20 ms·
Goodbye Popcorn Time
- IAmNotBorat 13y agoI hope someone from Hollywood reads that.
- wankershim 13y agoI hope not. It will convince them that bullying developers works because they can't afford lawyers.
- gscott 13y agoI made sure to download it right away a few days ago even though I don't know when I will get around to trying it.
- somesay 13y agoToo late. Their database is hosted somewhere online and now gone.
- TillE 13y agoShould be possible to build a P2P index with something like BTSync, which lets you hand out read-only keys. If only it were open source, or at least open protocol.
- marrusl 13y agoStrange. Just worked fine for me.
- mayanman 13y agoNo, it does not anymore, just spins. Mine also says Popcorn time Goodbye was just released you should get it now!
- gmazzotti 13y agoThe previous version still works, you can download it from here https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWw.. https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWw.... (aprently in the last version they added something that let them shut it down if the needed)
- ConceptJunkie 13y agoDon't worry. They already _know_ that.
- sylvinus 13y agoSomeone from Hollywood made them write that :)
- redox_ 13y agoWhat does their last commit stand for? https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app/commit/7e4d851bc02082d5bbc0260315fd61fe856d0bdc https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app/commit/7e4d851bc...
- galapago 13y agoLast flush of code?
- galapago 13y agoThere is an encrypted message [1] in the last commit of their website (popcorn-time.github.io). [1] https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-time.github.io/commit/d0a39b7f04bf8e6ceb1c41fa0b74a10e267beb92 https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-time.github.io/commi...
- leantx 13y agoI couldn't find the related public key to decrypt it :(
- somesay 13y agoI guess full name credits to prove their participation in case of job interviews while not making it too easy for the lawyers to address them. A timestamped, maybe later revealed proof of knowledge or secret communication doesn't make a lot of sense here.
- tlrobinson 13y agoA simple hash of the full names would do, wouldn't it?
- somesay 13y agoWell, but everyone could try guessing the names then, something they probably don't want. After all, it's just speculation what they have hidden there.
- robinhoodexe 13y agoHow long till someone forks it...
- iLoch 13y agoIt's already been forked multiple times via GitHub. I'm guessing whichever fork currently had the most active developers will continue the application. It's like the movie industry doesn't know how technology works or something...
- MikeTaylor 13y agoI wonder what will happen to the code-base. It's pretty hard to make an application go away when there are many checkouts of its git module around the world.
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoI'm absolutely certain it'll get forked and live on under different maintainers.
- sorahn 13y agoYeah, the service works. I know that I forked a copy just in case.
- maxmcd 13y agoWell, for anyone else looking, this build currently works for me: https://github.com/isra17/popcorn-app https://github.com/isra17/popcorn-app
- drawkbox 13y agoSadly, existing then shutting down so fast will only hurt the whole reason they set out. Lawyers and middle men are licking their chops and toasting champagne and caviar dreams at the idea of such fast work on their part. It did prove once again that demand for easy services is desired but lots of that were also because it was free.
- tricolon 13y agoWhy would lawyers be toasting champagne? They could have made money from a lawsuit.
- mobitar 13y agoWhile people downloaded millions of illegal movies..
- drawkbox 13y agoProof that their intimidation 'services' work will sell more intimidation services.
- mkessy 13y agoOnly the lawyers who don't understand the idea of an open source project would be licking their chops. I can still run popcorn time, you can still run popcorn time, anyone can still run popcorn time. It relies on completely open APIs hooked to the torrent infrastructure. Development will continue in some form or another I can guarantee it. Besides this isn't even the first project like this, just the most public. See: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174736 http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174736
- chii 13y agogood riddance to those people who would then pay for said intimidation service, the find out that it doesn't actually work.
- midas007 13y agoThe whole "we're shutting down" celebratory bragging isn't useful, it's destructive and encourages destroying of customer trust and business value.
- leot 13y agoIt's better that the Popcorn Time developers leave now than later. By leaving now they can take advantage of all the attention and get a great fork going.
- at-fates-hands 13y agoProbably what their initial intention was from the beginning. 1) Build something incredible. 2) Get a ton of cred for it. 3) Release it to the masses via open source. 4) Wait for the lawyers to roll up en masse. Then simply flee the scene, avoiding any legal entanglements and with steadfast assurances what you've created will now go on without you, and most likely morph into something even more incredible. Genius I tell you, genius.
- badman_ting 13y agoInteresting! Hadn't thought of that, but it's pretty clever if it is indeed what they're up to.
- zanny 13y agoIt is becoming a very viable strategy in the "questionable derivative works" scene to open source the assets before a release in case you are C&D'd. It is wonderful how the Internet makes it hard to suppress information.
- bduerst 13y agoSounds a little like Youtube (sans open source), right before it was acquired.
- wmf 13y agoIs Justin Frankel involved in this?
- couchand 13y agoI'd call that move the satoshi if it weren't too soon.
- ialex 13y agoHey this is not the end, it is an opportunity to sell this technology to some company that has problems streaming video PopCorn Time is just the proof that it works and it can be used to solve real world problems. So i hope you find a successful exit.
- manish_gill 13y agoI installed it 2 days ago. Was gonna try it out tonight, and now this. :(
- checker659 13y agoWorks regardless I think because it feeds off of torrents.
- manish_gill 13y agoDon't think so. I just get a "please wait" spinner.
- smileysteve 13y agoThey changed / took down the api that got the torrent providers.
- gmazzotti 13y agoThe previous version still works, you can download it from here https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWwvSb5g_eKgolRg https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWw... (aprently in the last version they added something that let them shut it down if the needed)
- johndevor 13y agoNot working for me any more. :(
- gmazzotti 13y agoThe previous version still works, you can download it from here https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWw.. https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWw.... (aprently in the last version they added something that let them shut it down if the needed)
- denimboy 13y agotry this: https://github.com/hjhart/the_rotten_pirate
- sheerun 13y agoYou can also search torrent manually and use https://github.com/mafintosh/peerflix https://github.com/mafintosh/peerflix with VLC
- Lambdanaut 13y agoTime to fork and continue development.
- User8712 13y agoWell, this is disappointing. It seemed like a nicely designed application, with an enthusiastic development team behind it. And now, within days, it's gone. If they wanted to avoid piracy, I think it might have had some potential going the legal route as well. It would be a nice interface to browse legal movies, documentaries, web series, etc. Strange decision, I could see a company like Netflix buying them out for a rather large sum of money, within a short period of time. As far as using it as a stepping stone to future jobs, why wouldn't they run the application longer? They pulled the plug before it became a widespread success. It they waited longer, the name Popcorn Time would actually be recognizable, which would be great for their résumé, kind of like saying you developed Napster. Now, they'll mention they worked on Popcorn Time, and have to explain to everyone it was an app to stream torrents, that had a brief shelf life. They really should have road this out longer. Even the name was catchy. Someone else is going to fork the project and achieve the success they would have earned.
- mbavio 13y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7401316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7401316
- lucb1e 13y ago> I could see a company like Netflix buying them out Really? I think Netflix would "suddenly" have each and every contract broken and no content can be watched on Netflix services ever again. Well, with the exception of anything that runs on Popcorn, of course.
- User8712 13y agoI never said Netflix would continue to run the application and let people stream illegal content. Let's break this down. First off, it's a perfect fit. The Popcorn Time audience streams the latest movies and tv series. This is exactly the audience Netflix wants to target. Popcorn Time hitting 100 million users doesn't seem far fetched. Netflix pays around $16 for each user that you refer to their free trial. Let's say Netflix buys Popcorn Time, converts it to movies that are in the public domain, and tries to refer everyone to the Netflix trial to continue streaming new films. We'll say 99% of people leave, and 1% take up the trial. That's 1 million trial users, which Netflix would currently pay 16 million dollars for in referral fees. In short, it could easily grow into an application worth tens of millions to a company like Netflix. The movie industry would love it. Netflix destroys the most popular service for illegally streaming movies, and they make some money off the Netflix subscribers. If someone makes a successful fork, maybe we'll see this happen.
- irunbackwards 13y agoAnyone interested in the app can still build it from their repo. https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app
- equalarrow 13y agoIf I wasn't on Comcast I would try this out.. I've had to resort to a lower-tech approach: * Rent a cheap server * Run transmission daemon on it * SSH into server, port forward 9091 * Connect to localhost:9091 and add torrents that way * When downloads are done, scp them off to my local network Con: way too many steps involved Pro: encrypted to/from my local network I know this is not nearly the same as Popcorn Time, but it would be nice to automate all this.
- kilroy123 13y agoThat's what a seed box is for. If you're really paranoid about it, you can actually pay for a seed box in bitcoins. Cost a good ~$20 a month though.
- tmslnz 13y agoPut.io "Seedbox As A Service" should work pretty well for that purpose
- icebraining 13y agoI have a similar setup, but I've automated a few more steps. I have couchpotato[1] running on my VPS. When I add a movie to it, it'll find and drop the torrent file to a directory, where rtorrent will pick it up and immediately start downloading it. When it finishes, it moves the files to a temporary directory, where couchpotato will detect them, rename them and move them to yet another directory, where Git Annex Assistant[2] will add them to its store and sync to a Raspberry Pi in my home through SSH/rsync. Then I can either copy the file to my laptop or Android by doing "git annex get <file>" or stream it from the Samba server running on the Pi. Complicated to setup initially, yes, but now it runs smoothly with almost no manual work. [1] https://couchpota.to/ https://couchpota.to/ [2] https://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/
- darksim905 13y agoNobody has a god damn spine in the tech world. These guys could've stood up & been different - the fact they shut down shortly after being featured on here, Reddit & other large websites shows that they weren't passionate at all & weren't willing to standup for their users at all. Ridiculous.
- ressmox 13y agoThat's an easy statement to make when you aren't risking a battle with the full legal force of corporations like the MPAA.
- spada 13y agoI owned a site that was targeted by the MPAA. I don't think you understand just how intense that can be. it's hardly a C&D letter.
- nawitus 13y agoThat's interesting. Any chance you could be more specific?
- madcow2011 13y agoI agree, I would love to hear add'l details if you don't mind.
- paulgb 13y agoHow dare people making a free, open-spurce project not engage in an expensive legal battle in order to keep that product available! The nerve!
- programminggeek 13y agoDid anyone believe that Popcorn Time was going to end any other way than this? Either they were going to be shut down by their own choice, or their hand would be forced by outside litigation. Just because something is legal doesn't mean companies won't spend millions of dollars to make your life miserable because of what you built.
- clarry 13y agoPerhaps they could've ended the way the Pirate Bay ended.
- codygman 13y agoPirate Bay looks up to me.
- res0nat0r 13y agoHah I predicted this 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379904 Just because your product is legal, but mainly used for illegal purposes really opens you up to a lot of issues. They should have expected this was coming.
- oh_sigh 13y agoI guess I'm the odd man out on reddit, er hackernews, but it doesn't seem too brave or incredible to build an app which is used to primarily stream stolen content.
- yuvadam 13y agoAgain with 'stolen'.
- oh_sigh 13y agoNotice how I said 'primarily', and not 'only'.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Nashhhh 13y agoYeah stolen! I had a copy of Ghostbusters at home on my shelf and it disappeared yesterday. I suspect a criminal using popcorntime must be responsible.
- oh_sigh 13y agoYes, because words are only allowed to have a single meaning. Using the word 'steal' to refer to piracy to bypass payment to the rights holder has been happening since at least the mid 80s(NYT reference from 1986: http://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/28/nyregion/cable-tv-operators-unite-to-fight-theft-of-their-services.html http://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/28/nyregion/cable-tv-operator... )
- MAGZine 13y agoIt's a pejorative term that predisposes someone to a certain conclusion. Pretty easy to bust out the 'S' word and win the jury in .2 seconds. ;-) http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131130/15263725410/surprise-mpaa-told-it-cant-use-terms-piracy-theft-stealing-during-hotfile-trial.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131130/15263725410/surpri...
- nasalgoat 13y agoOn the topic of pirated content, I was an early contributor to the Veronica Mars movie Kickstarter, and I received my "digital download" today. It consisted of a link to sign up to two separate websites to download a specific player that would stream the video for me on supported platforms only. Also, the HD version might not be available right away. I checked and the torrent of the HD version had been online for 30 minutes already. Why do they bother with this bullshit? It makes no logical sense and all it does is hurt them.
- lukifer 13y agoI think it boils down to the psychology of "something to gain" vs. "something to lose". New creatives who are kickstarting and bootstrapping lean towards the former, and are fine with relinquishing control if it means they get sales at all. Old guard suits are banking on a statistically predictable return rate, and focus on reducing risks to that return, even at the cost of additional short-term profits or long-term goodwill. Of course, the fact that Veronica Mars was kickstarted puts a hole in my theory. :) I'm guessing that its stakeholders are still partially in the old guard mindset, and/or they're trusting Hollywood's "best practices" for digital distribution. (They may also be under pre-existing contract restrictions for the Veronica Mars IP.)
- nasalgoat 13y agoI definitely believe it's the latter - the IP holders think they're protecting their content when in fact they are only increasing the piracy of it.
- drawkbox 13y agoI agree. The notion of creating false demand on the internet by constraining supply is not going to work ever, as it is ad infinitum a cat and mouse game. What does work is making content that is desired easy to get to and consume (at their own pace without delays before releases etc) at wide scale. People will pay for ease and they do like rewarding the creators of good entertainment and educational services. The better experience will always win, even if it is pay. Where before content creators wanted everyone tuning in at one time for big ad dollars and network effect, now it is the opposite, they should want consumers to drift through their lands of content at their leisure and not want to leave. This actually distributes traffic and demand as well so there aren't huge funnels of bandwidth hogging false demand schedules (HBOGO recently failed on the last episode of True Detective, where House of Cards people watch more distributed because it is all available at once).
- badman_ting 13y agoI never used the thing, but people seemed pretty impressed by it. This post is a mess though, it's all over the place.
- grannyg00se 13y agoYeah, I don't know what it is, what they've done, or why they are stopping. Not in any real detail anyway.
- tzaman 13y agoIs it just me or is there something they aren't telling us?
- hugobessa 13y agoThey said it would be great news. This post isn't great news. Yet.
- dylanlacom 13y agoI agree. It seems like there's something missing to the story. It makes sense that this is not a battle some people want to fight, but they clearly did want to when they created the app.
- zanny 13y agoWe can infer that any developer in the US or any real buddy-buddy country with the US probably had police at their door. Yea, they didn't break a law, but the police aren't for law enforcement really. They also probably got a few thousand notices they would be taken to court. Their entire goal worked, though - make the app in private, have it blow up, and since the code is FOSS now thousands of people have it and it won't die. Forks can spring up and improve on it just fine - hell, the original developers can work on it still under someone elses repo - but they aren't liable for anything.
- plg 13y agoWe need someone rich and powerful to champion this cause, to put their name, influence, reputation behind it. We need an Elon Musk or a Mark Zuckerburg to just do it, and say go ahead, try suing me, I am going to change the system.
- mixologic 13y agoElon Musk is busy trying to change the way cars are sold to the public. And he just lost a battle in New Jersey.
- NDizzle 13y agoThat may be gone but you can still use http://www.nzbplayer.com/ http://www.nzbplayer.com/ if you absolutely must watch things as you download them.
- mayanman 13y agoMine does not work anymore, just spins. Mine also says Popcorn time Goodbye was just released you should get it now!
- gmazzotti 13y agoThe previous version still works, you can download it from here https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWw.. https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWw.... (aprently in the last version they added something that let them shut it down if the needed)
- j_baker 13y ago> Popcorn Time as a project is legal. We checked. The law isn't quite so black and white. There are a lot of different theories good lawyers can come up with. At the end of the day, the only thing that's legal is what a court says is legal.
- EGreg 13y agoAnd even then it is not necessarily legal, because the case can be revisited on appeal. Or another case can be revisited in another court from a completely different angle. It's happened before. Many times.
- rhino369 13y agoAnd even if you had to make a legal / not legal binary choice, popcorn time wasn't legal. How do you check 4 times and not read MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.
- kilian 13y agoNot everyone lives in the USA ;) I don't know, but it could very well be that there are precedents in their home country Argentina supporting the 'legal' conclusion.
- xtracto 13y agoIn Mexico, sharing this kind of IP is legal as long as it is not done for-profit ("sin fines de lucro"): http://www.regiosfera.com/es-legal-compartir-contenido-en-mxico/ http://www.regiosfera.com/es-legal-compartir-contenido-en-mx...
- lucb1e 13y agoIn the Netherlands I believe any tool that is only used for illegal purposes is in itself illegal. For example hacking tools that are not meant for penetration testing would be illegal. Whether this would apply to applications providing copyright infringement on a huge scale, I don't know, though with the initially lost Pirate Bay case (which I have yet to see legal grounds for) it doesn't look too good.
- Oculus 13y agoI don't think this was Popcorn's choice. I'd be willing to bet their hand is being forced here.
- lucb1e 13y agoI think it was their choice, the way they go about it. They've given a huge middle finger to the copyright industry while staying within legal bounds and showing off their programming skills. Can't say they're set for life, but odds are they made themselves a pretty solid future without being dragged along with this project any further.
- jacobbudin 13y ago> We became the underdog that would fight for the consumer. That's like saying "Sure, we burned down the bank, but we did it for the frustrated account holders."
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- fjcaetano 13y agoIt doesn't matter. The code is already out there. Respectfully, I think the authors didn't think much and were kinda dumb. The project had a great potential, it was barely legal, they bought a fight with the media industry, but the cherry-on-top is that they putted their asses on the line. They shouldn't have used their real names. Anonymise your accounts and be happy. But as I said, it doesn't matter. Everyone already has a fork of their repo (which has over 70 open pull-requests) and any one of these forks may become the new "official". It won't stop. The gears are already running, much like bitcoin. Fortunately.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- slang800 13y agoAs you predicted, it looks like the new "official" repo is here: https://github.com/isra17/popcorn-app https://github.com/isra17/popcorn-app and people have already begun work on getting it working again.
- cettox 13y agoI was unaware of that repo yet, it took me 1 hour to get it working though some features was disabled : https://github.com/cettox/popcorn-app https://github.com/cettox/popcorn-app and for precompiled executables visit http://kemald.com/pt/popcorn.html http://kemald.com/pt/popcorn.html
- elwell 13y agoWell that was fast.
- elwell 13y agoAm interested in details, but none given.
- baby 13y agoI thought it was decentralized enough that you just needed the software for the job. Seems like it used a centralized point since I can't use it now.
- mkessy 13y agoReally? It's working fine for me. What problems are you having?
- mentos 13y ago> Piracy is not a people problem. It’s a service problem. I'd say its a pricing problem. Right now 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is available from Amazon Instant Video at $20. On your popular torrent site virtually the same product is available for $0 + (riskOfGettingCaught * $1,000,000 fine) = $0.000001 ? You can either try to increase the riskOfGettingCaught or decrease the legal price. I think the industry should do what Hulu has done over the past 5 years. Give the product away virtually for free, collect an enormous user base while you starve/kill the demand for the equivalent torrents, slowly increase the price of the service until you find equilibrium, then profit. But hey, maybe piracy isn't really a problem? The greatest assumption people make is that because someone downloaded a movie illegally they were willing to buy it for $20. Which is false. I'd have to imagine that selling 'The Wolf of Wall Street' for $20 on Amazon is more profitable than selling it for say $19 and capturing a few pirate consumers. But I wonder if theres a number between $0 and $19 that captures enough of the piraters to be more profitable than $20?
- secstate 13y agoLOL. And then if you're Hulu, start cramming ads back into paying users' faces. I miss the days when people threw sledghammers into giant TV screens to free us from this hell. Or was that a movie?
- amirouche 13y agoWhat people fail to understand or see or ack is that there is enough to do all the things...
- comex 13y agoIt's not like Apple has ads in their video service today, for their part :)
- saalweachter 13y agoOh god, Archer. Since FX took over in S4, their iTunes versions have between sandwiched with ads for other FX programs. ADS IN FULL-PRICED iTUNES DOWNLOADS. Filled me with such rage.
- theschwa 13y agoI find it interesting that this is essentially a web app front end, made with backbone.js, for the node module peerflix, but peerflix hasn't received any heat. It seems to me their only "fault" was making things too convenient.
- wmf 13y agoThat's the flip side of "it's a service problem". Hollywood only cares if you make infringing more convenient than buying.
- amirouche 13y agoOf course, they received money. So much coverage and stop it here? Who would believe that they are honest? As if the guy who invented torrent stopped working on torrent... There is a standard for this techno, it's called PPSP [1] it covers both "free" network (with a DHT tracker) and controlled networks (the one required for distributing protected content). There is even an free software that is based on it [2] and a c++ library [3]. It is was developed during P2PNext [4]. During this research some one achieved sub-second DHT lookup and now works at Spotify. If you are interested in the subject of P2P maybe "P2P virtual network" or "second life P2P" search might interest you. My interest is for the time being a graph database over a DHT. I am at the very early stage in terms of code. But maybe this might give you an idea of what I'm looking for [5]. [1] http://tools.ietf.org/wg/ppsp/ http://tools.ietf.org/wg/ppsp/ [2] http://www.tribler.org/trac http://www.tribler.org/trac [3] http://libswift.org/ http://libswift.org/ [4] http://p2pnext.eu/ http://p2pnext.eu/ [5] https://github.com/amirouche/no https://github.com/amirouche/no
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- j_s 13y agoCan not access the /no repo - maybe it's still private? Sounds interesting!
- amirouche 13y agoIt's offline actually, I deleted my github account because of recent events at github. Since you ask... 3rd iteration: It already took me too much time to write this comment. The code is really not interesting, the implementation of nolang is broken, I did not find time to debug it, not only "I want to do too much things at once" syndrom but I also wanted to mock the idea of some part of the "final" app, in a browser and apply it in the context of Culture&Empire to reach potential dev/users. Since the web is not my primary target, it doesn't really matter in any way but there's still valuable (to me) ideas in the app. This is the most exciting thing that I ever had in mind. It might sound also kind of naive: instead of pushing Pythonium forward and getting a Python framework similar to meteor or derbyjs I will do "no". https://bitbucket.org/amirouche/no-no-more-updates https://bitbucket.org/amirouche/no-no-more-updates The primary application I will build on top of "no" will be something like the venerable delicious bookmark website. As far as I can think, I would like to be able to boot a computer to be a "no" node with the very minimum. Code & Data will live primarily in the DHT. [0] The following link is lying. the exact definition of the compliant mode is "wanna be compliant" or "can be compliant" [1] https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pythonium https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pythonium [2] [2] As a Python dev (with JS knowledge), I really like the veloce mode... veloce mode generates perfect javascript code ie. with no overhead. The overhead of compliant mode is between 100 and 10 i don't remember correctly (based on pystones.py).
- izzydata 13y agoI'd pay 1-5 dollars for a digital download to a video file that I can move and put on anything I own in any way that I want. I won't pay 20-40 dollars for a video I can watch in very limited ways or is a physical disk. It is just too inconvenient to be worth it. There is also a consistency problem. I want everything to be from the same source or in the same format.
- api 13y agoI've scanned this whole thread and there's not a single post that is at all critical of the intentions behind Popcorn Time. I guess you're all okay with a world where content creators don't eat. Or do you have a better idea than copyright? If so, by all means let's hear it. I promise you that the person who solves that problem in an accessible way will be the next Mark Zuckerberg, or at least Tim Berners-Lee. Every single artist, musician, movie studio, and producer in the world will beat a path to your door, frantically scrambling for their checkbooks and trembling as they hover over a check with the pen asking "how much?!? how much!??" They will break into your house and shove cash down your throat while you sleep. I know a good number of writers, artists, and musicians. Do any of you six-figure-earners have any idea how insanely hard it is to even make a living doing anything "creative?" I mean a basic living: food, shelter, occasional transportation. Nothing infuriates these people more than clueless techies with (to them) unimaginable earning power braying on about how they should live off charity or touring revenues so "information can be free." You try it, and no open source does not count. Open source is a resume item that helps you land your next six-figure gig, not to mention the fact that it can be monetized in other ways... ways that unlike tip jars actually work. (Services, training, dual-licensing, etc.) Oh sure, yeah, the record industries and Hollywood make more than the artists. Everyone knows that. In the past, the record company or the studio made most of the money and the artist got too little. But now with piracy the artist gets zero. Is that a step in the right direction? We've gone from artists having to suck up to shady promoters to artists not even having shady promoters to suck up to. Why is there so much crappy music on the radio? Because the people who like it are either too young or too dumb to pirate it. And this is coming from someone who's written peer to peer apps. I am pretty liberal in this area. I do not believe a technology should be interfered with just because it could potentially be used for piracy. If we did that, we'd have to shut down the whole Internet. But there's a difference between designing an app that can be used for piracy and designing one whose entire focus and modus operandi is to promote piracy front and center. It may not be illegal but it's a dick move. Let's see you work for "voluntary contributions," assholes. To add douche to the nozzle, there's people in here congratulating the Popcorn Time authors on how brilliant they are by leveraging this for publicity. That's wonderful. Now these folks who did little more than hack together some node.js scripts with a front end will go out and make well above $100k while musicians struggle to pay rent for tiny closets in the ghetto. So the MPAA might have harassed them. Boo hoo. Go blow your nose into your hordes of cash. Maybe the end of copyright as we know it is technologically inevitable. But in the meantime it shows more than a little bit of ignorance, naiveté, and douchebaggery to congratulate each other on destroying peoples' livelihoods en masse. Maybe instead all you hackers could bend your considerable intellects toward trying to solve this problem in a productive way that actually helps creators get paid while also making it easy for people to enjoy their work. You'd be loved, not to mention wealthy and historically legendary.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- cottonseed 13y agoI thought it was a desktop app that used 3rd party torrent movie search APIs (YIFI, OpenSubtitles, etc.) to stream torrents. How does a desktop app "shut down"? I must be misunderstanding part of the architecture. Did they have a centralized server? What did they use it for? I know they took the down the download link. People are reporting the app no longer works.
- hadrien01 13y agoThey used the http://subapi.com/ http://subapi.com/ website as a gateway between their app and http://yts.re/api http://yts.re/api. You can browse precedent commits to check the previous code, which is what I'm doing now.
- fenghorn 13y agoPopcorn Time 0.1.0 depends on subapi.com to continue functioning. Based on the source the API returns JSON file with the following structure: { movies: { [ torrents: [ {'quality': '1080p', url: 'http://url.torrent' http://url.torrent'}, {'quality': '720p', url: 'http://url.torrent' http://url.torrent'}, {'quality': 'undefined', url: 'http://url.torrent' http://url.torrent'} ], subtitles: [ {'language': 'en', url: 'http://url.srt' http://url.srt'}, {'language': 'undefined', url: 'http://url.srt' http://url.srt'} ], imdb_id:, title:, year:, runtime:, synopsis:, voteAverage:, poster:, backdrop:, seeders:, leechers: ] } }
- cantbecool 13y agoI was hoping this service was going to take off. I created something similar, a simple movie torrent search engine: http://www.moviemagnet.net http://www.moviemagnet.net I hope people are not discouraged by Popcorn's exit, since torrent based applications should force the issue, old media companies to change their archaic distribution models.
- jxf 13y agoFWIW, the source code is still around on GitHub, if you'd like to fork it: https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app It doesn't seem to mention the license it's released under, though.
- Noxchi 13y agoI was trying to use Popcorn yesterday and it just plain sucked. I then installed XBMC and XBMCTorrent plugin, and everything was buttery smooth. Popcorn is built on A LOT of immature technology, which makes it very slow. XBMCtorrent on the other hand uses mature, tested, compiled libraries and platforms.
- gcv 13y agoCould this have been the intent all along? Make a decent first cut of the code, generate a ton of publicity, then generate a ton more publicity — note the vagueness about why exactly they shut down — then leave the code in reasonable working order up on GitHub. Now a thousand hard-to-shutdown forks will bloom.
- staticelf 13y agoWhy the fuck did they host the servers themselves? Was this planned all the time?
- userbinator 13y agoGoodbye Popcorn Time, Hello Streisand Effect.
- frade33 13y agoJust today I thought, can we an iPad version of this app. nevermind.
- usaphp 13y agoI don't understand why it got so much attention, it looks just like a ripoff from zona.ru, even the frontend website looks similar. And zona has been out there for quite some time already.
- baxter001 13y agoA nice wrapper around something like btcat: http://jordic.com/btcat/btcat http://jordic.com/btcat/btcat is all that's really needed, a great part of popcorn time was purely in the marketing and presentation, the technology is relatively straight forwards. Now it's clear there's a demand for similar tools this isn't a tide that can be stopped.
- ghx 13y agoKinda random, but I associate the word "popcorn" with time, because when I was a kid growing up in the Bay Area, we always dialed POP-CORN (767-2676) to get the current time. Probably just a coincidence?
- GigabyteCoin 13y agoI don't understand. I thought Popcorn Time was FOSS with it's source on GitHub that downloaded all it's data from external APIs. How can it possibly just "say goodbye"? Is this the main developers disowning it or what? I imagine thousands of other devs now have local forks of it on their home machine and can/will continue to develop and release it?
- kayoone 13y agoBelieving that piracy is solely a Service problem is pretty naive or downright ignorant. Yes, some people pirate because other means of purchasing the content in question are inferior but lets face it: People will always prefer the free option
- chii 13y agoNobody is saying it's solely a service problem - but that the current level of legit material isn't serving the full spectrum of available customers. Piracy will always happen, so if you wanted less pirates, one way is to better serve them.
- 514d3 13y agoOld working version: https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWwvSb5g_eKgolRg https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWw... Apparently they patched it after this release so they could shut it down; tested the one above a moment ago and it still works
- 514d3 13y agoOld working version: https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWwvSb5g_eKgolRg https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWw... Apparently they patched it after this release so they could shut it down; tested the one above a moment ago and it still works
- jcslzr 13y agoi think the solution is going to be the spotify model for movies.
- Jugurtha 13y agoThere's a saying that goes : Don't buy fish in the ocean. Studios and all assume that people are thieves. There are a number of cases to think of: Tim Ferriss teamed with.. BitTorrent to distribute his latest book (4 Hour Chef). He wrote a detailed article on his experience and the correlation between BitTorrent downloads and sales (number driven he is, he tracked that real-time). The model was the second-shareware model of early DOS games (you get part of the content, and if you like it, you buy the rest). And people bought it. There was an ad on BitTorrent clients. I haven't bought the book yet, but I haven't even downloaded the free content since I'm saving the thing for later. There was Radiohead releasing "In Rainbows" as a "Pay what you want" which is extremely risky (since you're giving all the content). And yet, I'll let the reader look up the numbers (it ended being pretty lucrative, since a lot of people pre-ordered it). Studios and Publishers seem to forget that a lot of human beings would pay if it were easy. One of the reasons I got a MasterCard recently is to pay for books I've read. I live in a country where English isn't spoken, so there's no way I can find them in libraries, I tried to buy on Amazon, they told me they can't ship it where I live. Second: It's ridiculous to expect of me to buy a movie I haven't watched, or a book I haven't read. Bear in mind that even with content so easily to be pirated, most movies, and I mean like 99% of them, I wouldn't waste bandwidth to download them. I swear that I wouldn't even watch them if I were paid. Why ? Because a movie is 1h30 to 2h minimum and my life is made of hours and minutes and seconds. I don't like to waste my time. It's not like I'm immortal. So most movies are crap to being with, not everyone is De Niro. An other reason: Content is hardly accessible the legal way because their platforms suck big time. I give an example ? Say there's an interview on NBC or CNN (though free).. I wouldn't watch it on CNN or NBC, because their site is so slow, their players are horrible you want to punch your laptop. So I go to Youtube and find that video and watch it without a glitch. So I wouldn't even watch free content on the platform of the provider of this free content, because his platform sucks ! If your website is straining someone's computer's resources and making the fan go crazy, you got to ask yourself tough questions (and probably fire some people). I gladly pay for things. I donate on random websites just because I want to, or because I liked something, or because they had a funny thing, etc.
- ElDiablo666 13y agoYou've really just illuminated what the MAFIAA doesn't want us to understand: that it is empirically false to state that people aren't supporting the arts. But let's not use their loaded propaganda bullshit terms when we're talking about these things. Sharing media isn't stealing. People who share music and movies online are not the same as armed robbers attacking a ship at gunpoint. If we are to win this war--and let's not delude ourselves, it's a war that the traitors started against us--then we must refuse to think the way they tell us to. These people screw over the creative folks who earn them record profits on a daily basis and they will cling tightly to their monopolies by purchasing more laws unless we stop them.
- GBiT 13y agoGoodbye Popcorn Time, hello Popcorn app - https://github.com/yify https://github.com/yify
- gulbrandr 13y agoThe best part: We’ve shown that people will risk fines, lawsuits and whatever consequences that may come just to be able to watch a recent movie in slippers. Just to get the kind of experience they deserve. And maybe, that asking nicely for a few bucks a month to watch whichever movie you want is a bit better than that. Popcorn Time is shutting down today. Not because we ran out of energy, commitment, focus or allies. But because we need to move on with our lives. Our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And that’s not a battle we want a place in.
- whatshaup 13y agoYou know what really grinds my gears? You actually give so much credit to Popcorn Time for "inventing" something that the damn europeans have for a thousand years...OK, maybe for americans is Heaven on earth cause they pay for damn everything but it's not like they invented fire! It's the same story as Twitter in Europe. Everyone thought it's just another social network, then it moves to US and BOOM. I should start "porting" some ideas then cause you just proved a point I have for 8 years now.
- Tycho 13y agoWe’ve shown that people will risk fines, lawsuits and whatever consequences that may come just to be able to watch a recent movie in slippers. Just to get the kind of experience they deserve. What? Why do they deserve this?
- f47h3r 13y agoDon't worry, YIFI is on it... http://torrentfreak.com/popcorn-time-shuts-down-then-gets-resurrected-by-yts-yify-140315/ http://torrentfreak.com/popcorn-time-shuts-down-then-gets-re... edit Link to new github repo for YIFY: https://github.com/Yify/popcorn-app https://github.com/Yify/popcorn-app
- jrochkind1 13y ago> Popcorn Time as a project is legal. We checked. Four Times. What the heck does that mean? Four times, eh? You mean you asked four different lawyers? You asked the same lawyer four times? You got sued four times and won? (Obviously not). You 'checked' by googling around for legal information... four times? You asked your cousin who took a class on copyright once? Four cousins? You emailed the MPAA... four times? I don't think the law works like you think it works. > Our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And that’s not a battle we want a place in. So, if after your 'four times checking', it still caught you by surprise that there'd be debates and legal threats... I don't think you were checking in the right places.
- notdonspaulding 13y agoHere's what I don't understand. I pay Netflix $8/month to stream movies and TV shows in HD. From that $8 Netflix has to pay their hosting expenses, maintain a profit margin, and pay licensing fees to Hollywood. Now a technology comes along that in several ways delivers a better service than Netflix to consumers, for absolutely no cost to Hollywood. Is there any reason Hollywood shouldn't just release content to torrents, and sell an unlimited license for $8, $16, $24, or ?? a month to consumers living in countries which respect intellectual property? I would gladly pay some amount of money to the content creators if it would buy me Popcorn-time service in a legal manner. I would say the vast majority of Americans are in this boat. They want the service that Popcorn Time used to provide, and they'll pay a price for it. It makes absolutely no sense to me that Hollywood hasn't figured out how to make an absolute killing off of this free infrastructure by merely selling legal amnesty in the form of bittorrent-streaming licenses.
- rahimnathwani 13y ago'Hollywood' isn't a single entity. Someone would need to: - Set this monthly fee - Work out a way to share the fee among content creators, and get that agreed by those content creators - Get the data required to support the fee-sharing agreement (e.g. movie plays) - Protect the revenues through, e.g. legal action against those who use the service without paying, and providing a payment mechanism for everyone else Think about it from the point of view of an individual content creator. If I were to create the best movie ever, and wanted to maximise my revenue from the money/sweat/risk I put in to get this far, what kind of revenue sharing model would need to exist, in order to persuade me to make the movie available on a service like the one you describe?
- mncolinlee 13y agoIt's deeply frustrating that Bittorrent is still synonymous with piracy just like MP3 was in the 1990s. It's simply a protocol. One may use a technology like this for very good purposes, including independent film distribution. When I worked at Pearson, we could not convince network personnel to allow corporate Bittorrent for media content distribution to international sites because they were afraid auditors would balk at it for its connotations. It was clearly the best technology for the job and auditors have accepted it for similar uses at companies like Ebay and Paypal.