Popcorn Time is back

by galapago • 12 years ago

181 138 12 years ago

ghughes• 12 years ago

Editorialized title.

I enjoyed the part where they berate the other fork for "ripping off" their UI, which exists solely to facilitate piracy.

ekianjo4• 12 years ago

which exists solely to facilitate piracy.

Let's not use the words the big majors wants people to use. The right wording is copyright infringement and that's it.

13hours• 12 years ago

Piracy is a well known synonym for copyright infringement. I would agree with you that something like "theft" would not be a good term to use, but Piracy is spot-on.

tzs• 12 years ago

If you are a plaintiff writing a complaint, an interested party writing an amicus brief, a legal scholar writing a law review article, and so on, then indeed the right wording is copyright infringement and arguably "that's it".

If you are speaking outside of a formal legal context, than it most certainly is not the case that "that's it". In ordinary English, we overload and generalize many criminal terms, such as "piracy", "theft", and "stealing" to apply to things that do not meet the precise legal definition of those words.

For example, consider "steal" and its variants. Here are some common examples of usage that are not literally the crime of stealing. Many are not even crimes or torts.

• Someone says they do not like cats and have no interest in having one as a pet. A cute stray kitten shows up on their doorstep, they take pity and feed it. They fall in love with it and keep it. They might say that the kitten "stole" their heart.

• An actor playing a minor role in a play gives a performance that outshines the performance of the stars. Many would say that the actor "stole" the show.

• An employee of a rival company poses as a janitor to gain access to your lab and takes a photo of a whiteboard containing the formula for a chemical that is a trade secret in your manufacturing process. It would be common to say that the rival company "stole" your secret formula.

• When crackers gain access to a company's list of customer email addresses, passwords, or credit card numbers, it is commonly said that the data was "stolen".

• Alice is Bob's fiancé. Mallory woos Alice without Bob's knowledge. Alice elopes with Mallory. Most would find it acceptable if Bob said that Mallory "stole" his fiancé.

• A team that has been behind since the start of the game but wins on a last second improbable play is often said to have "stolen" the game.

I could go on [1].

[1] I believe I once posted a longer list, but HN crashed shortly afterward and had to be restored from backup. My post was lost.

Springtime• 12 years ago

I enjoyed the part where they berate the other fork for "ripping off" their UI, which exists solely to facilitate piracy.

I did find this amusing. The irony is strong with this one, although they have some valid points expanded on in the Reddit post linked.

Comment from a contributor on the time4popcorn repo:

    I am also waiting for a reply. You guys just copy other
    people's work and don't even give them proper credits...
    if you decide to start coding I could put you back in.
    Not if you keep stealing though.

kluivers• 12 years ago

Question is: what license is that work released under (GPL3?) and does that license require attribution?

bryan_rasmussen• 12 years ago

They made something to facilitate piracy, most probably piracy not done for profit, but did not pirate something and then put it out as their own with the intention to make a profit.

peterhajas• 12 years ago

They're making an enabling technology which can solely be used for stealing. Seems like piracy to me.

ekianjo4• 12 years ago

I enjoyed the part where they berate the other fork for "ripping off" their UI, which exists solely to facilitate piracy.

You missed their point. They are angry about the ripoff because they include malware in it and try to pass for the real thing. Popcorn time does not pretend to be Metflix or something in terms of branding, so what's where your analogy ends

dspillett4• 12 years ago

I once, in a previous incarnation as a naughty law-breaking youngster, frequented a torrent tracker that specialised in games. You should have seen the vitriol thrown around if someone dare copy someone else's copy/keygen/what-ever without giving appropriate credit... I was thrown off the site for pointing out how amusing the hypocrisy was.

hnarn• 12 years ago

Maybe you were thrown off because you failed to see the difference between simply copying copyrighted content without permission (filesharing), and copying something and claiming that you in fact created it yourself, explicitly (I made this!) or implicitly, by not attributing the original author (plagiarism).

fit2rule3• 12 years ago

There's a missed opportunity here .. movie companies should be forking Popcorn Time, whacking a brand on there, and putting their own version out.

What a pity the world is run by lawyers..

tunnuz• 12 years ago

Netflix does this (the service, not the fork), too bad it is still unavailable in many countries.

ekianjo4• 12 years ago

And its catalog is limited, too, even in the US.

girvo• 12 years ago

The lack of Netflix in Australia really frustrates me. Id pay for it gladly and happily, but I can't, despite living in a first world country that has a very high amount of discretional spending (consider we pay twice what everyone else does, taking into account exchange rates, for software) and the highest rate of copyright infringement in first world countries. Sigh.

mehwoot• 12 years ago

Why?

forrestthewoods• 12 years ago

It's about volume. Sure the movie companies will be giving away their films for free. But if you give away enough films for free it becomes profitable!!

fit2rule3• 12 years ago

Control of your audience, first and foremost: the mainstay of the movie business. If you can convince someone to sit still and watch your art for up to 2 hours at a time, you've got an audience. If you can't, you've lost the audience.

Its an artistic thing - do you have access to, and can you know about, your audience? This has got to be better than not knowing and not having any control whatsoever - or worse, allowing someone else to have your audience (which is what happens with piracy).

But of course, with lawyers and accountants running the show, where they haven't quite figured out how to rate eyeballs in a spreadsheet without having $$-signs around, its no surprise that they're missing this opportunity.

Imagine if Universal embraced Popcorn Time and called their fork "Universal Popcorn Time", and modified it such that their catalog was entirely available. They'd have a real chance against the iTunes/AppStore/Netflix's of the world. Alas, they appear to be asleep at the wheel here .. even though the extremely Great features of Popcorn Time as an app are wide open and available to them ..

zarify• 12 years ago

The Doctor Who fan in me is lamenting that this domain isn't actually about a Popcorn Time-War.

shankysingh2• 12 years ago

update: removed..

thedrei• 12 years ago

Which let out little screams as they hit their target. This war seems on par with a marshmallow fight.

SchizoDuckie• 12 years ago

So they need a domain to tell us this? I'm calling shenanigans

mahyarm• 12 years ago

Next they could add chromecast support / transcoding and they have a pretty good competitor for plex.

After that a couple of mobile clients?

arianvanp• 12 years ago

I'm working on a fork with Chromecast support. It works pretty well. Just a bit scared to open source it. Perhaps i will release it under a pseudonym or something.

It's ridicioulous that people need to be afraid to release stuff but sadly enough this is the case.

espadrine5• 12 years ago

Why not submit your patch to one of the current maintainers privately? That way it won't link to you.

StavrosK• 12 years ago

Please submit it upstream. It would be amazing.

k-mcgrady5• 12 years ago

> It's ridicioulous that people need to be afraid to release stuff but sadly enough this is the case.

I'm conflicted on this. The MPAA abuse their power regularly but it's hard to deny it's now easier and cheaper than ever to access and watch movies. That takes away a lot of the justification for piracy and creating tools that facilitate it.

Edit: And here come the down votes. Don't down vote if you disagree with someone - reply. If they add nothing to the conversation then down vote.

RealGeek• 12 years ago

You can stream it to Chromecast with this trick: http://www.textndata.com/blog/chromecast-popcorn-time-movies

jtreanor• 12 years ago

Popcorn Time previously just showed open domain films in the screen shots. The new one has pictures Game of Thrones and company. It looks like they have stopped pretending this is not for piracy.

edit: clarification

espadrine5• 12 years ago

Now, for morality to be on their side, they need to publicly advocate and work on a better way to remunerate the content creators. Of course, they could go rogue and act exclusively out of spite for big media, arguing parasitically that how the content creators make money is none of their business.

But I really hope they don't.

pikachu_is_cool2• 12 years ago

Why?

RobAley3• 12 years ago

"Morality" is self-defined. No doubt they have their interpretation of morality on their side.

VikingCoder• 12 years ago

work on a better way to remunerate the content creators.

No one gets rewarded for this. The content creators have the exclusive right to establish their pricing terms. Other entities can make offers, of course, but copyright law gives them the exclusive right to establish pricing and distribution.

And they don't want to talk about it. They don't think they have a problem.

rwallace2• 12 years ago

Or they could correctly argue that the existence of big media is a massive net negative for the welfare of humanity, and anything that diverts money away from the industry is good for the world. Not that piracy seems to put much of a dent in the revenues of Hollywood, unfortunately, but if it did, that would be more than adequate moral justification for supporting Popcorn Time.

Cakez0r• 12 years ago

Perhaps they are choosing not to concern themselves with morality.

edoloughlin2• 12 years ago

Popcorn Time doesn't pirate movies, people pirate movies.

jws• 12 years ago

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

mzs• 12 years ago

The original one did as well initially, then quickly the films in the images changed to what you saw.

antihero2• 12 years ago

Someone posted a really good article on the being right vs being pragmatic - about it being a service problem as opposed to an ethical one, or something like that. It'd be really handy if someone could post it.

rrreese• 12 years ago

You're probably thinking of this article by Marco Arment: http://www.marco.org/2012/02/25/right-vs-pragmatic

mentos• 12 years ago

I 100% agree with this approach but what does it imply for the TV/Movie industry?

To me the problem is that they cannot control distribution. So one solution could be baking adverts into the tv/movie. Has the obvious flaw of poisoning art with advertising, but if done well might work?

What does everyone else see as the pragmatic solution?

DarqWebster• 12 years ago

It's like crossing the street.

You might legally have the right of way. Pragmatically however, you need to get out of the way of the moving car.

madeofpalk• 12 years ago

Or jay-walking.

Legally should should walk to the crossing at the end of the block. But pragmatically you could just run across the road during a lull of traffic.

krisgenre• 12 years ago

I am beginning to think time4popcorn might be the NSA! :O

danra• 12 years ago

Does anyone have the specifics of what malware time4popcorn includes?

imikay• 12 years ago

They are using SEO tricks to get a better rank.

happywolf• 12 years ago

Some of the reactions here remind me of the time when mp3 starting to gain traction (circa ~1995). A lot of people were worried this new file format would mark the end of entertainment business: who would spend money to buy songs when they could download for free in mp3 format? I guess I don't need to point out how much money Apple has made through iTunes by selling unprotected audio tracks for the past years.

In other words, I see similarities in concerns people are having on Popcorn Time and the introduction of mp3 10+ years ago. Businesses die not because of piracy, but because of lack of innovation and not meeting consumers' needs. period.

baby• 12 years ago

There is a difference between trying to find a mp3 to download and having the convenience of an application that works as well as netflix for movies but is completely free.

(btw I started coding on a popcorn-like but for music. Think spotify for free. https://github.com/mimoo/nodster it's here. But I'm thinking about changing the code to just converting youtube videos to mp3 instead of looking for mp3 files on google)

dublinben4• 12 years ago

Do you not remember programs like Napster and Limewire? They were as convenient as iTunes (years before iTMS was launched) and offered every song you could imagine. It's just surprising that it's taken so long for similar services to mature for video content.

chasing• 12 years ago

I guess I don't need to point out how much money Apple has made through iTunes by selling unprotected audio tracks for the past years.

Who gives a shit how much Apple makes? If the creators can't make enough to cover their costs or -- even better -- make a living practicing their art, then we all lose out.

(Edit: I'm not attacking happywolf -- I understand what she or he is saying. I'm just trying to put a pin on the real trouble with the economics of selling media. The aggregators have been doing fine. It's the creators who appear to be feeling the squeeze.)

glaugh• 12 years ago

My brother works in Hollywood, and would make the distinction that while musicians can make money on tour and with merch, movies basically only make money from selling the right to watch the thing.

I'd like to justify pirating movies, but I actually find that logic compelling. Ideas on other ways for folks in movies to get paid?

lobo_tuerto• 12 years ago

The same could be said about "songs", I guess.

Who is "movies"? The actors? The producers? The director?

xsmasher• 12 years ago

Kevin Smith has taken his last two movies on the road, selling out venues with a combined "Movie + Q&A" performance. He's presumably making more this way than he would with the traditional theatrical distribution, and he still has the option of putting it on VOD later.

It doesn't scale, though. I don't want to wait around for movies the way you wait for concerts to come around. It is an unpirateable experience, though.

js2• 12 years ago

The movie/tv/cable/theater industry's problem is that it's greedy at every level. Region locked DVDs, release windows, forced previews, commercials in the theater before your movie, commercials on paid streaming content (I'm looking at you Cosmos), Amazon for one thing, Apple for another, Netflix for a third, etc, etc. It wreaks of screw the customer, I'm getting mine.

Yes, a lot of this is a consequence of a free market. But so what? The end-result is that popcorn time is a compelling product not solely to get the content for free, but mostly because it's the least hassle way to get content at all.

hash9• 12 years ago

There's a ton of ways Hollywood can get paid but it may not be as easy or profitable.

Although it wouldn't be popular I could imagine Hollywood relying more on product placement. I've noticed TV shows targeted at young people having increasing amounts of brands in them.

Plus there's Kickstarter style. People pay for the movie they want to get made. Veronica Mars was funded this way.

justizin• 12 years ago

right. without popcorn time, i can download movies on a good connection faster via torrent than from itunes. i can watch tv shows that are artificially delayed from recordings on the east coast before they air on the west coast. i'm happy to support the content creators, but they make it so difficult to get at the content, it's tough to feel bad.

Following your metaphor, I now think back to how much money I spent on CDs which are now lost, damaged, what-have-you, and I have no license to that music - same for DVDs.

Fuck 'em.

mwilkison• 12 years ago

How feasible would it be to build an alt coin on top of Popcorn-Time. Call it PopCoin or Popcorn-Coin or something :). You pay every time you watch a movie, you get paid for hosting torrents and some percentage of each transaction is routed to the content creator/whoever owns the rights to the content?

kwamenum86• 12 years ago

PS: On a sidenote, and as Torrent Freak has written about them, I must point that Time4Popcorn are pretending to be developing another version of Popcorn Time. The truth is that they are ripping some of our community work without crediting the authors. We would obviously have no concerns if they acknowledged the source of the work, as Popcorn Time is an open source project. The latest example being how they compiled in their app 5 days of our UI work.

No words.

coffeecodecouch• 12 years ago

They're concerned about Time4Popcorn crediting the work as their own, which Popcorn Time (or any pirating platform I've ever seen) doesn't do.

abustamam2• 12 years ago

I can understand the logic, but no one using Popcorn time will credit the movie for being their own. No one thinks the star of Hunger Games was the developer of Popcorn Time, or the person pirating it, and no one is claiming as such.

Secondly, from my cursory glance, it seems as if T4P can/will easily spread malware, but this could just be fearmongering on Popcorn Time's end.

butterfi• 12 years ago

"We are totally aware of the legal implications, and we're not afraid, because we care for the people."

Personally I'd be interested in hearing more about how this is helping people. I suspect there are much better things you could be doing to help people then this project. A more accurate sentence might be: "We are totally aware of the legal implications, and we're not afraid, because we're doing it for the lolz and free movies"

rkuykendall-com• 12 years ago

The "lolz" might be more accurate, but I suspect that anybody developing for this project has no problems getting free movies without this app. It is marketed at people who find Bittorent complicated.

The most 'defendable' use-case would be an elderly, poor, sick grandmother in a country with no copyright laws who just wants to watch movies with her grandchildren or something. This might sound laughable to you, but developers for apps like this think of that as their target demographic, not all the mid-20s middle class Americans mostly using the app.

runawaybottle• 12 years ago

But here's the thing, people that know the most about getting stuff for free also automate the hell out of it. If you've got a usenet account, you've probably got the following setup:

- https://couchpota.to/ - http://sickbeard.com/ - https://github.com/rembo10/headphones

People auto-download the latest episode of a tv show throughout the season, albums, etc.

spaznode2• 12 years ago

Hey wait, http://www.time4popcorn.eu/ app compared to one referenced in this article is much much more functionally complete for what you see right now today.

Like tv series / playback torrent network seems to always work immediately. The get-popcorn app as it is now provides none of it.

So "blah blah blah" about all the promises and project mission. If you just want to have some f-in popcorn time enjoyment. If get-popcorn ends up being better at some point great, til then ...

http://www.time4popcorn.eu/ is the only popcorn for me. =)

computer• 12 years ago

Your time4popcorn runs code with full access to your computer directly from a server controlled by unnamed individuals who are acting in completely mysterious ways. I.e. on every load of the app, it downloads code from a server controlled by the time4popcorn guys, and then executes it locally with access to your entire system.

I would never trust such an app.

spaznode2• 12 years ago

Ohhh ..uhhh shit. Well, good point then. Glad I asked. =/

pennetti• 12 years ago

This is just another indication that video media is in need of a new medium. There is a need something like Steam or Spotify, but for TV Shows and movies. Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, etc. are all lacking in terms of the videos they offer and there's nothing to fill the void unless you want to go into the realm of physical media (and let's be honest, you don't). Torrents are easy, but managing a collection and getting good quality videos is still a pain.

I'm in college now and I started torrenting music in the 8th grade - iTunes came and I realized that I would have had to spend thousands of dollars to get the collection I wanted - so I continued to torrent music. I would have missed out on a lot of music if I relied on iTunes (and be out $100k or so) but once I found Spotify and realized that I would no longer have to edit all the ID3 tags, find album work, and deal with poor audio quality for $5 a month, I instantly switched and haven't looked back (except for music they lack like The Beatles, AC/DC, and Def Leppard which I still torrent, oops).

Game of Thrones recently broke a torrent record [1] and the CEO of HBO basically said they appreciate the publicity and thank their fans. IMO money is not as big of an issue for video as it is for music because the networks and actors aren't suffering the way musicians do (this is just my opinion based on observation). Yeah, Spotify has been called out for not compensating artists properly [2] but I think it's a step in the right direction in terms of service.

I like the idea of something like Popcorn Time but I think it's just a wake-up call that there is a need for innovation in the realm of video media. The music and gaming industries have seen a shift in recent years, so maybe movies and tv shows are not far behind...

[1] http://time.com/63331/game-of-thrones-torrent-record/ [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/thom-yorke-explains-why-he-ha...

Popcorn Time is back

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