Popcorn Time Is Dead | Hacker News Reader

Popcorn Time Is Dead

techcrunch.com

55 pointsamitkumar0135 comments

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FWIW, the source code is still around on GitHub, if you'd like to fork it:

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

It doesn't seem to mention the license it's released under, though.

Bizzarely, they've erased the entire commit history yet not the source code.

Maybe that was accidental and they intended to destroy it all but screwed up.

I doubt it was an accident, it's trivial to delete a repo on GitHub. I think they wanted their involvement (git commit history) removed from the primary repo.

Indeed. https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app/graphs/contribut...

Note that they're still listed in every fork of the repo.

The api used to pull movie information and torrent magnet links (subapi.com) has been disabled. Here's a working fork using the yts.re api: https://github.com/isra17/popcorn-app

ok thats weird because I have just finished my working version with tys.re api, and just saw this comment.

here is link that you can find precompiled executables http://kemald.com/pt/popcorn.html and here is my fork https://github.com/cettox/popcorn-app

The Mac version does not run on my Macbook Air running OS X 10.9.2

Interesting, I would look into this when I get my hands on my mac!

Really compelling open-source apps don't die; they metastatize.

free software

The greatest trick the devil has ever pulled...
But if that makes Hollywood sleep better at night, sure - sleep tight, Hollywood! All is well with the world now. No need to bother your pretty heads with Popcorn Time anymore. You can go back to your extortionist business models again.

What annoys me most about the war on Bittorrent is that it comes at such a tremendous cost. There used to be a time when you could find all kinds of _rare_ data in the Bittorrent swarm.
Now, between all the banning, blocking, slowing down and taking down of trackers, a lot of the richness is gone.
Sure, all the holywood crap is still there, but what about the sitedumps of now-offline web plattforms and the like?

I'm sure the decision to move on with their lives involved a "friendly email" and maybe a pay out, I guess we'll never truly know. Considering it was no different to that of uTorrent, Vuze and every other bittorrent client out there (you can stream torrents in uTorrent) it makes me wonder what the real reason was.
I've got the source code on my machine and there are quite a few forks of it still around anyways. Brilliant program, works extremely well.

Can you run it locally and it works the same?

One of the API's I believe that the developers were running is not working, someone has created a version of it here if you're interesting where they've got it working: http://kemald.com/pt/popcorn.html#.UyOq2PmSx8E — downside is a couple of features are no longer working like subtitles and no quality selection. Minor downsides in my opinion.

Interesting.
Here's another thought experiment - what if the app itself was decentralized - meaning 1,000's of local machines P2P load balanced.

If Hollywood wants to go down kicking and screaming, so be it. Piracy will come out on top eventually, it's only a matter of time.

All for disrupting Hollywood, but pirating (or file-sharing however you want to phrase it) is NOT how we are going to accomplish this.
The ripest piece of disruption is distribution platforms and working with studios to find a safe way to release a picture not going around them illegally.

Hollywood isn't going to work with you to disrupt anything.

Actually they have every intention of doing just that. Look at the decline in movie ticket sales year by year over the last 4. Emerging distribution platforms like Netflix and Hulu get lots of attention from production companies because they aren't afraid to shake it up and provide an alternative to the studio giants that don't develop small movies anymore.

On the contrary, piracy is exactly how we are going to accomplish this.

Thesis; Antithesis; Synthesis. That's how it always works.
Does anyone really think it would be possible today to buy a DRM-free song for under a buck from multiple sources, if not for the competition represented by Napster and its successors?

You make it sound like this is the only opportunity for disruption yet fail to bring a point to the table to back up this claim. Piracy is a violation of copyrighted content plain and simple. It is illegal. We will find another way.

Laws change.

I'm sure you said the exact same thing about music piracy until iTunes came along...

This is exactly what I am talking about haha. Nabster was the precursor to iTunes. iTunes disrupted everything legally.

Does anyone have original software for Linux-32bit?

Even the source code is gone?

Larger discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7401055

The source code its on the installation of hhte peoples machines. dont?

At least one API it uses has been killed as well.

"after only four days"?
I've known about popcorn time for at least a month...

It only exploded onto mainstream news sites 4 days ago.

Yeah but they talk about it like it's only been around for four days...

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