Hacker News Reader

With those applications you can get from clean install to playing a copyrighted movie in three clicks. You don't do that with a web browser.

Also, they are meant to be used that way. When people recommend those applications to friends and relatives they are meant to be used for copyright infringement.

I'm not agreeing with what was done here, but there is a qualitative difference between a torrent client, media player, etc, and the popcorn time applications.

Edit: yes, you can hit a movie streaming service with your web browser by navigating to a URL. Have a cookie. But that requires previous external data and thus is not "clean" install.

> With those applications you can get from clean install to playing a copyrighted movie in three clicks. You don't do that with a web browser.

Sure you can.

Click 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/fullmoviesonyoutube/

Click 2: Select a movie. Copyright infringement in two easy clicks!

There is no mainstream browser that automatically directs the user to a list like /r/fullmoviesonyoutube. A browser is a generic tool that can be made to visit infringing content, but does not itself encourage the user to do so. If there really were no difference between Popcorn Time and a browser, nobody would have used Popcorn Time, because 100% of its users already had browsers.

What if Popcorn Time made the user click a button 100 times before granting full access? Is that enough effort? Or if a link was proposed 2 clicks away from the homepage of a major browser? Is that too little effort? Where do we draw the line? I guess we don't, since the DMCA's scope is so large.

If the primary purpose of the app were still infringement but you had to click a button 100 times to use the app, the primary purpose of the app would still be infringement.

Where did that URL come from? That's what I meant by "clean install". You can really get from zero to copyright violation in three clicks and no external knowledge by using those applications.

How is that at all a useful distinction? Just having them change the default URL to YouTube but then having everyone learn the "pirate URL" through the same channels they learn about the existence of the software is not going to change anything.

I am going to make some software that scrapes that subreddit and presents a nice UI. Then see if it gets a DMCA takedown.

Right. This is the money sentence:

> Indeed, copyright infringement is so prevalent within the Projects that infringement plainly is their predominant use and purpose.

"Predominant use and purpose" is one of the tests for whether software is copyright-infringing under DMCA. IANAL but this looks pretty open-and-shut to me.

You're on the money here.

Of course "predominant use and purpose" eventually boils down to "I know it when I see it" [1]

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

Not necessarily. You could certainly have some quantifiable metric. For example, you could draw the line at, say, 80% of the works on offer.

In this case, that wouldn't be necessary. There may be a fine line somewhere where you could argue that a piece of software does or does not have infringement as its primary purpose. PopcornTime is not close to that line.

I haven't installed or used popcorn time.

I can't see how the number of clicks to install it and start watching a copyrighted movie could be less than required to install a web browser and start watching a copyrighted movie.

Surely they're both: click to download -> click to run installer -> click to start watching the movie....

Like I said, I have no experience doing that in popcorn time, but I can 100% say I could do that in a browser.

If there exists a browser which, when freshly installed, starts playing infringing content as soon as you launch it, that would probably get in trouble too. But no mainstream browser does that.

Google "[moviename] streaming". Click a link, hit play.

Bad or fake link, go back, click link, hit play, repeat until you give up.

The Big Difference between Popcorn Time and Chrome or Bit torrent is that while Chrome and Bit torrent are can be made to do illegal things such as pirate movies, Popcorn Time is explicitly made with the intention of illegally pirating movies.

The screenshots provided basically show that Popcorn Time is not just an app for legally playing content. It would be very difficult to argue to a judge "This app was not designed for the purpose of pirating movies" when these screenshots are right next to him/her.

Now let's say Popcorn Time has a configuration file that, by default, just happens to point to sources with illegal content. The question (which I don't have the answer to) is is Popcorn Time responsible for that configuration file? Would Google be responsible if a button on Chrome just happened to point to child porn which they don't control? Would, "It is the responsibility of our users not to download illegal content. If they don't want to view child pornography they can disable the clearly marked button in their settings or just not click it" suffice? I'm not a lawyer so I don't have the answer.

> Making distinctions like this is dangerous, and allowing speech to be suppressed by corporate interests is a worrying trend.

Why does everything have to be a free speech issue nowadays? If you think not being able to share copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holder violates the first ammendment then you should be working towards repealing The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, not stopping it from being enforced.

EDIT:

From the DMCA:

> No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that- (A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; (B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or (C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

It's sort of like making an armor piercing bullet and arguing that it's for hunting. Sure you could hunt with it, but it'd be kind of pointless unless there are deer wearing kevlar.

What technological measure is this circumventing?

> From the DMCA

DMCA 1201 has nothing to do with Popcorn Time. That covers DRM circumvention (and should be repealed). The theory of liability for Popcorn Time is under the Grokster ruling, if the authors are inducing copyright infringement by promoting the tool for that purpose.

The notice and takedown provision is DMCA 512, which is a safe harbor for hosts like Github. It says (roughly) that you aren't liable for copyright infringement of your users if you timely respond to take down notices. But Github wouldn't be liable for copyright infringement anyway because the Popcorn Time software is not copyrighted by the claimants and Github isn't the party allegedly inducing copyright infringement. So Github apparently doesn't have to comply with the notice if they don't want to.

Of course, almost everyone complies with all notices whatsoever regardless of how absurd or invalid they are, because the host doesn't have a strong enough incentive to fight somebody else's battle. That's the free speech issue.

Safe Harbor doesn't give GitHub the authority to decide whether the notice would hold up in court; they need to comply with properly formatted notices if they want to keep their safe harbor status

Is it really that draconian? So, if I find a blog post on github pages that I don't like, I'll just submit a completely bogus claim of copyright infringement, and it'll be gone? (I realize that fraudulent DMCA takedown notices are supposedly illegal, in order to "prevent" such abuse).

As implied by other comments, this is clearly not a valid notice: it would either have to be a claim that the code itself was infringing, or that it constitutes a DRM circumvention tool (like DeCSS). Neither is the case here, as far as I can tell.

In any case, if this software is illegal under the DMCA, so would the "cp" command be -- as it can be used to make copies of copyrighted contents (note that neither tool circumvents DRM).

> is explicitly made with the intention of illegally pirating movies.

Intention is a quality of the author, not a quality of the work. In the real world governed by the laws of reality, an object or tool or even bundle of software has no intention. It's just a thing.

Claiming that the intention can magically transfer through the object is like some 21st century form of shamanism.

I reject such stupid notions.

If, generally speaking, this software is used to commit illegal acts, then it is those acts which are illegal, not the tool that is used in the commission of the acts.

By banning the tools, you're not preventing the illegal act... you're preventing anyone from using it for legal acts, and cementing the idea that it is only used for those things illegal.

But we're not even really talking about banning it... that would cost too much in lobbyist bribes, too much political capital, too much time and effort. Instead, we're going to twist existing laws to pretend that somehow someone else's code can be censored because of some unfounded ideas about what the code does. That's a chickenshit move if ever there was one.

> If you think not being able to share copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holder violates the first ammendment then you should be working towards repealing

I no longer trust that our government represents its people well enough for that to be possible. And I reject the idea that you can just set me off on impossible quests and that if I refuse them you win the argument.

I can't say where the line is, but popcorn time seems to be in a different category than torrent clients, etc. in that popcorn time just gives you a list of copyright protected movies in its interface. With a torrent, you have to get a seed file elsewhere which could potentially be anything.

It could be dangerous though, to start banning tools like this without defining a difference. That's why this is troubling, because in this case, a DCMA makes no sense but they did it anyway.

I'll extend my hypothetical.

Lets say there are two groups. One group builds a generic media client - under the guise of better delivery of free educational videos (MIT lectures etc.)

The other group sets up "Movie Copyright Watch" and publishes an up-to-date list of movie torrents - under the guise of occasionally reporting this list back to MPAA and the like.

Now lets say team A decide to adopt the same configuration format as team B uses to publish the list.

Neither team has done anything wrong and the resulting application is capable of infringing copyright - and is essentially equivalent to what popcorn time has.

What is the difference? Tools are tools - it is crazy to ban knives because you can stab people with them.

"it is crazy to ban knives because you can stab people with them."

That's true when looking at kitchen knifes, but to stretch your analogy: popcorn time is to other media applications as GI Joe's Combat knife is to other knives. It's not made to butter your bread: it's made to stab people.

Popcorn time was made specifically to infringe, that's not to say that the copyright system is not hopelessly broken, but imo this is a legitimate takedown notice.

Yes, it's a similar to gun control arguments. Some guns are more for self-defense, or hunting animals, other guns, like assault rifles, are designed for war.

The reason I said a DCMA takedown doesn't make sense is because they are usually to take down actual media, like a youtube video, not the source code to a tool. But I think they didn't really have options and wanted it done quickly.

> But I think they didn't really have options and wanted it done quickly.

So we live in a world where laws don't matter, only expediency in pursuit of the goals of the copyright cartels?

> Yes, it's a similar to gun control arguments. Some guns are more for self-defense, or hunting animals, other guns, like assault rifles, are designed for war.

This is actually a surprisingly good analogy. People want to ban "guns that can kill people" but revolvers and hunting rifles are no less capable of killing people than an AR-15, so instead they ban "guns that look scary" regardless that they use the same bullets, have the same rate of fire, etc. Look up how an "assault rifle" is defined, it's hilarious.

It's exactly the same problem here. The technical architecture of Popcorn Time could just as well be used as a YouTube competitor as to pirate Hollywood movies. You want to ban the second and not the first but they're really the same piece of software.

"assault rifle" has a particular meaning, and generally specifies that it be capable of multi-round firing on a single trigger pull, which is a useful and meaningful distinction in weapon operation.

I think you're referring to "assault weapon", which was a buzz-word for anything that scared people during the last major gun debate.

You're completely right about the definitions (and it's probably not worth getting any further into the gun control debate to argue about whether "multi-round firing" is any more harmful in practice than "pull the trigger more than once").

But it doesn't really change the point; a firearm that isn't an "assault rifle" or an "assault weapon" is still a completely effective killing tool.

There is no way to make a generic tool that can only be used for authorized purposes. The tool has no way to determine what purposes are authorized.

Oh, I agree with your point.

I just try to correct the language (and complain about it) when I see it used, because people picked "assault weapon" to conflate things that aren't assault rifles with assault rifles. Setting aside merits of the ban, the ban on assault rifles actually targeted a particular technology to ban. We could (in principle, I don't really want to) have a discussion about if that technology makes a difference in the effectiveness of a weapon.

The "assault weapon" ban was just meaningless cosmetic features because people felt scared. I don't necessarily agree with all the gun legislature out there, but if we're going to make it, it should at least be specific and about specific technologies rather than nebulous surface appearance.

Your hypothetical isn't very much like the situation at hand, so what is it meant to reflect on or reveal? Do you want us to try a case over the Internet that looks almost nothing like the topic under discussion here and is based only on vague description?

"So by this logic...the source code for any web browser, torrent client, media player etc. etc. should be subject to these notices because they can be used to infringe copyright?"

No. And as the complaint makes clear, it is not being filed in response to potential infringement, but clearly demonstrable instances of actual infringement.

Big, big difference.

Please tell me what part of the source code infringed copyright?

The statement calls out instances of the running application infringing copyright. Nowhere does it say the source code was infringing copyright (and I am not sure how source code could unless it was either stolen or had the lyrics to "A Whole New World" in one of the comments.)

Which means the DCMA notice was targeting a tool of potential infringement not infringement itself.

Why do you keep saying "potential infringement"? Are you actually so unaware of the details of this situation that you are unsure whether anybody watched content through Popcorn Time without authorization from the copyright holder? There have been users in HN comment threads who admitted to doing so, so you can set your mind at ease that there was actual, non-potential infringement here.

"Please tell me what part of the source code infringed copyright?"

Judging from your question, your confusion about why this is illegal stems from two problems: you're unclear on both the law in general and the charges in particular. In this case, there is no complaint that the code has been improperly copied from someone else. Indeed, the code may well be an original work, freely distributed by its author, and being used in full accordance with his wishes.

However, copyright law covers more than that. Here, the complaint is that the code exists principally and primarily to violate the law, which is a violation in its own right. In this regard, publishing it is a bit like distributing sawn-off shotguns, which are generally illegal regardless of what's being done with them.

>Maybe we can skirt by with the general purpose nature of the above tools...so what about tools used to facilitate penetration testing (which can also be used for computer crime) - should we get rid of that source code too?

Germany made all "hacker tools" illegal to posses in 2007.

http://makezine.com/2007/08/11/the-hacker-tool-law-in-ef/

The actual law (1) says that it is illegal to create (or obtain) a computer program that has the purpose of making it possible to gain access to data (2) which is not meant for you and is accessible only via 'access security'.

It is also illegal to create (or obtain) a computer program that is intended for performing a such crime.

1: http://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/202c.html

2: http://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/202a.html

> So by this logic

That's just it. The IP system (and more generally, the entire legal system) isn't based on logic. If you upset the people with political power, you'll find that your actions are "illegal." That's the real spirit of IP law: it's illegal to upset powerful IP lobbies.

"it's illegal to upset powerful IP lobbies."

Demonstrably untrue. See "Google / continued existence of" for a case in point.

I should have clarified that it only applies to individuals, or organizations without much political power of their own.

The real spirit of IP law is "art, music, and creative professions should be viable professions for which people can actually get paid."

Whether it accomplishes that is debatable at times, and it's certainly misused, but that's why it exists.

"Information wants to be free" is a terrible argument from the naturalistic fallacy. Cars want to break down, your body wants to get cancer, and ebola wants to spread.

The question is whether information having to be free is good for us. If your profession is at all related to the production of information -- art, code, anything -- then you should be very skeptical of this meme. If all information is free, your salary is $0 unless you are making content for indirect monetization -- which means propaganda, surveillance based marketing, etc. A world where information is free is a world where only content with an indirect manipulative agenda gets financed and where the value of intellectual labor is subject to extreme downward pressure.

Piracy isn't a liberal, liberating thing... it's akin to union-busting and other forms of aggressive labor devaluation. It benefits ultra-capitalists who own large channels of communication and want to be able to monetize content and user behavior without paying for its creation.

That sounds like a reasonable proposal for what the real spirit of IP law should be, but certainly not what it actually is.

It's broken, but getting rid of it entirely doesn't fix the problem. It makes it worse.

I think my general point is this:

In a world where energy, food, and real estate are inflating and wages are flat or deflating, it behooves us to be incredibly skeptical of any agenda or meme that devalues or takes leverage away from labor. Ask yourself "cui bono?"

"Information wants to be free" is another way of saying "I don't want to pay people for knowledge work or art." Now who wouldn't want to do that? Maybe... oh... I don't know... multi-billion-dollar companies that make money by shoveling "content" out to consumers in exchange for being able to track their every move and sell it to advertisers? If they have to pay for content, that's just a cost to them. So it behooves those industries to promote the meme that piracy is great and information should be free, since it helps to devalue the "content" that they need to keep their surveillance based marketing machines running.

I'm starting to see the purveyors of aggressive industrial-scale piracy as being analogous to the brown shirt types that used to go out and bust kneecaps of union members to intimidate them into accepting concessions. Dropping the bottom out of higher-priced content models makes producers of content more willing to accept pennies on the dollar later.

I've been skeptical of free for a while, but believe it or not the Snowden revelations really pushed me over the edge. It made it very clear that free == surveillance is the business model, and it therefore got me really thinking skeptically about the concept of free (as in beer).

I don't think it's always bad. I work on open source software. But I think it must be the creator's choice.

I'm also not a fan of the DMCA as written -- it contains some nasty and odious terms that are ripe for abuse like the "anti-circumvention" clause -- but in this case I think it's being used in the right way to shut down something that's deliberately abusive.

> It's broken, but getting rid of it entirely doesn't fix the problem. It makes it worse.

I never suggested that getting rid of it entirely would fix the problem.

> "Information wants to be free" is another way of saying "I don't want to pay people for knowledge work or art."

I'm not a fan of the mantra "information wants to be free," but I also don't think that opposing strict IP laws is equivalent to not wanting people to pay for knowledge or art. It might be equivalent to opposing the viability of certain business plans for monetizing IP, but there are other business plans for monetizing IP that don't rely on being subsidized by draconian and borderline orwellian IP enforcement.

I don't really see the connection you're trying to make between pro-piracy groups and massive advertising corporations.

"I don't really see the connection you're trying to make between pro-piracy groups and massive advertising corporations."

It's simple cause and effect.

If pay-for-content business models like traditional record sales, movies, etc. are non-viable in the Internet age due to aggressive piracy, then the only viable business models are indirect monetization.

Indirect monetization means finding ways to monetize the consumer -- surveillance, manipulation, propaganda, etc.

Free (as in beer) leads directly to creepy business models. Instead of paying directly for music, movies, etc., you pay for them indirectly by allowing the distribution network to monitor everything you do and sell that information to advertisers and who knows who else.

There's a whole other level too when you get into the subject of jailed platforms and DRM -- piracy creates a powerful economic incentive to develop and aggressively deploy tools to restrict how you use your computer. Think the DMCA is draconian? Wait until your CPU will only execute code signed by a key embedded in the hardware. Abusing freedom to abuse others is one way to lose it, since after a while it leads to a perverse environment where good people who otherwise would support freedom start opposing it for legitimate reasons.

Edit:

Replying here since HN doesn't like deep discussions and limits them. "You're posting too frequently..."

I'm not making a boolean logic error because I am not engaging in boolean logic. I'm talking about the incentive structure of the market. It's analog logic-- not either-or but more-less. Does the market favor this business model more or less than that one? A market replete with piracy is one that is tilted far toward indirect business models almost to the exclusion of direct ones.

Your fallacy is very simple. You're saying that ¬A ⇒ B, and implying that it means that A ⇒ ¬B, with A=direct and B=indirect monetization.

The conclusion doesn't follow. There's no reason to believe that enforcing direct monetization will reduce indirect monetization, and history shows that creepy and manipulative is and was being used way before "home taping was killing music."

"Information wants to be free" is a terrible argument from the naturalistic fallacy. Cars want to break down, your body wants to get cancer, and ebola wants to spread.

I agree.

The question is whether information having to be free is good for us.

Eliminating copyright doesn't the information has to be free. As a producer of copyrighted works which are freely distributable, my paycheck is an example of that.

If all information is free, your salary is $0 unless you are making content for indirect monetization -- which means propaganda, surveillance based marketing, etc. A world where information is free is a world where only content with an indirect manipulative agenda gets financed

After the Sony rootkits, I don't know how anyone can still claim with a straight face that paying protects you from that.

Content producers have introduced propaganda and manipulative advertising decades before widespread copyright infringement was even possible. From Donald Duck campaigning for WWII involvement, trials with subliminal ads, decades of product placement, really, it's everywhere.

And why shouldn't it be? Why would we expect the major studios and labels who end up owning most distribution rights to forgo those extra sources of income? "Our customers pay, we're morally bound to treat them well"? Yeah, right.

It benefits ultra-capitalists who own large channels of communication

Unlike the previous model? Yeah, no capitalists in the MPAA and RIAA!

"As a producer of copyrighted works which are freely distributable, my paycheck is an example of that."

So if I pull your OSS archive and take it closed and found a new company based on it, you're totally okay with that?

I work on OSS too, but that's a choice. If I don't choose to release something OSS and you make a tool designed to rip me off, that's the same thing as taking your OSS project and stripping your name off and taking it closed. If I did that I'd be violating your terms and generally abusing you, which is what Popcorn Time is explicitly created to do to movie makers. It says "we don't care what you think about how you want your work to be used... we get to decide that for you."

Edit:

... and the RIAA is essentially a union. They look like buffoons because historically their understanding of technology is awful, but their stated purpose in life is to protect the income of working professionals in the recording industry. That includes but is not limited to musicians, since it takes a lot more than musicians to make a good album. Like most unions they are paranoid and reactionary, seeing any change as an attempt to devalue the labor of their members, but that's sort of what trade unions do. I know it's become fashionable to hate on unions, but look at what it's doing to the wealth distribution in this country. I think that's something that needs to be reconsidered. If the RIAA/MPAA are morons and reactionaries, then the tech industry could have stepped up and suggested a better alternative. "We ain't gonna pay you sheeeit" is not a good alternative.

Yeah, music and movie studios can be jerks, but at least they paid the artists something. The new model is to pay the artist nothing (or close to it) and monetize their work indirectly via advertising and customer surveillance.

The general attitude of tech people toward artists is disturbing. If you can program, you can fall out of bed and into a job making more than the vast majority of musicians can ever dream of making. I mean... six figure salaries are the stuff of fever dreams to most artists. They will never make what a low-skill JavaScript hacker makes right out of college. Benefits? What are those? Then you go and use your free personal time to build tools to yank the bottom out from under that industry even further? It just makes us look like a bunch of entitled, spoiled brats that get our kicks from rubbing our comparative privilege in everyone else's face.

No. I just won't use the law against you.

EDIT: I have no idea what is this new model that you're talking about, or why do you assume I support it. If anything, it's you who are taking the side of the tech giants, since they're all reliant on copyright and patents too.

EDIT2: I make $15k/year. And I don't really care what artists think of the "tech industry". That's mostly an US thing.