
Inside Popcorn Time – the world's fastest growing piracy site - sleepyhead
http://www.dn.no/magasinet/2015/09/07/1606/Popcorn-Time/inside-popcorn-time--the-worlds-fastest-growing-piracy-site
======
powertower
> Most of the core team had been operating under false identities, used
> anonymization tools and been very careful with operational security.

> All of a sudden all the developers discovered simultaneously that a lawyer
> from the film studio Warner Bros. had visited their professional LinkedIn
> pages.

Are there any details about how the Warner Bros. lawyer was able to find the
developers?

Sounds like a story of it's own, bigger than this one.

~~~
kordless
It wouldn't be that hard to ID the skills the devs had to build the product,
then scrape Github and LinkedIn for profiles that match those skills. Automate
a visit to their page (and a few thousand other devs) and you've managed to
spook the few that are actually working on it. I periodically get visits from
attorneys to my LinkedIn page, but have done nothing to warrant those visits,
at least to my knowledge.

~~~
marincounty
I always wondered why anyone would use their legal name, or even home IP
address when using GIT? Especially, if one is doing anything remotely fishy?

I have always used a pseudonym on GIT, and all other sites. I tell people, who
need to see my work/me, my pseudonym. I guess if I was actively looking for a
job I wouldn't be able to be anonymous?

~~~
superuser2
Most people are proud of their open source contributions; they're part of your
personal brand, and people in the community like to look good/get discovered
that way. It builds credibility and shows goodwill.

I use pseudonyms when I wish to speak freely to a larger internet-only
community, away from scrutiny by people who know me in real life but may not
understand the context of the community in which a discussion takes place. I
suppose I would construct an alter ego on Github if I were working on
something illegal in my country.

Anything targeted at people who know you should be under the name they know
you by. It's not as if pseudonymity defeats Big Data - all they care about is
which ads you're likely to click on, whether there is a correct name
associated with that profile is of no consequence. And of course anything not
done through Tor can still be traced through your ISP's subscriber records.
Using a pseudonym on, say, Facebook mostly just inconveniences people. I
suppose it could be a reasonable countermeasure against a stalker, but locked-
down privacy settings (or just not using Facebook) are probably safer bets.

------
korginator
In my part of the world, I pay for netflix (and deezer and apple streaming
music) but we're locked out of many good shows because of artificially created
region restrictions with no technical merit or justification other than the
fact that the movie industry wants to squeeze blood from every region in the
world separately, at the very least.

Even with our local cable companies inking deals with HBO and other big names,
we still don't get the latest shows or episodes even through their local
streaming video on demand services, we have to wait months or sometimes years
before it's legally available in our region... and I live in a country where
people don't blink while splurging on the latest iPhone 6+ or Macbook pro or a
new playstation 4.

There's absolutely no logical reason that customers willing to pay for these
shows should be locked out "just because", and this is what drives people to
alternate tools like popcorn time.

The music industry had their first taste with napster in the early '00s, and
they fought the ideas tooth and nail instead of realizing it could be mutually
beneficial to embrace this technology and bring music to more people faster.
Now the movie industry is making the same mistakes and are facing the same
result.

~~~
bko
When people view the current law as unjust, they are more likely to break it.
This has a very negative impact on society as a whole as it makes them more
cynical about their institutions and leads to more rule breaking unrelated to
the unjust law.

It would be in everybody's best interest to rethink how we approach digital
property rights across borders.

Paul Robinson had recently discussed this in a podcast:

> One of the chapters we have is on Prohibition, American Prohibition. Which I
> think is really wonderful. Because that really demonstrates that dynamic on
> a large scale. For a lot of interesting reasons we throw it in, Prohibition.
> But then it's broken so often, even by public officials. Nobody takes it
> seriously. So, it's no surprise that you have a lot of violation of
> prohibition laws. What's less obvious to people but I think really telling,
> is that during Prohibition, crime rates generally went up. Even if it had
> nothing to do with Prohibition. You had crime rates going up because there
> was this general effect. People would look at the criminal law, see that
> they simply didn't see drinking alcohol as condemnable conduct and that
> undermined their faith that the criminal really knew what was condemnable
> and what wasn't; saw a lot of people breaking the criminal law and not
> feeling bad about it. There was, the community sense was that the criminal
> law was just being silly and out of step here. And that reduction in its
> reputation, it's moral reputation, translated into a lot of other areas. It
> was a very bad time for crime, until Prohibition was repealed and criminal
> law started trying to earn back some of its lost reputation. [0]

[0]
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/08/paul_robinson_o.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/08/paul_robinson_o.html)

~~~
caskance
The observation implies that public opinion should match law, that doesn't
necessarily mean it's the latter that should change rather than the former.

~~~
bko
I always thought the purpose of a legal system (in the US) having a jury of
your peers was that the law reflect changing societal attitudes. Law loses
legitimacy when it's not reflective of the will of the people.

~~~
caskance
Yes, they should be in agreement. That doesn't say anything about which one
should be in charge. With modern propaganda technology, it's possible to
change the will of the people match the law whereas historically changing the
law to match the will of the people was the only option.

------
loganu
"I am convinced that the Popcorn Time-killer is going to be a Netflix without
borders. They should remove national restrictions for films,..."

Does someone have some insight into why Netflix has time and geographic
restrictions on content? I can understand, in some cases, publishers not
wanting to let their movies or TV out to foreign countries. (Maybe waiting for
a marketing push, or a broadcast deal to be reached in a new market/locale)
But I can't really wrap my head around movies and shows being phased in and
out. (Example: Recently saw that some of the Transformers movies will
disappear in a week or two).

From a technical standpoint, I can't see the issue being that they can only
have a certain number of films view-able. from an economic standpoint, I would
think that whenever someone watches a show, a portion of their monthly Netflix
fee goes to the creators of that show, so there's always an incentive for the
creators to let Netflix show their content.

~~~
criley2
"I am convinced that the Popcorn Time-killer is going to be a Netflix without
borders. They should remove national restrictions for films,..."

Haha you can tell when opinions are offered about services that the speaker
doesn't use.

Netflix is laggy on movies (in terms of how long before Netflix gets access
after initial release) and extremely hit or miss on selection. They're canning
Stars and picking up Disney, which still gives them a very low total % of
movies, and still prevents them from accessing the movies early.

Popcorn Time lets you watch rips and cams long before a legal Netflix has
access.

People aren't using Popcorn Time to watch content available on US Netflix,
they're using it to watch content that is locked behind contract and available
in theatres or still in various exclusivity periods.

The same thing they use Bittorrent for. Go check the top downloads right now
on a major tracker: None of the popular movies are available on ANY Netflix.

It's frankly delusional to think that Netflix's laggy, spotty access to last
years movies will "kill" a service that illegally grants you access to movies
earlier than Netflix will ever get.

~~~
smacktoward
Netflix's USP isn't access to movies anymore. It's access to exclusive-to-
Netflix content like _House of Cards_ , _Orange is the New Black_ , etc.

The fact that you get some movies along with that original content is just a
legacy of their old strategy, which means that (1) their movie library is
never going to get much better than it is now, and (2) things like feature
film release windows are now more or less irrelevant to Netflix's market
appeal, since they have full control over when their original content rolls
out.

~~~
soylentcola
That's sort of how I look at it. To me, Netflix (streaming) isn't a
replacement for Blockbuster or PPV/VOD like their DVD-by-mail service. It's a
cheap replacement for basic cable.

For under $10/mo I get the mostly the same thing as I get from all those
USA/TBS/TNT sorts of channels: something to skim through and usually find
something to watch with the occasional original show that I specifically seek
out. With basic cable, I also can't count on a large selection of recent
release movies or being able to find a specific movie/show to watch at any
given time. The main difference is that basic cable costs more than the $8 or
$9 per month that I pay for Netflix streaming.

------
tinalumfoil
> "Somebody told me that popcorn time is the Netflix killer and I think that
> isn't true. I think it's not a piracy problem, it's a service problem. You
> have to give the users what they want in a fair price."

This is a pretty common sentiment on HN and other places on the internet
that's used to justify piracy but I don't think it really applies to most
people who say it. The person in the video is from Buenos Aires and really
can't get his hands on movies and TV shows short of going to the United
States.

But if you're in the United States and want a TV show, between iTunes, Amazon
instant, YouTube rentals, Google Play, Microsoft Store and your cable provider
the movie is probably a $2-$3 HD rental. $5-$6 if its just released. If you
have time to browse HN you're not poor enough to justify pirating over a $6
rental.

Of course the counterargument is "but the DRM formats don't work on my
TV/car/fridge", but that doesn't work here because Popcorn Time is designed
for desktop viewing and deletes the videos on reboot, not for transferring to
other devices. And "the only movies with high pirate rates aren't easily
available" doesn't work either because the most pirated shows are the ones
most easily available. Game of Thrones is on HBO Go, Walking Dead is on
amc.com, Kingsman: The Secret Service and Seventh Son is on every rental
service listed above. [0]

[0] [https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-
the-w...](https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-
week-050415/) [http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/top-10-pirated-tv-
shows...](http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/top-10-pirated-tv-shows-
of-2014-game-of-thrones-walking-dead-lead-list-1201390863/)

~~~
malka
> between iTunes, Amazon instant, YouTube rentals, Google Play, Microsoft
> Store and your cable provider the movie is probably a $2-$3 HD rental. $5-$6
> if its just released.

That is part of the problem. If I want to watch a movie, I'm gonna use the
most convenient and easy method, because as most humans, I am lazy.

So I can either :

* find which service has the movie I want to watch

* create an account on it

* enter billing informations

* watch a DRMed movie

or i can

* find a torrent of the movie

* download it

So even not taking any notion of price into account, the piracy solution is
far more convenient. There is a lot of friction with legal solutions.

~~~
matthewmacleod
_So even not taking any notion of price into account, the piracy solution is
far more convenient._

I'm not convinced by that argument.

It's possible that for a technically-skilled user with everything set up
correctly, that could be the case - but you're exaggerating the scale of the
difference for most users.

Let's say you're already a Netflix subscriber, for example; you want to watch
a movie. It's offered by Netflix. You open the app, select the movie and it
starts playing. You want to watch it on your TV? You use your Apple
TV/Chromecast and it magically works. There's no waiting for a download, no
need to worry about the format or resolution, and no concerns about the
legality of it.

The same applies to e.g. Amazon Prime, or iTunes, or whatever cable service
you have available. It will probably work, probably won't be a pain in the
arse to setup, and won't get you into any trouble with your internet provider.

"Far more convenient" is simply overstating it.

~~~
kuschku
If you are in the US, yes.

For me, it works like this:

I want to watch a movie. I look in Netflix, which has less than a few dozen
movies. Can’t find it. So I turn on the VPN, for which I pay also money. Ah,
there it is. Now, let’s Chromecast it... Oh, fuck, forgot Chromecast doesn’t
have the VPN. Let’s set up the VPN on the router...

(by now the person with which I wanted to watch the movie turned on Popcorn
Time and has already started the movie, while I try to read the documentation
of my router).

In the US, Popcorn Time is not really useful.

But especially in english-speaking european countries with bad coverage from
US services, like the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Scandinavia, parts of
Germany, etc, Popcorn Time is often the simplest way to watch a movie.

Before Popcorn Time, German online streaming portals like Movie4k.to,
Kinox.to, which are built around hosters like streamcloud.eu or megaupload.com
(RIP), were so popular that 80% of the German population has used them at
least once.

------
c3534l
It's hard to feel bad for an industry that just flat out refuses to offer the
products and services it's customers demand. 15 years ago I considered it
ridiculous that TV shows weren't offered online. Popcorn Time should never
have been able to get a foothold in the first place because people should have
been able to access it's services legally. The video game industry has
somewhat learned its lesson now that we have steam which has been great for
gamers and developers (especially smaller developers). So, yeah, it's illegal
and I understand why we have copyright laws. But people have been bitching
about this and taking copyright law into their own hands since _napster_.
Reading articles like these is like watching a youtube video of someone
obnoxious get their ass kicked. I don't condone violence, but you get zero
sympathy from me.

------
talleyrand
"Creators and makers should have the right to determine how and where the work
they own is distributed."

This is a debatable proposition.

~~~
tptacek
If it's debatable when it comes to movies, it's debatable when it comes to
software, and we should all be making a lot less money.

~~~
ajross
To be fair, it's not "all" in the sense of "all of us".

Many (frankly most) programmers are employed in positions where the revenue
supporting their salary is not the sales of licenses to potentially copyable
IP. I work for a hardware vendor. Web developers sell services and data
access, etc...

I don't necessarily agree with the grandparent's position on copyright, but
the content utopia those folks envision isn't actually implausible.

~~~
tptacek
They work in a market alongside people whose compensation is _entirely_
derived from intellectual property law. Their wages are driven up by
compensation from those firms.

~~~
ajross
Which is true, though that gets to your use of "a lot" in the original.

To claim that content IP licensing pays for some programmers salaries is
straightforward. To extend that to argue that salaries of _all_ programmers
are significantly higher needs numbers; it's not at all an obvious corrollary.

~~~
tptacek
I don't directly profit from software IPR (I don't sell shrink-wrap). If
software IP was indefensible, I think I'd lose more than 40% of my market
value.

------
mpeg
This is a terrible article, full of inaccurate facts.

The most blatant of all is that Popcorn Time is not a site, it's an
application (which is why it's been so hard to block).

It uses existing sites (like YTS and The Piratebay) to find magnet links to
content to stream (using a torrent streaming library)

Also: "“Mr. Robot” is not available elsewhere, apart from on Popcorn Time." \-
What the hell? If a series is available on Popcorn Time it's inherently
because it's available somewhere else, as they don't host any content

But the one that bothers me most is that they mention how before Popcorn Time,
piracy involved: "Aggressive advertising banners, websites popping up
unexpectedly and strange porn ads".

Well, guess what? Popcorn Time is an application that most people download in
binary form, so it could steal your personal data, inject advertising in other
sites, use your computer as a proxy... etc. It's not a step forward.

~~~
orf
> The most blatant of all is that Popcorn Time is not a site, it's an
> application (which is why it's been so hard to block).

Popcorn time uses a webservice.

~~~
pudquick
It's using third-party APIs for the .torrent content and search engines for
content.

But it doesn't even need that. You can use a .torrent or magnet URL from
anywhere on the latest builds.

Just drag-n-drop a .torrent file onto the UI or simply paste (Ctrl-V / Cmd-V)
a magnet URL that you already had on your clipboard and it will gladly attempt
to live stream any arbitrary torrent.

The built-in video player generally works the best with .mp4 video files, but
I've seen it successfully stream other media types as well.

When the torrent file in question contains multiple media files, a file
chooser dialog appears letting you select which one you wish to watch.

The application could literally be re-written at any time to use any torrent
site for showing content.

.. and since it's open source, the genie is out of the bottle.

------
United857
Napster, Gnutella and friends forced the music industry to adapt their
business models to include digital distribution -- and we've learned that
consumers are still willing to pay for services that are reasonably priced,
DRM-free, and easy to use even with piracy as an alternative.

Hopefully Popcorn Time will do the same for movies. Netflix and friends have
made great strides -- but they are still hobbled by DRM and geographical
restrictions, as the article points out.

------
profinger
Never heard of the site until this article but this is the problem we've seen
all too much. Most of the time, there's no paid service offering what we want.
If there is, the price is unreasonable or the service is ridiculously locked
down. This is the same thing that happened with music in the 90s etc. Finally,
something like Spotify came around and made it so that music was actually
AVAILABLE for us to explore not "you have to purchase this if you even want to
know what the artist sounds like."

If you want to watch football games online and you find that it's going to
either cost you $20/game for only your home team's games and they cut out the
announcers or something and double up on the commercials to pay for the
network AND to pay for the game(hypothetical) and then you find that you can
watch it on a third party streaming site for free and have your favorite
announcer doing commentary, you're bound to not want to pay the ridiculous
amount for it and move to using some less-than-wholesome service.

There's no real solution to any of this aside from a paradigm shift. Yes,
money is the motivation for creating a lot of this stuff. However, people are
just going to continue to find ways around terrible ridiculous lock downs.

------
mizzao
The MPAA spends who-knows-how-many millions of dollars hiring lawyers and PIs
to go after volunteer programmers in countries all over the world, when they
_could_ just be spending that on an online distribution system for movies that
would provide the service that Popcorn Time currently does. There's demand for
streaming movies and up-to-date releases with people willing to pay, why not
meet it?

This kind of parallels craigslist, which has turned the classifieds market
into a multi-billion-dollar sinkhole
([http://theweek.com/articles/461056/craigslist-took-
nearly-1-...](http://theweek.com/articles/461056/craigslist-took-
nearly-1-billion-year-away-from-dying-newspapers)). Except craigslist has
critical mass and can't be easily replaced, whereas a concerted effort to
innovate instead of stagnate by the movie industry could easily become a
preferred service to PT.

~~~
untog
_There 's demand for streaming movies and up-to-date releases with people
willing to pay, why not meet it?_

These services already exist, though (not movie-theatre-release up to date,
but neither is Popcorn Time). Yet people still want to watch these movies for
free.

Let's not kid ourselves - yes, the MPAA could help to create a better system
than currently exists for streaming movies. No, users of Popcorn Time won't
suddenly start paying for movies while the free Popcorn Time service still
exists.

~~~
saint_fiasco
They could at least try. Spotify is not making as much money as they could in
a market full of perfect angels who never pirate, but they still get by.

~~~
untog
Netflix/Amazon Instant/iTunes is not making as much money as it could in a
market full of perfect angels, too.

~~~
saint_fiasco
Their catalogues are also much more limited, especially outside the US.

------
javiercr
I don't understand why the article says they have been operating under false
identities.

When they released the first version in 2014 they shared it on twitter
mentioning all the team.

> It's popcorn time! @getpopcornapp! /cc @tomasdev @abad @brunolazzaro
> @alan_reid

[https://twitter.com/diego_ar/status/432720371465609216](https://twitter.com/diego_ar/status/432720371465609216)

I mean, if they were so concerned with their identity, they would have deleted
that tweet, right?

~~~
dperalta
deleted (?)

------
jcromartie
It boggles my mind how glossy and polished and professional the site is, and
that it gives credit to the people who make it happen, but gives no
recognition to the people who make the content that everybody feels entitled
to.

~~~
api
This is the dead horse I keep beating in these threads. If there were no
copyright, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. would all be doing this to artists
for massive profit and with their brands front and center. People would
actually ask questions like "what, you mean Apple didn't make The Hobbit?"

The idea that everyone would just transition to a gift culture and give
artists a big hug in a post-copyright world is incredibly naive. Too many
people are cheap greedy assholes. It'd be an exploitation-fest for the five
seconds it would take for all creative industries to go bankrupt. Then there
would be nothing.

~~~
Strang
I agree that the current creative industries would probably go bankrupt.
Goodbye to the "summer blockbuster", pop megastars, etc. Is that really such a
vital societal good that we need to take civil and criminal action against
individuals that threaten these industries?

I disagree entirely that there would be "nothing". Art and entertainment would
just look different. The budgets would probably be lower, and the payment and
distribution channels would be entirely different. Kickstarter/Patreon vs.
Netflix/retail.

~~~
api
"The budgets would probably be lower,"

This is another way of saying the salaries would be lower and there would be
no benefits or permanent career path in the arts. The arts would become a
hobby that people do before they get a 'real job' that is able to support them
as adults.

What I don't think you understand is that those big-budget shallow pop pieces
support the rest of the industry _both directly and indirectly_. Look at
software for an example -- your little open source effort is in fact
bankrolled by the open source ecosystem that is subsidized by Facebook,
Google, big VC money, etc. The high salaries in tech are held up by the demand
that these large houses create. When you cut the top of the pyramid off an
industry, the result is _recession_ \-- an overall deflation of the rest of
the labor market. Look at what happened to even unrelated industrial concerns
in Detroit when the big-three auto makers left town. The _entire economy_ of
the city collapsed, not just car factories.

I'll give you a concrete example: all the cool synth and instrument gear
musicians use to innovate. It's a good example because I know people who work
for Moog Music and other firms in those areas. The majority of those firms'
revenue comes from larger and deeper pocketed artists and other creative
concerns that buy the latest-and-greatest and the big-ticket items. Kill off
all that and Moog would go out of business and all the little indie bands
would no longer even be able to purchase gear.

Your ability to produce an album or a movie on a Kickstarter budget is in fact
_subsidized indirectly_ by way of demand generated by the larger and deeper
pocketed side of the industry and the productive economy of scale that it
helps create. Industries are ecosystems and the bigger concerns within them
are primary producers -- what happens to a forest if you cut down all the
trees?

I agree that copyright is in need of some reform, but the radical anti-
copyright and 'pirate party' position is just insanely naive and would
completely destroy art, music, and literature as viable career paths for
anyone. It's the kind of position you encounter from people who have zero
understanding of economics and/or are really naive about human nature (a.k.a.
have never met a sociopath).

~~~
Strang
I think your conflating my position with another. I understand that
eliminating copyright would be a massive upheaval. I do understand that many
companies, industries, and career paths would be drastically affected
negatively.

I just don't think that maintaining the status quo justifies the current
policing of personal computer and internet usage.

Nowadays, film and music are just files, and can be freely copied at will. The
creative industries have refused to acknowledge this reality. I don't think
any individuals should be jailed or bankrupted to maintain this illusion any
longer.

When the dust settles, society will still have art and entertainment. It will
just be different from what we are used to.

~~~
api
I don't believe people should go to jail unless they are profiting massively
from copyright violation -- e.g. someone selling a bootleg subscription
streaming service and pocketing the money.

I also agree that the concept of copyright is a 'legal fiction' in the sense
that it's a kind of hack. 'People who make intangible things should be able to
get paid, so let's pretend they are physical artifacts.' But the purpose of
that hack is at least in its purest sense noble. Child labor laws are also a
legal fiction. There is no natural reason for them to exist. We made them up
because we got tired watching the children of the poor be used up as a
consumable good. Nature sucks. Civilization is a conspiracy to escape the
brutal amoral Darwinism of nature.

If you want to get rid of copyright, create a better alternative. But your
better alternative must do the good things that the original does, otherwise
it won't work. So far I don't see such a thing.

The fundamental issue is present here in this sentence:

"Nowadays, film and music are just files, and can be freely copied at will."

Let's say I have two files. One is a music file, the other is the output of
/dev/urandom. They could be of equal size, and they are equally easy to copy.
But one contains the results of possibly thousands of hours of human labor not
to mention the irreplaceable and ethereal quality we call 'creativity', while
the other contains no actual information at all.

Conflating one with the other based on how easy they are to duplicate amounts
to a profound devaluation of human labor and human life.

The same sort of argument sounds absurd when applied to physical goods e.g. "a
t-shirt is just cotton, so why do we have to pay a premium to a bunch of
factory workers?" But it is in fact the same argument, since in reality
_everything is just information_ and therefore all labor amounts to the
transformation of information. Your t-shirt is just carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,
etc. organized in a particular way.

(This argument carried further gets really interesting, but I have work to do.
Quick version: in a post-3d-printing future where everything is automated,
copyright might well be the _only form of property_ and the _only mechanism
for compensation_ available to the non-capitalist class.)

~~~
Strang
My point about copying files is more literal than that. I'm not trying to
theoretically devalue the creative or economic worth of the work. I'm saying
that nowadays those works are delivered as files, which are literally free to
copy. They can be encumbered with DRM, but DRM is also free to remove.

This is a drastic change from the days of printing presses, vinyl records,
etc. The idea that these industries should be allowed to ignore this reality
by punishing those who make use of it is ludicrous, in my opinion.

My alternative to copyright is nothing. Let society figure out how to
remunerate artists without coercion.

~~~
api
"Let society figure out how to remunerate artists without coercion."

It already has. It's called Spotify, Apple Music, etc. If you remove copyright
from the equation, this is what will happen:

These services will continue to exist, but free of copyright restrictions will
make _all_ content available to their customers. Then they'll become free, or
freemium with an ad-supported free tier and an ad-free tier for a few bucks a
month. Now that one of their major cost centers is gone they won't need to
charge much.

Apple and the other Lords of the Brand and the Distribution Channel will still
pay the artist... whatever they see fit to pay. It will be below minimum wage,
with the artist expected to make up the difference by brewing coffee or
waiting tables. They may occasionally take an artist and make them wealthy (by
artist standards) in order to con the majority of punks into thinking art is a
viable career path. As with all industries powered by burning out the young,
you have to keep the queue full.

This looks not terribly unlike the old record company model, but with one key
difference:

In the old model the artist had a contract. It might have been a shitty
contract, but it was a contract and the artist had _some_ negotiating
capability. In the new model the artist has none, zero, nada. Yes master, pay
me whatever you like master.

A few artists will try to rebel and form alternative channels, but there is no
copyright, remember? Apple and the others will simply vacuum up the content
from these channels and add it to their already-massive catalog without paying
anything in return. A few loyal fans might boycott the big channels and go
with the indies, but not enough to make a difference. Do you want six
apps/sites/feeds to listen to music or just one?

A few rebels might also try to turn the tables by vacuuming up the catalogs of
Apple et. al. and creating bootleg ad-free versions. Sure, fine, go ahead.
It'll cut into the majors revenue a bit but it won't do anything for the
artists. If anything it'll make things even worse by squeezing the majors,
causing them to cut expenses in the one place they're now completely free to
do so: paying artists less.

It's called a "deflationary race to the bottom," and in such scenarios the
lower-downs lose more than the higher-ups because they have no intrinsic
structural leverage.

If you're curious I can also tell you what will happen without child labor
laws. It'll involve crying, secret mass graves, and cute little amputees.

Everyone is not an asshole, but _enough_ people are assholes and _enough_
businesses are more or less amoral that laws are required to address the worst
of the resulting excesses. You'll never have a society without coercion. The
question is whether you want one where the strong coerce the weak or one where
coercion is applied according to some more objective standard and with the
goal of common welfare and compassion. What we have now is somewhere in
between, as real things tend to be, but I'm very much against anything that
moves it more toward a might-makes-right world.

I say this as an ex-Libertarian. The big thing that destroyed my faith was
getting deeply involved in the business world and learning how Shit Really
Works, which reminds me of that old 'we should teach the Bible in school so
we'd have more atheists' line. It ain't a joke.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
This is a really interesting and well reasoned comment. I'm not gonna try to
refute most of it because I actually agree with a bunch of it. But I just
wanted to point out that different artistic mediums behave differently. For
instance, with PC games (Steam dominates here) it doesn't seem that the
"deflationary race to the bottom" that has been happening there (as more and
more low quality games get in) has been affecting developers who produce
~good~ games. This can be either because Steam somehow managed to solve this
magically or because the PC gaming audience is more engaged in what they buy,
either way, not everything you said would play out that way in that market. I
think these differences should also be taken in consideration separately for
music, movies and books if you want a more accurate result in what you think
would happen.

------
ghshephard
What's bizarre to me is how casually "non tech" people in Singapore refer to
watching stuff on "Popcorn Time."

~~~
userbinator
Around a decade or more ago, when P2P filesharing was really popular, average
"non tech" people were speaking of Kazaa, Limewire, etc. and all the "free
stuff" they could get from them.

~~~
Someone1234
And of course Napster, which was so popular even several movies and TV shows
of the period referenced it (e.g. The Italian Job (2003)).

------
drivingmenuts
Can someone clarify something for me?

If I am a movie producer, do I or do I not have the right to release a movie
in one region and a month later in another region?

Do I have the right to release in one medium first, then some other medium
later (or not at all)?

Do I have the right to maximize the profit on an optional, non-essential
product?

Now, the studios say one thing, everyone here seems to be saying another.
There's a ton of rhetoric on either side, but no clear-cut answers.

(By "here", I mean in general tone, not specifics within this particular
thread of conversations.)

~~~
davidw
They have that right, but that doesn't mean it isn't lame. It goes against an
open internet. I'm happy to pay for stuff I like on line, but found it
supremely annoying that I couldn't get US shows or movies when I lived in
Italy, even with a US credit card and billing address. I ended up signing up
for a proxy thing, so on top of paying for content, I had to pay extra just to
access it!

Realistically, not everyone is going to make that choice.

Mostly, Amazon seems to have gotten things right with the Kindle: content is
mostly accessible anywhere, and it's _very_ easy to buy, making that the path
of least resistance.

~~~
thirdsun
Music's got it right too - it's a flawless, DRM-free experience to buy an
album these days. And I do it a lot (not a fan of streaming, prefer to own my
content).

Movies however...it couldn't be any less convenient to buy a movie in high
quality and original audio/language that can be played in any media player
(like Kodi/XBMC). In fact it is legally impossible. Buy and download online?
Not possible. The closest option is buying a bluray and ripping it. I'd even
consider getting an optical drive (that I absolutely don't need otherwise) to
do that, but as a european I'd also have to deal with those unnecessary delays
in availability.

I'm sorry, but as long as this situation remains, I won't feel sorry about
pirating bluray-ripped movies in good quality. On the other hand I can't
remember when I last pirated music.

------
BatFastard
Seems like this is an idea whose time has come. Once the source is out, how
much would it take for a new team to take up the quest? This time they could
make sure to create new anonymous identities (how to do this properly?). I
don't know the in and outs of such things.

Why has the time come? Watching content on the owners web site is a horrible
experience. You get the same ad multiple times in a row, OR the volume on one
is barely audible, and the next is blowing out the windows. Worse then it ever
was on cable or broadcast. From what I hear, popcorn time makes this all go
away.

------
kordless
> “Creators and makers should have the right to determine how and where the
> work they own is distributed. Popcorn Time has no legitimate purpose; it
> only serves to infringe copyright thereby preventing creators from earning
> money for their work. The film and TV industry is comprised of hundreds of
> thousands of men and women working hard behind the scenes to bring the
> vibrant, creative stories we enjoy to the screen. Content theft undermines
> that hard work and also negatively impacts the audience’s experience online
> by often directing them to low-quality versions of movies and shows or sites
> infected with malware and viruses.” - Stan McCoy, Stan McCoy, President and
> Managing Director of the MPA in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The initial line of reasoning in this quote is flawed. Creators and makers
don't have the right to pre-determine judgement of a particular piece of
software or the _possible_ use of that software by users based on some claim
to "rights". It's the pre-judging part that is wrong here, not the simulated
assertion to ownership of the content in a hypothetical violation. Judging my
use of a particular piece of software before I use it is stupid, narrow minded
and factually blaming. Would they also limit my use of an operating system to
run the software? Or a computer to run the OS? No. Why? Because Apple makes
lots of money doing those things.

Because this line of reasoning is flawed, it's not a big surprise Stan quickly
drops into bias hacking the audience by making arguments that Popcorn Time
"negatively impacts audience experience" and contains "malware and viruses".
Given the fact they are willing to spread falsehoods is an indication they
themselves are in cognitive dissonance over the whole thing.

Not that they don't spread falsehoods about their own content all the time to
us via commercials, billboards, flyers, ads on websites, reviews, etc., etc.

I'd like to see the creative industry move toward an Open Source model over
the coming years in an attempt to move us away from these confrontational
rationalizations which are being driven by increasing demands around revenue.
Perhaps this Open Source model would also allow us to better illustrate the
problem of mass production of low quality movies and content. These low
quality movies "have no legitimate purpose and only serve to infringe on
moviegoer's rights, thus preventing them from enjoying their night and wasting
their money on yet another crappy flick".

~~~
soft_dev_person
It's ironic that he even dares to state that piracy "negatively impacts
audience experience".

If anything, it is the legal ways to watch movies that have traditionally had
the inverior experience. Forcing me to watch commercials or be warned that
copyright is a crime for minutes before the actual content.

Movie industry: You have always been burning bridges! Wake up, for crying out
loud! </pointless rant>

------
MrBra
Why I did not now about this.

------
username3
That wasn't Wired.

------
ErikRogneby
Why have a Terms of Service for what is clearly an illegal site?
[https://popcorntime.io/tos](https://popcorntime.io/tos)

~~~
mpeg
Because it's not clearly illegal...

For instance, here's a google search [0] that gives you access to the same
pirated material that Popcorn Time does (but with a worse UI)

Does this mean google is an illegal site? Is HN an illegal site? It can get
pretty complex.

[0]:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=yify+jurassic+world+filetype...](https://www.google.com/search?q=yify+jurassic+world+filetype:torrent)

~~~
junto
Out of interest it works using Bittorrent right?

In Germany you won't have problems downloading movies, but uploading them gets
you quickly a nasty letter and further abuses escalates to prosecution.

Since Popcorntime is using Bittoerrent, does it just download, or does it
upload too?

~~~
mpeg
Both, like any Bittorrent client. The difference is it uses a library which
prioritises certain file chunks so that you can watch it as you download
(stream it).

