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Comment by happywolf | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.)

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.

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?

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