
Popcorn Time is back - galapago
http://popcorntimewar.com/
======
butterfi
"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"

~~~
rkuykendall-com
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.

~~~
runawaybottle
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/](https://couchpota.to/) \-
[http://sickbeard.com/](http://sickbeard.com/) \-
[https://github.com/rembo10/headphones](https://github.com/rembo10/headphones)

People auto-download the latest episode of a tv show throughout the season,
albums, etc.

------
kwamenum86
_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.

~~~
coffeecodecouch
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.

~~~
abustamam
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.

------
jtreanor
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

~~~
espadrine
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.

~~~
VikingCoder
> 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.

~~~
ClashTheBunny
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.

------
ghughes
Editorialized title.

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

~~~
ekianjo
> 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.

~~~
13hours
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.

~~~
DerpDerpDerp
"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.

------
antihero
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.

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

~~~
mentos
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?

~~~
JonLim
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.

~~~
exelius
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.)

~~~
gnopgnip
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.

~~~
exelius
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.

------
happywolf
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.

~~~
glaugh
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?

~~~
js2
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.

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

After that a couple of mobile clients?

~~~
arianvanp
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.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> 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.

~~~
Ntrails
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.

~~~
vertex-four
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.

------
fit2rule
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..

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

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

~~~
sspiff
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.

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

~~~
shankysingh
update: removed..

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

~~~
shankysingh
update : removed.

------
pennetti
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/](http://time.com/63331/game-of-thrones-torrent-record/) [2]
[http://www.businessinsider.com/thom-yorke-explains-why-he-
ha...](http://www.businessinsider.com/thom-yorke-explains-why-he-hates-
spotify-2013-10)

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

------
imikay
They are using SEO tricks to get a better rank.

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

------
danra
Does anyone have the specifics of what malware time4popcorn includes?

------
spaznode
Hey wait, [http://www.time4popcorn.eu/](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/](http://www.time4popcorn.eu/) is the only popcorn
for me. =)

~~~
computer
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.

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

