Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk

http://torrentfreak.com/popcorn-time-devs-drop-like-flies-but-no-one-will-talk-140420/

by hashtag • 12 years ago

145 101 12 years ago

deelowe• 12 years ago

I understand the sudden deletion of the repos, but why are the devs being compelled to not speak? Are NSLs being issued for PT developers?

betterunix• 12 years ago

Optimistic: lawyer advice

Pessimistic: Hollywood thugs

nakedrobot2• 12 years ago

Popcorn Time is _this_ close to being the Napster of Film, Hollywood must be literally shitting bricks. Someone has probably taken it upon himself to threaten these devs in a nasty (and perhaps illegal) way. Surely the story will come out eventually.

In the meantime, Popcorn Time is fully available to download. So I'm not sure what genie they're putting back in the bottle....

girvo2• 12 years ago

It's a curious state of affairs. I'd love to know how it all went down, as I've never seen things this weird even in the piracy world...

bryanlarsen• 12 years ago

The threat could be nothing more than suing for copyright violation. The fines for that are insanely high, and evidence of such is not necessarily hard to collect. After all, it's highly unlikely the devs were developing Popcorn Time without using it themselves.

higherpurpose3• 12 years ago

I wonder if the way they threatened them is with such a lawsuit...unless they delete everything. But were all the devs (other than the original ones) from US? I don't think copyright fines are as huge in other places.

Either way, whoever will be working next on it, it would be preferable if he was from Spain:

http://torrentfreak.com/records-labels-lose-big-as-court-dec...

cmiles742• 12 years ago

Surely they download at least a bit of a movie to test. Setting up a mock service that pushes open source video might be a technical solution, but that might not matter once you're in front of a judge.

wpietri4• 12 years ago

They wouldn't even have to use it themselves. If I understand rightly, "contributory copyright infringement"[1] is the stick they would get beaten with here.

My hazy understanding is that if the Popcorn Time folks had wanted to get away with this, they shouldn't have said anything about Hollywood movies. They should have promoted it as a tool for watching all the great publicly-licensed documentaries and fan-made films out there on the torrent network. That would give them "substantial non-infringing use" [2]. And if somebody else published instructions on how to change the configs so you'd also get Hollywood's finest, well, that wouldn't be their fault. Oopsie!

[1] http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/question.cgi?Question...

[2] http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Substantial_noninfringing_use

Touche11• 12 years ago

Popcorn Time is _this_ close to being the Napster of Film

No it's not. The elephant in the room that no wants to talk about is that Popcorn Time doesn't work on a television. Television is where people watch movies.

Back in the late 90s when Napster was a real mainstream thing, people didn't just listen to the music on their computers, they burnt them to CDs and took them to their cars, to parties, etc.

evv• 12 years ago

If I were a Hollywood exec right now I would be sweating bullets. Steam boxes will be hitting the shelves in the next couple of years and then there will be no stopping hackers from bringing the elegance of Popcorn Time to the comfort of the living room.

calinet64• 12 years ago

This is becoming less and less important. My TV is just a display for a Mac Mini, for example. If I had an AppleTV, I could just mirror the content straight to that. Before all this useful extravagance, I just hooked my computer up to my TV using (gasp) a cable. Worked great, and me and most other people I know, especially those younger than me, are fully used to making this work.

Even then, my girlfriend could not care less about even having a TV. She watches everything on her computer and is perfectly happy.

thesnufkin• 12 years ago

But what is "television"? Isn't it just device, or system where the barrier of entry to access entertainment is sufficiently low for the majority of the population? And if so popcorn time is a giant leap in lowering this barrier of entry on desktops and laptops.

And since in a lot of countries pirated movies are often way quicker than regular distribution, this can really swing people towards PC based "television" or media consumption vs old-time television.

whatevsbro4• 12 years ago

Someone has probably taken it upon himself to threaten these devs in a nasty (and perhaps illegal) way.

Someone, you say? How about just stating the fucking obvious: That "someone" is The US Government, and this is just standard gag-order fare. "Stop developing the app, or we will fuck up your life. Oh, and don't say a word about this to anyone, or we'll fuck up your life."

This insanity is obviously unconstitutional (for starters), but since the USG obviously doesn't give a fuck anyway, what with the all-encompassing surveillance and all, this has become just business as usual.

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qp...

jodrellblank2• 12 years ago

What video is that, "how to completely not understand the way a society works and that you are part of a society"?

Edit: The video presenter says "don't pay taxes, don't follow laws".

That's like not getting your children vaccinated - a benefit for you in the short term, assuming nothing everything else stays the same. All other people are vaccinated so there's nobody you can catch the disease from anyway. Most people pay taxes so there's no degradation in the local life, but you have more money and more choices.

But if there were no taxes and no law for everyone, you wouldn't be able to do that. Rule of law keeps buildings built to a safe standard, keeps food edible, keeps water drinkable, keeps airlines basically safe, keeps employers from abusing employees with low wages and no safety codes, keeps businesses from wrecking and polluting the local town/city environment.

How much are you really going to be able to keep of your earnings if you have to personally guard it 24/7 because there's no police, no law, no way to stop someone stronger taking it without followup, and no banks you trust?

And how much is that money going to be worth anyway if there's no government to say that it has value by fiat? Who will take your money if they have no guarantee anyone else values it?

wpietri4• 12 years ago

It was probably Hollywood's lawyers, and it is likely constitutional.

They can't shut somebody up for their opinions. But if you do something illegal or actionable (in this case, contributory copyright infringement), you may prefer shutting up to accepting the full legal consequences of your actions.

goldenkey3• 12 years ago

I don't see why Popcorn time doesn't offer legitimate ways to purchase the content.

For an honest TV index with multiple streaming sources, check out http://episodeslist.com

It's updated daily.

nnnnni• 12 years ago

It's likely because Hollywood won't LET them "offer legitimate ways to purchase the content".

There's a device that will allow normal people to watch new theater movies at home, but it's $500 per viewing after buying the highly-secured $35000 Prima video server. There are also a bunch of requirements that the company checks in person before allowing someone to buy into the service.

runeks• 12 years ago

I don't watch a lot of films/TV series, so I would totally pay to watch a single TV episode/film. But I'm on Linux, and I don't know how to do that with iTunes, or if it's even possible. Hulu and Netflix require a subscription, which gets way too expensive because I don't watch a lot of stuff, and when trying to purchase an episode on Amazon I'm greeted with the following:

We could not process your order because of geographical restrictions on the product which you were attempting to purchase. Please refer to the terms of use for this product to determine the geographical restrictions.

I simply can't find any site that lets me pay to download a movie/TV show episode, so I usually turn to Pirate Bay.

Semaphor2• 12 years ago

That doesn't look that bad. Now if it had a personalizable lists with information when what show (that's still running) airs, it would be better. Sadly I still haven't found anything better than ezTV and I don't even use their torrent links…

pjbrow2• 12 years ago

It would be great if a developer beyond the reach of the Western legal system would take this project up with a self hosted repo. Code is speech. It's a terrible precedent for devs to be afraid to have code (including me after reading this). This is where the myriad of outdated laws and prosecutorial discretion bites: it's impossible to know where the legal line is.

__ Addition: My view on the savvy modus operandi here (I'm a lawyer when I'm not a developer). If you give someone any kind of reason to sue you, you're essentially handing them a stick. It's much worse if they can afford to hit you with it and you can't afford to defend yourself. The people threatening to sue these guys are almost certainly making silence a condition not to sue. This isolates the devs from people who could support them, and has the added effect of intimidating other devs with the unexplained "disappearances".

Spittie• 12 years ago

I'm honestly surprised that nobody (that I know off) has started to develop a fork while being behind Tor/I2P.

cottonseed• 12 years ago

I agree. But where are they going to host it? Maybe you don't get hit with a lawsuit, but your github repo still gets taken down. Set up a hidden service git repo? Does that scale? How do you accept changes? I'm sure people are making and sharing changes privately. Maybe there is a need for better censorship-resistant code collaboration tools? Some kind of peer-to-peer github that works over Tor.

espadrine2• 12 years ago

There is no western legal system. As absurd as it sounds, what went down with TPB shows how laws perspire beyond a country's boundaries.

As for what actually happened to PT, it isn't as clear-cut as it seems.

I can tell you one thing as food for thought, though. I contributed a minor patch to two forks. I was granted a small amount of dogecoins (about $.10) for one of those contributions. The notion that there would be a remuneration model behind that rather unique type of open-source project tells a lot about how lacking we are. We miss economic models for the free capabilities we build. Things like Gittip only just emerge, but the way they solve the problem of having multiple people be granted a fair share of buying power based on their contributions don't actually rely on a robust mathematical model, and are very probably flawed at scale. That is true of Gittip, it is true of Flattr (notably irrelevant when dealing with a team), it is even true of the Bitcoin ecosystem, given the absence of a proof for the convergence of its volatility.

Those challenges raised by the amazing prospect of a truly decentralized economy are greater than building an app on top of a peer-to-peer network of video distribution. They wouldn't be the first to direct their efforts there, either; a famous TPB member created Flattr after putting his TPB past behind.

PS: on the issue of the struggle for equitable remuneration, here is an outstanding blog post by someone working in a cooperative called Igalia; he did contractor work on V8 and Firefox for Bloomberg: http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for-money

Joeboy4• 12 years ago

I was thinking about approximately this just yesterday. I have a banal coding problem that's in the way of what I actually want to do, and would be prepared to pay somebody maybe a hundred bucks to make it go away. Probably there exists a person with the skills and experience to make that happen easily, and for whom that would constitute a non-insulting payment, but I don't know how to find them. There are open source bounty sites, but I doubt I'm going to find the specialist I need on any of them. So instead I'm going to have to spend hours or maybe days learning stuff I would rather not know about.

Edit: If anybody can make this python call to lilv's swig bindings not segfault, I will give them a hundred bucks:

https://github.com/Joeboy/joeboy-lv2-plugins/blob/master/lv2...

ericb2• 12 years ago

I have a different theory.

I think everyone who touches it gets a payout. Think about it--legal threats tend to make people angry. Especially anti-intellectual property types. By the odds, shouldn't we be seeing a Streisand effect? Being set for life, though, now that's a good motivator to keep your mouth shut.

girvo2• 12 years ago

And consider all of them saying "moving on to other projects" + a gag order... An interesting theory, I'll give you that.

If I was offered a payout, with the condition of not talking about it at all, I'd probably take it. I don't care about piracy enough, personally.

naterator• 12 years ago

An interesting theory, but the problem with it is that the pool of potential devs is effectively limitless (well, not really but it might as well be). They would have to pay me multiple $10ks to stop dev and shut up. And offering that to 100 or 1,000 devs starts getting really expensive. I don't know. Certainly the first few groups it would work, but... if the cat ever got out, everyone would be lining up to develop it, and it would be easy for the cat to get out.

ericb2• 12 years ago

True, but once the cat gets out of the bag, you can always fall back to the stick-only option.

lettergram• 12 years ago

My guess is that they receive a lawsuit the same time they receive this option.

Everyone is shown the carrot and the stick.

bowlofpetunias• 12 years ago

Replace Popcorn Time with any kind of politically undesirable activity, and it sounds exactly like so many stories from so many totalitarian regimes.

JoeAltmaier• 12 years ago

Is 'politically undesirable' the new PC phrase for 'illegal'?

Rusky• 12 years ago

Is writing Popcorn Time itself actually illegal?

higherpurpose3• 12 years ago

Gagging developers for writing code seems way beyond "legality" to me. They should be able to at least say "I'm being sued for developing Popcorn Time". If your government is gagging you from saying even that...then something has gone terribly wrong somewhere, and yes that does seem like a totalitarian tool when used like that.

pjbrow2• 12 years ago

The doctrines underpinning IP law are flimsy and arbitrary. It's normal for technology to change the balance of power (and the laws that enshrine that balance).

In the current environment, Hollywood's business model is unreasonable, and people know it. Until people think it's reasonable, a lot of them are going to pirate. Technology has changed. Hollywood needs to change.

What should be illegal, is threatening to sue someone for working on code with others.

forgottenpass• 12 years ago

More like a synonym for "rocking the boat." There are legal things that fit the category, as well as illegal things that are not politically agitating (like speeding on a freeway or getting into a fistfight).

mindslight• 12 years ago

No, but "Illegal" is the longstanding newspeak term for "politically undesirable".

philtar• 12 years ago

Anyone have the code somewhere? I'll host it.

Edit: Isn't this it? https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app

What exactly is the problem?

espadrine2• 12 years ago

This has been abandoned (and the history destroyed) over a month ago. Nobody that has access develops it. All forks of this died.

higherpurpose3• 12 years ago

This seems to be the latest one:

https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-app

undershirt• 12 years ago

Wow, thanks. I just cloned, built, and ran it on Mac. It really works well. That was too easy.

logfromblammo• 12 years ago

They're being paid off, with silence a condition of the agreement. Seems like the smart thing to do would be to start a new fork and wait for the lawyer and suspiciously well-muscled paralegal with the inexplicable tire iron to arrive on your doorstep. Then take the money. Don't negotiate, just take the money.

orblivion2• 12 years ago

It's bizarre to me that something awful is apparently being threatened against the developers, and yet new forks are not banned from github.

icpmacdo• 12 years ago

Im not sure how liberal Github is with banning project but I think a possible reason would be they don't want to terminate a project until they get a court order.

orblivion2• 12 years ago

Right, and it surprises me that nobody's ordered Github to take them down, since they presumably ordered the project developers to stop.

wpietri4• 12 years ago

I think Github doesn't have to worry here. Service providers who host content for others generally have safe harbor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicatio...

If people were uploading copyrighted material, then Github would be obliged to honor takedown notices. But here, the code's under some sort of public license, so the takedown process wouldn't apply.

goldenkey3• 12 years ago

http://episodeslist.com is an honest alternative where you can stream from Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, iTunes and more

commentzorro• 12 years ago

Way too expensive. I'm willing to pay RedBox prices for a movie and less than half that for a one hour TV drama.

tapia• 12 years ago

What would happen if suddenly, a very big number of developers (I really mean it... like thousands of developers) began to contribute to such a project. Would hollywood start to sue everyone? And what if some of them would be some "rockstar developers" (like very important for the software world)... yeah... I'm just dreaming, but it would be like the equivalent to a mass protest, that they just wouldn't be able to handle.

wpietri4• 12 years ago

It's an existential threat to Hollywood's current business models. They would sue a very big number of developers. Most of whom would fold about 30 seconds after getting the legal paperwork.

The few who remained would get crushed. Viacom's YouTube suit ran for 7 years before settlement. And Hollywood is practiced at fucking with the little people; you can see Buchwald v Paramount for an example of how they operate, and one of the rare times they lost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchwald_v._Paramount

captainmuon• 12 years ago

I've been thinking, one should find some mortally ill people in whose name one sets up the repository and website (or just a straight site where you can download all the movies). In exchange one secretly pays their family enough in cash or bitcoin that they don't ever have to worry about money again.

If I were filthy rich and had more criminal intentions, I would totally do that ;-)

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

Doesn't it seem like TF could simply create their own Repo, build it and start developing on it and see what comes out of the woodwork? Seems like its pretty easy to bait these mysterious forces.

devx• 12 years ago

Yes, I was also wondering if FSF or someone like that could take the project themselves. Let's see who comes knocking. It wouldn't be the first time FSF "facilitated piracy" by building tools like that (see GnuNet, Mediagoblin, etc), so I doubt they would be too afraid to try it.

lkd3• 12 years ago

You're overestimating TorrentFreak's commitment to investigative journalism.

llamataboot• 12 years ago

Mass forking protest? Could we get 1000 new forks of this project by nightfall?

TazeTSchnitzel• 12 years ago

I don't think the industry is silencing them. I think the original devs have gotten scared of being sued and have quickly dropped the project and severed all connections with it.

lkd3• 12 years ago

This doesn't explain identical behavior by all later devs. The most reasonable explanation is a common cause.

jokoon• 12 years ago

sigh

Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk

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