Joker – Torrents to streamable video

http://joker.org/

by bmaeser • 12 years ago

401 158 12 years ago

joker.org

Phogo• 12 years ago

Wow, that was easy and actually worked flawlessly.

Could you provide us with a little info on the technologies behind it?

bmaeser2• 12 years ago

sorry, not my site or tech. i just shared the link here on hn.

colinramsay• 12 years ago

This worked really well for me after a few seconds of stuttering at the start. Looking at the network requests, it's streaming from an MP4 file on the server which I guess is being fed by the torrent. But doesn't it effectively mean that this site is hosting the MP4 of potentially illegal content - even if just a few seconds of it? Or even as just a container for it?

pessimizer• 12 years ago

That's not how I expected it to be designed. I assumed that you would only be asking for the pieces to fill a moving buffer starting from the beginning of the file (like a sort of client 'superseeding.')

edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-seeding

super-leeching?

easytiger• 12 years ago

If it all runs in the browser then its no different than running a libtorrent application locally or such locally

romanovcode• 12 years ago

It depends. In Germany, for example, it's illegal to SEED, downloading is not a problem. That's why websites similar to mega upload and russian movie streaming websites are so popular there.

If this thing only gives content to you and you don't give anything back than it's pretty cool.

chii• 12 years ago

i was hoping that it was a javascript torrent client, not a server based media player that happened to use a torrent to obtain that media (then immediately serving that media). It's a cool tech, but it's a tech that can be targeted by "authorities", and so sooner rather than later, will get taken down due to copyright claims.

agumonkey2• 12 years ago

Tried different links (magnets or .torrent) without any luck. I'm curious to see how it behaves even though I don't intend to use it afterwards.. just for the sake of doing it in the browser. Anyone care to give me a small sample magnet ? <10M

icebraining3• 12 years ago

This works fine for me: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:373b1794e9e73dbf206bce304a5900851193f285&dn=steal+ this+film+part+1+and+2&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A8 0%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337

caractacus3• 12 years ago

Tried an mkv from NYAA: no go, format not supported (loads to 100% but then gives the error)

Different mkv from Kickass: format not supported (without loading, apparently, though I wonder if it's cached given that it was Guardians of the Galaxy)

TV episode of Gotham: same as for previous

Something is happening because it says e.g. 'Gotham' in the top and retrieves a nice faded background of the cast but I keep getting 'format not supported'

EDIT: seems to be my browser or connection; trying a different machine on a different IP and it works very nicely and quickly indeed.

mk00• 12 years ago

Worked beautifully for me, including loading at different points. Very nice.

bluehazed• 12 years ago

Worked fantastic. Awesome.

Mendim2• 12 years ago

IT saves the torrents in host.i checked an video.the site maybe will be suspended because is hosted ilegaly contents

http://v4.joker.org/v/d027a2418e34d040f015a75376d627c0a022e2...

ikt• 12 years ago

looks like it deletes the file shortly after download?

Mendim2• 12 years ago

let we check it after 24 hours.maybe they delete files automaticaly.but for now the link is alive yet.

drdoooom2• 12 years ago

this is really great, worked better than i anticipated. maybe a xbmc addon in the future!

zperrault• 12 years ago

There are actually several XBMC addons that do this sort of Torrent file streaming. Here's one: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=200957

drdoooom2• 12 years ago

that's great, thanks i'll check it out. i don't suppose you know of a similar option for roku?

Patrick_Devine• 12 years ago

Didn't have time to look through the DOM. Is this a javascript torrent client? I think there was one out there in the wild before, but I'm not sure how good it was. I always thought if there was a simple JS torrent library out there, Bit torrent could make a comeback.

mhaymo• 12 years ago

According to this (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4776112/is-it-possible-to...), it's not possible to build a bittorrent client in javascript.

MzHN• 12 years ago

That was true in 2011, when the question was asked and answered.

For recent developments, take a look at http://webtorrent.io

iambot• 12 years ago

it is: https://github.com/feross/webtorrent

kristofferR2• 12 years ago

Damn, it's awesome that bandwidth has become this cheap.

This isn't a torrent client in your browser, the server actually does the torrenting for you and then streams the file to you as it's downloading on the server.

interdrift• 12 years ago

What if the data isn't a video.Does every format have a header which provides that it's actually a video?I assume it works through a stream feeding it with data at a time and then decoding it?

icebraining3• 12 years ago

Does every format have a header which provides that it's actually a video?

I've never seen one that didn't. Certainly the most common containers do.

hotgoldminer• 12 years ago

What are the legal ramifications of streaming pirated content? Could you cache popular content to preserve downstream traffic? Or is that the loophole? This plus content aggregation/browsing.. hmm..

belorn• 12 years ago

Depend where the server is located. In this case its UK law that dictate the rules. If it did go to court, I would suspect that the case Public Relations Consultants Association Limited [PRCA] v. The Newspaper Licensing Agency Limited and others (http://www.ip-watch.org/2013/05/07/viewing-cached-copyrighte...) would be relevant.

"The court said: Whether looking at a cached copy of protected content, without downloading or printing it, amounts to infringement. Lower courts held that it does, a finding unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court.".

kristofferR2• 12 years ago

How is downloading defined?

showsover• 12 years ago

The owner ought to be happy if he's not extradited to america.

See Richard O'Dwyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Dwyer

NoMoreNicksLeft• 12 years ago

The legality of is moot. Do the copyright cartels like it (no need to answer)?

If so, then high-profile and particularly-irritating pirates will be targeted, and if the laws don't specifically make it illegal then they will be twisted to enable prosecution anyway.

In the United States, prosecutors routinely fabricate financial returns for piracy, that way it's a felony instead of a misdemeanor. They do this by making the argument that the movies they downloaded for personal viewing constitute financial proceeds.

When such a thing is not only possible, but standard operating procedure, asking about the legal ramifications are silly. You're probably still safe just by being part of the herd, but they've been known to single out people to make examples of too.

rhino369• 12 years ago

Legal ramifications for you or for joker.org.

For you, it is copyright infringement. But it's hard to catch you. I guess you are vulnerable to joker.org giving you up if they get subpoenaed, if they keep records.

For joker.org, that depends on how they are classified. It probably does not qualify for a transitory network safeharbor because 1) if it's servers are uploading it is giving the file to more than one person and 2) joker.org is arguably modifying the content by assembling it into a stream. Though I could be convinced it isn't modifying it just by streaming it. If they are caching, it would also bust their safeharbor.

If it is classified as a §512(c) site, it has a better argument actually. Though I don't see a DMCA agent listed on the site.

Jamie452• 12 years ago

Seeking seems super fast, I'm impressed!

afro88• 12 years ago

Anyone know how this would work in Germany? They're incredibly strict on torrents here (you can torrent one movie and get a letter in the mail 2 weeks later). This seems like it would be a nice workaround... While it lasts

jagermo2• 12 years ago

It would work - however, I guess you mean: "Will I stay anonymous and/or not upload anything, so the movie industry will not send their goons/laywers after me."

I'd say no.

kuschku• 12 years ago

The idea is that streaming can never be illegal under current german laws, so if the server is just handing an mp4 to the client, then it’s perfectly legal.

hobofan• 12 years ago

If you stream it through your browser, they still have the same IP, which is used to identify you.

As for prosecution of torrent seeders, that's not really possible anymore IIRC, since the "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" (= stockpile saving of which IP address has been connect to which landline, in case it is needed for law enforcement) has been declared illegal. AFAIK movie torrents were never really monitored, the focus was always on the latest music releases. I also haven't heard of any fines for torrenting in the last 2-3 years, but that might be because I'm not really in that age anymore.

memorion• 12 years ago

They can have your IP but just streaming itself isn't illegal in Germany and since you actually don't personally seed the content here you might just be ok.

rglullis• 12 years ago

You can leech in Germany just fine. Legally, the problem here is only in uploading the content.

Or if you want to be extra careful, use a VPN. ipredator is reasonably good, and you get an IP number from Sweden so you can also bypass all the GEMA crap.

atmosx3• 12 years ago

I can think more ways to circumvent that system than I can count. I'm in CZ now and the Pirate-Bay has this banner[1] might be a good start.

[1] https://www.frootvpn.com

denisnazarov2• 12 years ago

This is not actually p2p. Check out https://github.com/feross/webtorrent. Hoping to hear feross' input.

caractacus3• 12 years ago

Does that matter? The joker.org server is doing the p2p download bit and streaming the content to the browser.

It's likely that it's caching material for torrents. I tried Guardians of the Galaxy and could skip almost all the way to the end of the film when it had only just begun.

skolor• 12 years ago

That could quite possibly just being taking advantage of the torrent block downloading. Normally you download blocks based on the least available, but you can pull them in any order you want. This would allow the server to selectively buffer whatever you need fairly quickly.

That said, its likely that they're cacheing.

denisnazarov2• 12 years ago

A free seedbox with no login barrier is unscalable for many reasons. Its neat, but I would rather see everyone who thinks this is interesting contribute to the Webtorrent project, which strives to make being a torrent node as easy as visiting a URL, using WebRTC as the data channel.

foobarqux4• 12 years ago

webtorrent doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. The most important part, client integration, hasn't occurred anywhere, and the author hasn't even pursued it.

woah• 12 years ago

How can you say it's not getting anywhere? Last time I checked, Feross is pushing an incredible amount of modular, high quality code. His #webtorrent IRC room is highly active and has even become a meeting place of sorts for people working on other decentralization projects. The idea that client integration is the most important part is entirely your opinion, and it's an opinion that not many agree with. In a completely browser-based form webtorrent could still have the potential to cut media hosting costs by a factor of 100.

daddykotex• 12 years ago

Very impressive, it worked flawlessly for me with a randomly picked torrent. The file was an MP4.

Good job, I hope you find a way to make it stick around!

fredley• 12 years ago

On my Chromebook I use JSTorrent: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jstorrent/anhdpjpo...

kzahel• 12 years ago

Which has a free trial version: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jstorrent-lite/abm...

sdk16420• 12 years ago

The paid version of Vuze also allows streaming torrent videos http://www.vuze.com/features/playnow

So all in all, hardly a new concept, but this looks really convenient to use.

j_s• 12 years ago

Tribler is free and will prioritize piece-picking to allow immediate playback while the download is in progress. This has long been frowned upon in the BitTorrent community and usually leads to client bans from the more pickiest of the private sharing sites.

http://www.tribler.org/

kumarharsh• 12 years ago

It seems there is another issue: Some of the torrent videos don't play at all.

manish_gill• 12 years ago

I wonder how this will work with Private Trackers?

neogenix• 12 years ago

Does it support ChromeCast?

baldfat• 12 years ago

So a ton of links and stories are removed from Hacker News based on???? But a service that stream pirated material is fine?

undrwatr• 12 years ago

I'm sure there's at least one legal video torrent out there. Technology alone does not infringement make.

darkstar999• 12 years ago

Bank robbers use cars. Ban all cars.

kbart2• 12 years ago

What's with the attitude that torrents == piracy? Torrents have many legitimate uses and is great technology for decentralized sharing, for example, you can download some Linux distributions via torrents from the official site what in turn reduces cost for the maintainers. It's the same as saying that all Tor users are pedophiles. I expect people here in HN to be more technologically literate and less biased than average Joe.

bmaeser2• 12 years ago

developer of joker.org joined comments on product hunt: http://www.producthunt.com/posts/joker

josu2• 12 years ago

This is the guy who claims to be the developer: https://twitter.com/ufukaltinok

wmt4• 12 years ago

The guy sure likes superonlinealmalimiyim.com

imaginenore• 12 years ago

That's a Turkish name, and there are a couple of Facebook accounts that match the name and the photo.

Here's the US-Turkey extradition treaty:

http://www.mcnabbassociates.com/Turkey%20International%20Ext...

Codename47tr2• 12 years ago

Even works perfect on my ipad, amazing

Sami_Lehtinen• 12 years ago

In Finland it's totally legal to watch streamed pirated content. But the streamer (source) will get quite likely get sued and pay a lot.

IkmoIkmo• 12 years ago

Wow that was smooth as butter... Am I unique or is everyone getting speed like this?

wmt4• 12 years ago

What's the catch? I have a few trust issues when someone wants to pay his own money to give me access to mostly illegal content.

Somebody just spent time making a torrent streaming service, and is now paying for the bandwidth it takes to download that torrent content AND to upload it to your browser. What I could quickly see about the service is that the facebook "app" of it doesn't have too many users[1], dyn.com[2] handles the site DNS (not free) and redstation.com[3] hosts the service (not free).

[1] https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer/?method=GET&p...

[2] http://who.is/whois/joker.org

[3] http://tools.pingdom.com/ping/?target=149.3.133.138&o=1

Codename47tr2• 12 years ago

I think after few months, it'll not be free. This is the trial

tomp• 12 years ago

Ads.

MegaUpload (and all other "upload"/filesharing websites), Grooveshark.

Google and Facebook are not really giving you access to mostly illegal content, but are still paying their own money for the bandwidth (which is huge, in the case of Facebook).

foobarqux4• 12 years ago

The catch is the owner is clueless. If it doesn't close due to load in a few days it will close due to liability in a few weeks.

wmt4• 12 years ago

I would've disagreed with your assessment, but then the guy came out with his (probably) own name and picture @ https://twitter.com/ufukaltinok

graystevens2• 12 years ago

I'm assuming you can extract a nice amount of personal information from 'private' torrents and links. Excellent way to harvest accounts of private torrent sites for your own personal gain.

jsmthrowaway• 12 years ago

That isn't how private torrents work. They contain a key that identifies the user who downloaded it, for bookkeeping purposes on the site (tracking bytes in and bytes out for ratio purposes), but you cannot get into the site's UI from the information in the torrent. This was a deliberate design decision in most private tracker software, notably Gazelle, because it was accepted that people would post the .torrent files in other places. Many trackers also limit the IP addresses that are permitted to join a swarm based upon the same identifier in the torrent file; all of the ones I've been in have required me to disclose the IP addresses of my seedboxes, and attempting to use another IP address would get my account flagged for a ban.

So no, your assumption is completely incorrect. Even if someone shoved a passthepopcorn torrent in there, (a) that person would likely get banned from ptp, (b) it probably wouldn't work in the first place because joker's servers couldn't join the swarm and (c) the information that the owner of joker can glean from such a torrent file would be almost entirely useless unless the goal is boosting the ratio of the user.

As much as you'd assume about something you've never used, private torrents are actually a well-oiled, quite secure machine. It's easy to think of pirates as incompetent, but Gazelle is actually decent software and the biggest problem I ever faced while involved in that scene was DDoS attacks against the trackers.

namsterdamus• 12 years ago

No catch really, This isn't new my friend ran server farms that did this same thing in china and asia. Originally they served as proxy servers for delivering censored content in China but then due to the availability of massive server farms he tested out a service that streamed torrents, even megauploads links, zip files, etc all from a single site. I think it was called PaperBus. Because the farms are in China it was cost effective and could transfer torrents relatively quickly server to server after which it would eventually have many of the files already cached and could continue to serve it up faster.

corford• 12 years ago

Off-topic but does anyone here have any first hand experience with redstation.com ? Hadn't heard of them before but have just checked their prices and they're in the same ball park as Hetzner. Surprised me given they are a UK based operation (our hosting always seems to be more expensive than equivalent stuff on the continent).

rasz_pl2• 12 years ago

Downloading movies is perfectly legal in many European countries.

Bpit• 12 years ago

Perfectly legal is way different than not pursued ...

atmosx3• 12 years ago

Is this open source? Can I download/install this to my VPS?!

taneem• 12 years ago

What's the difference between this and Popcorn Time?

louhike• 12 years ago

Popcorn Time is decentralized. It does not require the movie to be downloaded first on a server, unlike this service.

calvin_c• 12 years ago

As I understand it Popcorn Time torrents and seeds a file sequentially, allowing you to watch the video as it downloads and removes the video from your device when it's over. It's more similar to torrenting a file yourself, but doesn't store the file when it's over. In contrast this torrents the file to the server and allows you to stream the content over your browser, so it isn't your device doing the leeching and seeding. You just watch it all happen.

taternuts• 12 years ago

Last I checked, it's actually a simple check-box in the settings to stop popcorn time from deleting the file afterwards. Really the only thing popcorn time did over the old-fashioned torrenting process was enable easy 'streaming' of torrents by downloading the bits in order instead of by least available first, as well as a nice UI to find them

h43k3r• 12 years ago

I am thinking of starting a project similar to this for DC++. DC++ is pretty popular in many of the indian universities intranet networks for sharing files/music/videos(I know its illegal, but no one cares about it here in India because very weak laws) . Anyone having any inputs on this?

foobarqux4• 12 years ago

iflix.io, which did the exact same thing (in fact I think it is the same code base), closed after a few days because it is not sustainable to do the downloading on behalf of the client.

tomphoolery• 12 years ago

Noticed "Inception" was much easier to stream than "200 Motels", and the laserdisc version didn't even work. How in the hell does this thing work? It's pretty awesome, once the movie actually downloads. :)

Seems like there's some caching going on. Good idea.

dchuk• 12 years ago

Well, "200 Motels" shows about 16 seeds on Kickass right now, while Inception has about 1600. So that would explain why one works so much better than the other.

emerongi2• 12 years ago

It must be caching the more popular torrents. Inception loaded up within 1s for me, which means there probably was no communication between the trackers and the server. Other torrents didn't even load up for me.

jokoon• 12 years ago

I remember watching some video of bram cohen in his lab, where he was actually making some p2p video client.

I guess what he's working on at this moment... I guess nothing ?

caractacus3• 12 years ago

Bram Cohen has been working on some p2p video client for years and I don't think he's ever even released an alpha. Given that (i) typical residential broadband speeds have increased dramatically over the last few years and (ii) bittorrent or some form of it has become the accepted means for cheap live video streaming by clients the world over (qvod, pps, popcorntime, etc etc), I don't see what issues he might be facing.

digital-rubber• 12 years ago

Somehow i predict this site will not live long. Mainly because of the legal implications.

If it does live long, i might start to wonder if this is some RIAA like honeypot system to have users report where they get their torrent downloads from by sharing the links directly.

Just my penny.

mbesto2• 12 years ago

I do exactly this with Put.io - (1) get magnet link (2) stream on the browser and (3) push out to chromecast on my TV. No downloading ever.

My understanding of "how is this legal" is the following - the server and server admin has no keys to the data so it would be impossible for them to do DMCA. Put.io has been around for a long time now so I'm pretty sure they've cleared the legal hurdles already.

hyperbovine2• 12 years ago

I congratulate you on possessing such an easily appeased conscience.

coryfklein2• 12 years ago

You assume he is doing something wrong, but using torrents to stream video is probably amoral, not immoral.

mbesto2• 12 years ago

What does my conscience have anything to do with the technical functionality of this system and a discussion on the legality of it?

atmosx3• 12 years ago

conscience?

When you explain to me why a guy selling one tomato that once eaten can not be replicated and a digital good that once replicated loses none of it's quality are the same, I'll start talking about conscience.

ps. I'm not saying that people should not pay for digital content. But when there are farmers out there who sell their products under the same rules Sony Entertainment sells mp3's of songs written 20 years in digital format, sorry there's something utterly wrong with the system.

delluminatus• 12 years ago

This happens every time someone brings up torrenting on HN: a baseless, sarcastic, unsubstantiated, "moral" judgement.

Why do you feel the need to stick your head into the comment section and spit out a worthless one-line comment about conscience?

Please keep your morality complex out of our technical discussion.

kansface• 12 years ago

Being around for a long time in this space simply means no one with means has seen fit to sue/extort them out of business yet.

omgmog• 12 years ago

Tested with Big Buck Bunny and it seems to work nice enough.

http://distribution.bbb3d.renderfarming.net/video/mp4/bbb_su...

maram• 12 years ago

Wow! this is very simple and easy to use!! I wonder for how long it will be available..

geekymartian• 12 years ago

This is cute, but I will continue using peerflix : https://github.com/mafintosh/peerflix . Loads way faster and is not hosted/tracked (besides the obvious p2p interaction). And I don't have to see ads.

hyyypr• 12 years ago

Thanks, very nice little software.

Aissen• 12 years ago

So this is basically put.io, but free ?

JCJoverTCP• 12 years ago

dont torrent chunks show up out of order?

valarauca1• 12 years ago

No this is how you stream torrents.

Normally you request what ever chunk a seeder has available. But instead you request in order. This slows your speed (slightly), but a torrent likely will still finish before the movie has making the point moot.

paul9290• 12 years ago

With all the streaming sites out there that let you watch ALL your favorite TV shows and the latest movies, I never understood the lure of PopCorn Time and this type of site?

With both Popcorn Time and this tool (site) I could receive a copyright infringement notice. While the streaming sites that stream the latest from the Pirate Bay & more are liable. Further, by the letter of the law, me watching these streams is perfectly legal; no copyright notice will be received.

Maybe the streaming sites I speak of are not well known or not openly spoken about because they'll get shut down?

veridies• 12 years ago

There's also the issue of quality; most free streaming sites have much more heavily compressed video than a good torrent. And you don't have to deal with ads on a torrent.

anilshanbhag• 12 years ago

This service is very good. You can watch pretty much any video (not a movie - that's piracy you know) as if it were hosted on Youtube. Scrolling is smooth and almost instantaneous load time.

jmbmxer• 12 years ago

I work in security and have been running into more and more issues with these types of Torrent streaming services. People at work mostly know that downloading a BitTorrent client, seeding, leeching, etc. is bad but they have no idea that these streaming applications are doing the same exact thing behind the scenes. They just see it as a way to watch free movies. Keep your employees informed about this and tighten up your policies because DMCA laws apply.

kbart2• 12 years ago

As other comments have already mentioned, watching the streaming contest (even copyrighted) is perfectly legal in many countries (at least in EU).

notax• 12 years ago

Doesn't seem to work. I get an error on any torrent I try, regardless of source or video format.

Joker – Torrents to streamable video

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