's not immediately clear if it has subtitles, what language it might be dubbed in and if it is HD or not.

It's a pretty well executed idea that's naturally going to be a bit rough 'round the edges, but it's a great start.

programmer_babu2• 14 years ago

Hey, bug report: you didn't check if the password I entered second time matches the first one.

jcfrei• 14 years ago

looking good - though it seems like you're filtering porn. obviously slightly less useful without pornography.

leoplct2• 14 years ago

Should be greater a modal link (fancybox or facebox) with trailer! This project is awesome!!!!

It's available code via Github??

PhilRae• 14 years ago

Regardless of what you're searching for, it is a really nice site and very functional. Yes all other torrent sites are hideous and full of horrible spammy adverts pretending to be download buttons (so I'm told), but this one is nice and clean, has a gorgeous UI, and makes great use of movie art in the design.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Thanks a lot for the feedback! Glad you like it. We really love movies, hope it shows.

galfarragem4• 14 years ago

There is one book from a portuguese writer where the argument is something like this: press a button, you'll get a million dollars and somebody (that you don't know) in a very far way place dies. Nobody will know about it just you. Will you press it or not? Piracy is the same. Is so easy to get and normally nobody will know, just a smaller reward and smaller consequences too. Most of people just press it..

disclaimer: I and nearly everybody somewhere during is life press it, specially if the "reward" is larger. A videogame in my country is around 75€, minimum wage less than 500€, unemployment rate among younger around 40%.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Apparently Hollywood made that book into a movie: http://movies.io/m/TN

galfarragem4• 14 years ago

I heard about that movie, is based on ("The Mandarin", 1880) by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Maria_de_E%C3%A7a_de_...

5xz41s0P8T5N• 14 years ago

Press button, use money to save >2 lives.

galfarragem4• 14 years ago

Morality is not maths.

leoplct2• 14 years ago

It's awesome! Is there any change to made this legal??

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

cf. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4058057

We're looking into it.

wilfra• 14 years ago

But where are the flashing penis enlargement banners???

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Sorry, we don't have that feature yet. Or ever :)

Just got contacted for an ad campaign and turned them down.

paulovsk2• 14 years ago

Beautiful. The background HD image was a nice touch.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Thanks! Blame http://themoviedb.org/ for all the nice image resources. These guys do an amazing job. Props!

fdjlda• 14 years ago

this doesn't work anymore! I can't download anything :(

eeirinberg• 14 years ago

the downloads don't actually work!!!

shmerl4• 14 years ago

Just a thought. If you consider the site as kind of a model and example for films distribution, why can't you add a [Donate] button, and direct all the funds to the corresponding companies who produced the movies? They might even get a better idea that convenient service without any DRM junk brings them revenue. Without such option the site is questionable.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

What you suggest raises several important issues: first, we'd expect of these companies to go the extra mile of taking our money and redistributing to the rightful owners (which costs, it's a great deal of work to find out who owns what, be it in the music or movie industry).

Second and most importantly, there would be no way for us to guarantee that the donations you make go to them and not us. We'd get shot down because we'd then try to 'profit' from it. Which we don't and we won't.

So nope, no donations directly on the website, ever. However, we'll start displaying legal offers (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc.) for US visitors, and we're working towards featuring Open / Creative Commons / Libre movie content.

shmerl4• 14 years ago

Well, first part is possible to resolve (but requires effort to find out who's the owner, yes). Second part can be resolved if you technically build the transparency system. I.e. those who pay will have a tracking mechanism for the transaction and would be able to confirm that their money aren't used by you. But in general I agree, it's more of a wishful thinking, in practice it requires effort. But you went so far as to make the site which offers a way to get the content completely for free. It would be fair to put at least some effort for enabling the backwards flow. If you are scared of being shut down, why not being scared of acting without respect to the creators of the movies? Linking to DRMed channels kind of defeats the purpose, since you are promoting a DRM free way.

pbreit• 14 years ago

Without file formats it's a non-starter (unless, for me, they are all x264).

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Hover over the 'download' link, see full release name, often x264/h264 is present in the name.

rjau• 14 years ago

Love it. Really nice site, I'm going to have to try and remember to use this over torrentz.eu. Killer extra feature: Suggestions. But before you go reinventing the wheel, can you implement this? tastekid.com. Best recommendations I've seen. I believe they have an api.

nddrylliog96• 14 years ago

Reinventing the wheel is part of the fun. Recommendation algorithms are not that hard once you know the math behind. But, sure, it goes further than being a Rails dev.

We'll compare with Tastekid for quality :)

rdl• 14 years ago

Wow, this is quite a nice UI.

Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be

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