Popcorn Time is back | Hacker News Reader

Popcorn Time is back

popcorntimewar.com

181 pointsgalapago138 comments

"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"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Why?

> Why?

Why I hope they don't just stay rogue? Because having a self-sustainable, transparent industry that actually tries to protect users benefits everyone in the long-run.

Creators would accept such an industry because they could do what they love for money, and users would accept it because they would obtain entertainment while knowing where the money they spend goes, and knowing that the work will go to the public domain after a reasonable amount of time.

I know I sound like a fool; no need to tell me.

Sorry, I should have clarified. I meant this: "arguing parasitically that how the content creators make money is none of their business"

I was just wondering your thought process here. It seems that you think piracy is a bad thing, when I see it as a good thing. Who cares about the industry? We have more and higher quality music, software, movies, and TV than ever because of piracy. And for free! Shouldn't that be celebrated? We can now focus on spending our money on more pressing things like food, shelter and health care.

Sure, some people can't make money off of direct sales of copies but markets change. We can adapt. Just look at Chance the Rapper, he gave both albums out for free (never charged a dime) and he's rolling in dough because of features and concerts. Also I'm pretty sure he's not at the mercy of a record company, either.

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

Sure, but many share a similar definition of morality.

More to the point, the economics are not relative to a point of view. Their project can only succeed, as it stands, if it is used marginally. If everyone used it instead of the competition, content creators would have to change the way they work drastically, and no new content would show up on PT.

> no new content would show up on PT

This does not logically follow from your argument.

We would have to look at similar areas where creators are not paid. For example, most YouTube videos are created with unpaid labor. This does not seem to affect their quantity. Quality varies, but payment does not seem to be the defining factor of quality videos.

There are many more economic models than pay-at-the-point-of-use, so its not clear at all that the project would fail.

espadrine did say "work on a better way to remunerate the content creators."

He implied that was the job of the popcorn time team, it's unlikely that they could or would be able to implement or influence renumeration (beyond the influence of producing the popcorn time platform). It's also not clear that all content creators would need to be renumerated, certainly not to the level that some are today, and it's not clear that a delivery platform has or should have a direct role in the chain of consumer->artist payments.

It's a "brave new world" out there, traditional models are changing and no one really knows what the new models will look like.

I dunno, Mozart kept producing great music without copyright. People would still go to movie theaters for the social experience .. they'd also keep going to concerts for the same reason.

> If everyone used it ... no new content would show up

This is to me a bit disturbing. When we say this, we are announcing to the world that culture has inherently no value what so ever. The only way to create value from culture is to prohibit poor people from participating, thus creating an artificial divide that benefits those who have over those who haven't.

Governments are the one who enforces this divide with copyright law, so in the end its government that dictate that this philosophy is the one and only truth. I just don't believe that in 2014, we can't find value in culture beyond prohibit people of private, non-conflicting usage.

>it protects poor people's work from being appropriated by rich people

No it doesn't. Major corporations like Target and H&M rip off small designers all the time. Litigation is expensive, and unfairly favors wealthier parties.

> 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.

Yes, but you can provide an alternative for new content creators who yet aren't entrenched in the old system.

Let's say I live in an Eastern European kleptocracy. Let's say it's fairly impossible to purchase things legally. What about showing them that I'm actually worth it. If people set up a way to actually donate to the content creators anonymously, we could prove that we aren't actually kleptomaniacs and show what a donation system would actually reap for them. They won't sell it to me legally after all.

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.

Could you elaborate on how big media is a 'massive net negative for the welfare of humanity'?

I, too, live under a rock and would like some more info on that.

Two reasons.

First, the destructive effects of having the media cartels lobbying for restriction of freedom in the name of protection of 'intellectual property'; those are sufficiently well known that I probably don't have to elaborate on them here.

Second, modern media are junk food for the mind, exploits for security vulnerabilities in our motivation systems. It's not easy to pick up on this, because e.g. watching a movie seems to make you happier for the couple of hours while you're watching it; what you don't notice is that it rewires your brain so that the entire rest of your life is that little bit less happy. Studies have shown that, taking both prevalence and magnitude of the effect into account, watching television is the single strongest determining factor in quality of life, with the effect being monotonic: the less television you watch, the happier you are. At least one study corrected for confounding influences by comparing otherwise similar neighborhoods in Third World cities where television had become available versus where it had not, and the effect was striking: where television goes, quality of life takes a nosedive.

For discussion of these and related phenomena, see http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html and http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/why_we_havent_met_an...

Couldn't book-reading also be similar? Both book-reading and TV-watching take the participant out of the facets of reality and immerses them into another world.

Granted, some could argue that book-reading is an intellectual activity because our brain is processing language, but I'm not so sure reading Nora Roberts could be considered an intellectual activity (nothing against Roberts, but the type of people who seem to read her book don't seem the intellectual type).

>Not that piracy seems to put much of a dent in the revenues of Hollywood

What do the revenues of Hollywood have to do with anything "moral"?

"Hollywood" (or the movie industry) is a risk taking enterprise. They put money up front to create art that they believe will offer a positive reutrn for their investment. Sometimes it produces good things, sometimes it produces dreck.

The question is, why does Hollywood need to fail for a moral victory? There are a variety of routes to produce and distribute your own film, go ahead and do it. Hollywood doesn't preclude you from making a successful independent film anymore than Microsoft precludes you from making a successful software application. Adam Carolla just crowd-sourced his latest film based on a script.

Of course, in the case of independent anything, you get/have to take all the financial risk up front. That's a downer (or impossibility) for most people, and partially why Hollywood exists.

Perhaps they are choosing not to concern themselves with morality.

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

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

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

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

Editorialized title.

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

> 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.

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.

"Piracy" is a term used specifically to attach the implication of theft to copyright infringement, because actual pirates steal things.

The root of calling it "piracy" is no better than calling it "theft", even if it has become common to refer to it as such.

It's completely reasonable to make an appeal to talk about it accurately.

Piracy still exists and kills people. Using that word for downloading a movie just seems wrong.

Nope, Piracy can be used to mean a lot of things, including stealing physical goods IRL. It's certainly not the right expression to use if you ONLY mean copyright infringement.

And people who do copyright infringment have adopted the label. Just look at the Pirate Party and The Pirate Bay.

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.

He's making a point to raise awareness of a propaganda term that's made it into the common lexicon, and saying its use should be discontinued when discussing copyright infringement. He's expressing a prescriptive statement, and you're replying with a descriptive statement.

> 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.

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

Almost all licenses require attribution, at least at the file level.

Not the GPL. GNU & RMS used to complain about the attribution requirement of the original BSD licences.

The GPL does require attribution. It was the advertising clause of the older BSD licenses (similar to the one used by OpenSSL) that was problematic for the GPL, because it imposed restrictions on activities not directly connected to the software. You absolutely cannot remove copyright notices from GPL software and claim credit for it.

> You absolutely cannot remove copyright notices from GPL software and claim credit for it.

There is nothing in the GPL that requires preserving upstream copyright notices in downstream modified versions of software, or any other form of attribution of the origin of modified versions; it does require "appropriate copyright notice", but since copyright on a derived work rests with the creator of the derivative, the modifiers copyright would appear to suffice for that for modified works. The GPL explicitly prohibits attributing modified works to the creators of the upstream work (as it requires you to include notification of your modification and a relevant date).

provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice; keep intact all notices stating that this License and any non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code; keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty

Removing notices can be very dangerous, and should not be done without legal advice. The default way to include GPL is to also have an absence of warranty, which is explicitly required to keep intact in modified version.

Removing notices can be a crime subject to a fine: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/506#d

GPLv3. It doesn't require attribution, unless specified by the authors alongside the license. They didn't specify that requirement. Nothing on the Readme, no additional information on the License file, nothing in the code files.

> you may (if authorized by the copyright holders of that material) supplement the terms of this License with terms […] [r]equiring preservation of […] author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed by works containing it

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.

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

It might be piracy, but it's definitively not stealing. The SCOTUS itself explained why.

> 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

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.

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).

There is no difference.

The content producer worked on the content and wants what they want in exchange for it (indirectly for the effort): money.

The ripper worked on ripping the content and wants what they want for it (indirectly for the effort): recognition.

One of the usual complains was their "internal rips" being posted elsewhere even when posted without any attribution being removed (or at least with no claim of creator-ship added). There were "rippers" who tried to take credit for the efforts of others, but re-distributing outside the group was the main complaint (either with "correct" attribution or with no attribution at all).

I was thrown off because I refused to apologise for not seeing the difference between one person taking the attitude "great, I'll take this and do what-ever I want to do with it under my own terms and not your's because I can and fuck you if you don't like it" and a second person also taking the attitude "great, I'll take this and do what-ever I want to do with it under my own terms and not your's because I can and fuck you if you don't like it".

There is a difference. When movies are copied, nobody takes the credits out and adds their name into them. We're talking about attribution vs. copyright. They're completely separate issues, and it trips people up every time something like this gets posted.

In both cases we are talking about taking what you want distributing it to others because you can irrespective of the views of the content creator(s) and other interested parties.

In both cases someone is saying "how dare you do what I don't want you to do?" because they believe they have the right to control such activities and the other party either disagrees with that belief or simply doesn't care.

Yeah, and if we zoom out far enough, every crime is really about people being selfish, so really, it's all the same. The point was that he's not complaining about copyright infringement, he's complaining about attribution. Moral conclusions aside, a lot of people do confuse these two concepts, and they are in fact different concepts, and it's worth distinguishing them. That's all I was saying.

  Yeah, and if we zoom out far enough, every crime is really about people being selfish

Hence the base rule of my life philosophy is "try not to be a dick"!

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.

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

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?

They've definitely been baking advertisements into movies and television shows for years now.

My ideal pragmatic solution would be a platform (or two, or five) that acts like a dumb pipe for content providers to license their content to, and receive some form of compensation every time it is watched, prorated into the amount of the episode/movie is actually watched.

However, given the difficult licensing issues found for every country, that's probably not going to happen any time soon.

Also the content production ecosystem is currently reliant on big successes making up for failures and/or niche content.

That's why cable companies bundle channels together instead of letting you pick and choose the ones you want.

If it wasn't for this, the industry would become even more risk-averse, and we would see a lot less diversity of content, or risky unproven ventures.

In the end I believe this would be a net loss to everyone.

This solution is what the content creators want too: the problem is how to pay for it. Micropayments are the obvious choice, but they're currently impractical for a number of reasons (Bitcoin is promising but has yet to clear adoption hurdles necessary to hit the mainstream). I don't know that this will ever come to pass though. Micropayment tech is just too far off, and workable online distribution models are already in development.

Obviously, the cable/satellite/telco video companies of the world don't want to get disintermediated here; so most of them have been building IP video platforms for the last few years. It will still likely require a cable video subscription (though maybe with a slight discount as you won't need to rent a cable box.)

A distributed network is not well suited to micropayments. With every user it exponentially increases the resources used. Bitcoin can handle about 7 transactions a second maximum. Much less currently.

Yeah; there are technical limitations with Bitcoin that are well-known. I was referring more to virtual currencies in general; Bitcoin is unlikely to be the final evolution of virtual currency. My comment was more about how Bitcoin raises the promise, but I do know it's unlikely to be able to fulfill it.

Product placement is already doing that to an extent. If there were actual banner popups embedded into the video (like Youtube's but not closable) I probably wouldn't watch a movie, even if it were free. It's too damaging to the immersion.

The solution is to offer a lot more for a competitive price. Remove all barriers to user adoption, for instance, region-based airing (why would we wait 'till a show airs in the UK?), cable subscription (why would a user buy cable when they can download?), DRM (if we can get an MKV we can play anywhere, why get a shitty DRM'd file that only plays on verified TVs), spend a few ££ making OSS applications that download episodes automatically (or make streaming really good).

Basically, make a product that can actually compete with the solutions that piracy offers, from a technical and experience perspective, then price it at what people are prepared to pay.

Or you will die.

I'd be happy to trade in subscriptions to Usenet et all if there was something even several times the price of it if I knew my money was going to the authors (and even the middlemen that get it to happen, providing they are actually providing something good as opposed to being greedy and backwards).

The old business model doesn't work.

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.

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.

I thought jay-walking was specifically crossing against the lights at a controlled intersection. If there are no lights (within ~20 metres) it isn't jay-walking...[0]

[0] I could be completely wrong, and given the international audience I am probable both right and wrong.

As with most regulations like this, in the US it depends on the state. In Georgia, for example, you cannot cross the street outside of a crosswalk anywhere between two light-controlled intersections, but everywhere else is pretty much fine [1]. These laws have led me to act in such bizarre ways as crossing the street against the signal once all the traffic has passed but walking a couple feet outside of the crosswalk so that I'm not breaking the law.

[1] http://peds.org/issues/respect-pedestrians/pedestrian_right_...

I know a girl who found out that in her little town in Ohio, jaywalking isn't a crime at all. Now she just crosses wherever and whenever she wants!

http://spacing.ca/toronto/2007/11/20/pedestrians-crossing-mi...

In Toronto you can more or less cross where you want, as long as you're not interfering with lawful traffic. If you step in front of a car moving at the speed limit and get hit, it's your fault. If you make a car slow down even a little bit to avoid hitting you, you're at fault.

If there's a big enough gap that no cars have to slow down as you cross, you're good to go!

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.

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)

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.

> and offered every song you could imagine

This is where I tend to disagree. Yes, popular songs were on there, but terribly tagged (or outright mislabeled), and half of it was porn. Not even varied porn, just the same damn videos replicated a million times.

I don't remember video at all in Napster and most Napster rooms were very nice. People actually catalogued their library in use and we could download from a specific user.

I suppose you are talking about emule or Kazaa, but Napster was surely a very nice place to hang out. I have met even met people there, people I still talk to this day.

> 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.)

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

After that a couple of mobile clients?

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.

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

Please submit it upstream. It would be amazing.

>> 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.

Anecdotal evidence alert.

I live in the UK. On Sunday I wanted to watch the new Fargo TV show. I do not own a Television. I went to watch it 'live' on the Channel 4 website. It kept saying my broadband wasn't good enough. Odd. Googled a bit, ah - adblock is causing issues. This needs a new whitelist compared to 4od - fine by me. Sit through 2 minutes of adverts specifically over the web player (bearing in mind the channel I am waiting to watch also has ads - so by watching online I am apparently getting extra, thanks). Miss the first minute of the show but never mind - I was setting up last minute.

30 seconds into the stream, player dies and shows "insufficient bandwidth" again. Hit refresh. Starts new ad cycle over player.

Ctrl+W. Ctrl+T. "Eztv.it". Tab. "Fargo". Tab Enter Tab Tab Enter. Enter.

Within 4 minutes my "too slow" broadband had got the show at what seemed like better quality than the official web player. I also had no ads so I even finished watching the episode before terrestrial viewers despite starting late.

Content delivery still sucks. Maybe my tolerance is too low, but frankly maybe it's worth accommodating that and providing content in an easy and consistent fashion.

I was so impressed by Joss Whedon releasing his movie on vimeo (although I would prefer DLs over streams) that I bought it just to support it.

I have to agree with you on 4OD. I've always had big issues when using it. Were your issues only with the live broadcast? Would you have been able to watch it on demand or would it have the same problems.

4OD is absolutely dreadful, and I've found that it doesn't work on Linux. Luckily, there's a 4OD YouTube channel where you can get the same content in a better (but still buggy, I assume Google wrote custom advertising code for them) player.

EDIT: Actually, they've gone and removed all that. Wonderful. I wish companies would license the BBC iPlayer technology.

I still can't buy movies in a DRM-free, open format at any price or convenience level. You might consider the status quo easy and cheap, but I'm still unimpressed.

Until MPAA-approved services offer a product that is superior (or at least equivalent) to the illicit services, this conflict will continue.

Define the convenience level you would like. Search > Download in iTunes and search > stream on Netflix seem hard to beat for convenience.

1. Search on website that doesn't require proprietary plugins like flash or silverlight.

2. Download file directly with browser, without having to install further proprietary software.

3. Copy file to any device of my choosing.

4. Play file on device using only free software.

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

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..

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

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

I have a Netflix US account (over VPN, since I live outside the US), and after all the coverage it had gotten, I was really disappointed with the catalog. A lot of the shows my girlfriend was hoping to watch are unavailable, and the movie catalog is also extremely restricted.

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.

Why?

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!!

Amazon sells a number of things at a loss and still seems to be doing fine.

What does Amazon sell for a loss?

At various times, books, e-books, and kindle fires.

Amazon actually shifted the pricing on books and e-books by selling them at below what they were buying them at for prolonged periods of times, and drove rival book sellers out of business by doing so... and then didn't raise their prices.

Do we know if they still sell books at a loss? I'm guessing with their volume and many competitors killed off they have an insane control over their own buying cost and can force that price to now be profitable, but it'd be interesting to know either way.

Well, from their earnings reports, their gross revenue has grown dramatically but their profit margin remains near zero because they spend every additional dollar they make on growing the company.

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/future_tense/20...

The quote from the dot com days was "Sure we lose money with every sale, but we make it up in volume".

It's obviously implied in this suggestion that they would charge... an element of Popcorn Time's appeal is that it's easy to use and works, unlike virtually every paid movie streaming/download service in existence.

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 ..

>> "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."

What? iTunes, AppStore, and Netflix are stores. Universal isn't competing with them and doesn't need to. They exist to sell Universal's content.

Yeah, they're stores that deliver content, and in which Universal must pay a (not insubstantial) fee to participate.

Just like Popcorn App could be, without that onerous fee that is ..

Yes but if Universal did that they would then have to build a payment or subscription system into their app and spend a ton of money managing that and supporting it. Or are you suggesting they give their movies away for free on the app? If so then they're better off just letting the stores take a cut - that way they actually earn money.

If they were to give away their movies for free (if that's what you're suggesting) how - exactly - would they monetise that successfully? Unlike the music industry which can make up losses on record sales through concerts and merch their isn't really an equivalent for the movie industry.

Wow that seems like a really stupid idea.

First of all what does a "Popcorn Time" fork give Universal over putting their newer movies on Hulu. Nothing that I can see. They are going to have to put a decent amount of ads on it(especially if they offer recent releases like I guess popcorn time has) if they want to make any money on letting users view stuff for "free" (information on the audience is worth some things but mainly as targeting for ads(+theater and dvd sales to some extent) but this would help undercut dvd sales also how good is the quality of the information provided on the internet can be poor(for example see all the 90+ year olds on age gates)).

Also is there a way to prevent users from sharing in Popcorn Time? If not they would get massive lawsuits from other content providers for profiting for piracy. If yes then ads + limited content = why would people use their fork?

There is a lot of potential in the subscription model(ala netflix), I think there is a decent amount of untapped potential something like an expanded hulu free where newer just realeased stuff and older seasons or prime content is supported by a lot more ads, there is very little potential for giving stuff away for free without ads for most tv show/movie content.

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

update: removed..

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

update : removed.

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...

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

They are using SEO tricks to get a better rank.

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

Does anyone have the specifics of what malware time4popcorn includes?

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. =)

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.

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

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