8 ms·

Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk

145 points by hashtag 12y ago

deelowe 12y ago
I understand the sudden deletion of the repos, but why are the devs being compelled to not speak? Are NSLs being issued for PT developers?
- betterunix 12y ago
  Optimistic: lawyer advice Pessimistic: Hollywood thugs
nakedrobot2 12y ago
Popcorn Time is _this_ close to being the Napster of Film, Hollywood must be literally shitting bricks. Someone has probably taken it upon himself to threaten these devs in a nasty (and perhaps illegal) way. Surely the story will come out eventually. In the meantime, Popcorn Time is fully available to download. So I'm not sure what genie they're putting back in the bottle....
- girvo 12y ago
  It's a curious state of affairs. I'd love to know how it all went down, as I've never seen things this weird even in the piracy world...
- bryanlarsen 12y ago
  The threat could be nothing more than suing for copyright violation. The fines for that are insanely high, and evidence of such is not necessarily hard to collect. After all, it's highly unlikely the devs were developing Popcorn Time without using it themselves.
  - higherpurpose 12y ago
    I wonder if the way they threatened them is with such a lawsuit...unless they delete everything. But were all the devs (other than the original ones) from US? I don't think copyright fines are as huge in other places. Either way, whoever will be working next on it, it would be preferable if he was from Spain: http://torrentfreak.com/records-labels-lose-big-as-court-declares-file-sharing-tools-legal-140410/ http://torrentfreak.com/records-labels-lose-big-as-court-dec...
  - cmiles74 12y ago
    Surely they download at least a bit of a movie to test. Setting up a mock service that pushes open source video might be a technical solution, but that might not matter once you're in front of a judge.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    They wouldn't even have to use it themselves. If I understand rightly, "contributory copyright infringement"[1] is the stick they would get beaten with here. My hazy understanding is that if the Popcorn Time folks had wanted to get away with this, they shouldn't have said anything about Hollywood movies. They should have promoted it as a tool for watching all the great publicly-licensed documentaries and fan-made films out there on the torrent network. That would give them "substantial non-infringing use" [2]. And if somebody else published instructions on how to change the configs so you'd also get Hollywood's finest, well, that wouldn't be their fault. Oopsie! [1] http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/question.cgi?QuestionID=268 http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/question.cgi?Question... [2] http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Substantial_noninfringing_use http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Substantial_noninfringing_use
    - sspross 12y ago
      No I like that they pointed out how it should work and if the industry gives me something nearly usefull i'm the first who is paying monthly for it!
- Touche 12y ago
  > Popcorn Time is _this_ close to being the Napster of Film No it's not. The elephant in the room that no wants to talk about is that Popcorn Time doesn't work on a television. Television is where people watch movies. Back in the late 90s when Napster was a real mainstream thing, people didn't just listen to the music on their computers, they burnt them to CDs and took them to their cars, to parties, etc.
  - evv 12y ago
    If I were a Hollywood exec right now I would be sweating bullets. Steam boxes will be hitting the shelves in the next couple of years and then there will be no stopping hackers from bringing the elegance of Popcorn Time to the comfort of the living room.
    - calinet6 12y ago
      If not this, then there will be something else. It won't be long before any digital content is simply available. It will eventually equilibrate into its natural state: a public good, non-rival and non-exclusive in consumption. Eventually, we'll pay for our bandwidth and content in one utility package, track usage in a legal and unlimited way, and divvy proceeds of our utility subscription to content creators based on popularity. A systematic solution is necessary, and the faster we're able to do it, the better.
    - genwin 12y ago
      Pretty sure I could buy a device today that streams wirelessly from my computer to the TV in the living room.
    - Touche 12y ago
      Again, you are underestimating how mainstream Napster was at it's heyday. Steam boxes are going to be a niche of a niche.
  - calinet6 12y ago
    This is becoming less and less important. My TV is just a display for a Mac Mini, for example. If I had an AppleTV, I could just mirror the content straight to that. Before all this useful extravagance, I just hooked my computer up to my TV using (gasp) a cable. Worked great, and me and most other people I know, especially those younger than me, are fully used to making this work. Even then, my girlfriend could not care less about even having a TV. She watches everything on her computer and is perfectly happy.
- whatevsbro 12y ago
  > Someone has probably taken it upon himself to threaten these devs in a nasty (and perhaps illegal) way. Someone, you say? How about just stating the fucking obvious: That "someone" is The US Government, and this is just standard gag-order fare. "Stop developing the app, or we will fuck up your life. Oh, and don't say a word about this to anyone, or we'll fuck up your life." This insanity is obviously unconstitutional (for starters), but since the USG obviously doesn't give a fuck anyway, what with the all-encompassing surveillance and all, this has become just business as usual. Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qpcfZzx8xY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qp...
  - jodrellblank 12y ago
    What video is that, "how to completely not understand the way a society works and that you are part of a society"? Edit: The video presenter says "don't pay taxes, don't follow laws". That's like not getting your children vaccinated - a benefit for you in the short term, assuming nothing everything else stays the same. All other people are vaccinated so there's nobody you can catch the disease from anyway. Most people pay taxes so there's no degradation in the local life, but you have more money and more choices. But if there were no taxes and no law for everyone, you wouldn't be able to do that. Rule of law keeps buildings built to a safe standard, keeps food edible, keeps water drinkable, keeps airlines basically safe, keeps employers from abusing employees with low wages and no safety codes, keeps businesses from wrecking and polluting the local town/city environment. How much are you really going to be able to keep of your earnings if you have to personally guard it 24/7 because there's no police, no law, no way to stop someone stronger taking it without followup, and no banks you trust? And how much is that money going to be worth anyway if there's no government to say that it has value by fiat? Who will take your money if they have no guarantee anyone else values it?
    - whatevsbro 12y ago
      > The video presenter says "don't pay taxes, don't follow laws". I agree that telling people not to pay taxes is a bit silly when doing that will get you hauled to jail. But that brings us to the video's point: we should not have rulers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNIgztvyU2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNIgztvyU2U > Rule of law keeps buildings built to a safe standard, keeps food edible, keeps water drinkable, keeps airlines basically safe, keeps employers from abusing employees with low wages and no safety codes, keeps businesses from wrecking and polluting the local town/city environment. There's too much to unpack there. But having no ruleRs doesn't mean having no rules. Besides, in case you haven't noticed, the so-called rule of law only applies to us little folks, not Wall Street banksters, for example. If you commit fraud, you go to jail. If a banker commits fraud, he will face no negative consequences. He'll just be collecting massive bonuses for wrecking the economy. As for the other stuff, if you build a shit airplane and it crashes, you'll have a hard time convincing people to buy more of your airplanes. No one is more motivated to make sure Boeing's aircrafts are safe than Boeing itself. The same applies to food. If your food products harm people, no one will want to buy them, and you won't get any money. But this only works all the way in a free market, where all exchanges are voluntary, and thus, everything is subject to competition. > How much are you really going to be able to keep of your earnings if you have to personally guard it 24/7 because there's no police, no law, no way to stop someone stronger taking it without followup, and no banks you trust? This is a common sticking point, and I was stuck too. But then I realized that whenever someone wants to hurt you somewhere, a police officer will not materialize there to protect you. The government doesn't actually prevent any crimes, it only discourages (ordinary) people from committing them. The same kind of discouragement can be arranged without a government, and will work a lot better because it's based on voluntary co-operation, and therefore can't be bribed to look the other way. > And how much is that money going to be worth anyway if there's no government to say that it has value by fiat? Gold was happily used as a currency for ages, without anyone decreeing that it has value. Money just doesn't work that way. Gold was used exactly because everyone wanted it (ie. it had universal value), it was durable, divisible, and so on. Our fiat currencies only have value because governments force us to pay taxes in them. Otherwise no one would use such unreliable currencies.
- goldenkey 12y ago
  I don't see why Popcorn time doesn't offer legitimate ways to purchase the content. For an honest TV index with multiple streaming sources, check out http://episodeslist.com http://episodeslist.com It's updated daily.
  - nnnnni 12y ago
    It's likely because Hollywood won't LET them "offer legitimate ways to purchase the content". There's a device that will allow normal people to watch new theater movies at home, but it's $500 per viewing after buying the highly-secured $35000 Prima video server. There are also a bunch of requirements that the company checks in person before allowing someone to buy into the service.
    - goldenkey 12y ago
      Fair enough. What about older movies that are available from Netflix or Amazon, iTunes, etc? Popcorn time could at least provide some links for purchasing the media.
      - Touche 12y ago
        What would be the point? You couldn't view them within Popcorn Time. Popcorn Time is not IMDB, it is for streaming movies to watch in the app.
  - runeks 12y ago
    I don't watch a lot of films/TV series, so I would totally pay to watch a single TV episode/film. But I'm on Linux, and I don't know how to do that with iTunes, or if it's even possible. Hulu and Netflix require a subscription, which gets way too expensive because I don't watch a lot of stuff, and when trying to purchase an episode on Amazon I'm greeted with the following: > We could not process your order because of geographical restrictions on the product which you were attempting to purchase. Please refer to the terms of use for this product to determine the geographical restrictions. I simply can't find any site that lets me pay to download a movie/TV show episode, so I usually turn to Pirate Bay.
pjbrow 12y ago
It would be great if a developer beyond the reach of the Western legal system would take this project up with a self hosted repo. Code is speech. It's a terrible precedent for devs to be afraid to have code (including me after reading this). This is where the myriad of outdated laws and prosecutorial discretion bites: it's impossible to know where the legal line is. __ Addition: My view on the savvy modus operandi here (I'm a lawyer when I'm not a developer). If you give someone any kind of reason to sue you, you're essentially handing them a stick. It's much worse if they can afford to hit you with it and you can't afford to defend yourself. The people threatening to sue these guys are almost certainly making silence a condition not to sue. This isolates the devs from people who could support them, and has the added effect of intimidating other devs with the unexplained "disappearances".
- Spittie 12y ago
  I'm honestly surprised that nobody (that I know off) has started to develop a fork while being behind Tor/I2P.
  - cottonseed 12y ago
    I agree. But where are they going to host it? Maybe you don't get hit with a lawsuit, but your github repo still gets taken down. Set up a hidden service git repo? Does that scale? How do you accept changes? I'm sure people are making and sharing changes privately. Maybe there is a need for better censorship-resistant code collaboration tools? Some kind of peer-to-peer github that works over Tor.
- espadrine 12y ago
  There is no western legal system. As absurd as it sounds, what went down with TPB shows how laws perspire beyond a country's boundaries. As for what actually happened to PT, it isn't as clear-cut as it seems. I can tell you one thing as food for thought, though. I contributed a minor patch to two forks. I was granted a small amount of dogecoins (about $.10) for one of those contributions. The notion that there would be a remuneration model behind that rather unique type of open-source project tells a lot about how lacking we are. We miss economic models for the free capabilities we build. Things like Gittip only just emerge, but the way they solve the problem of having multiple people be granted a fair share of buying power based on their contributions don't actually rely on a robust mathematical model, and are very probably flawed at scale. That is true of Gittip, it is true of Flattr (notably irrelevant when dealing with a team), it is even true of the Bitcoin ecosystem, given the absence of a proof for the convergence of its volatility. Those challenges raised by the amazing prospect of a truly decentralized economy are greater than building an app on top of a peer-to-peer network of video distribution. They wouldn't be the first to direct their efforts there, either; a famous TPB member created Flattr after putting his TPB past behind. PS: on the issue of the struggle for equitable remuneration, here is an outstanding blog post by someone working in a cooperative called Igalia; he did contractor work on V8 and Firefox for Bloomberg: http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for-money http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for-money
ericb 12y ago
I have a different theory. I think everyone who touches it gets a payout. Think about it--legal threats tend to make people angry. Especially anti-intellectual property types. By the odds, shouldn't we be seeing a Streisand effect? Being set for life, though, now that's a good motivator to keep your mouth shut.
- girvo 12y ago
  And consider all of them saying "moving on to other projects" + a gag order... An interesting theory, I'll give you that. If I was offered a payout, with the condition of not talking about it at all, I'd probably take it. I don't care about piracy enough, personally.
- naterator 12y ago
  An interesting theory, but the problem with it is that the pool of potential devs is effectively limitless (well, not really but it might as well be). They would have to pay me multiple $10ks to stop dev and shut up. And offering that to 100 or 1,000 devs starts getting really expensive. I don't know. Certainly the first few groups it would work, but... if the cat ever got out, everyone would be lining up to develop it, and it would be easy for the cat to get out.
  - ericb 12y ago
    True, but once the cat gets out of the bag, you can always fall back to the stick-only option.
- lettergram 12y ago
  My guess is that they receive a lawsuit the same time they receive this option. Everyone is shown the carrot and the stick.
bowlofpetunias 12y ago
Replace Popcorn Time with any kind of politically undesirable activity, and it sounds exactly like so many stories from so many totalitarian regimes.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Is 'politically undesirable' the new PC phrase for 'illegal'?
  - Rusky 12y ago
    Is writing Popcorn Time itself actually illegal?
    - drunkcatsdgaf 12y ago
      I dont see how. PCT is scrapper with a pretty UI for the most part.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      Circumventing a rights control measure is illegal and there are probably lawyers who would want to make that case to test it in court.
      - PeterisP 12y ago
        1) The software that is included in popcorntime isn't circumventing any rights control measure - the bittorrents that it accesses don't include any rights control measures that would need to be circumvented. The people who originally supplied and seeded those may (or may not) have used some software that circumvents rights control measures, but that's not included in Popcorntime. 2) Circumventing rights control measures is legal in my country and most countries globally. Copyright laws as agreed in Berne conventions and implemented in local legislation simply don't mention such measures and their circumvention in any way, they handle just the copyright part. USA has a single very specific law - DMCA - that restricts such circumvention; it has been trying to "export" that concept to other countries through trade treaties; but it hasn't succeeded for the most part; making and distributing such tools is legal almost everywhere - and the legality of using them depends on the legality of actual act you're doing; if you're allowed to make that copy (i.e., personal backups) the the use is legal; if you're not (i.e., for redistribution), then the copying is illegal but the 'rights control measure' doesn't change anything at all and its circumvention is irrelevant.
philtar 12y ago
Anyone have the code somewhere? I'll host it. Edit: Isn't this it? https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app What exactly is the problem?
- espadrine 12y ago
  This has been abandoned (and the history destroyed) over a month ago. Nobody that has access develops it. All forks of this died.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  This seems to be the latest one: https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-app https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-app
  - undershirt 12y ago
    Wow, thanks. I just cloned, built, and ran it on Mac. It really works well. That was too easy.
logfromblammo 12y ago
They're being paid off, with silence a condition of the agreement. Seems like the smart thing to do would be to start a new fork and wait for the lawyer and suspiciously well-muscled paralegal with the inexplicable tire iron to arrive on your doorstep. Then take the money. Don't negotiate, just take the money.
orblivion 12y ago
It's bizarre to me that something awful is apparently being threatened against the developers, and yet new forks are not banned from github.
- icpmacdo 12y ago
  Im not sure how liberal Github is with banning project but I think a possible reason would be they don't want to terminate a project until they get a court order.
  - orblivion 12y ago
    Right, and it surprises me that nobody's ordered Github to take them down, since they presumably ordered the project developers to stop.
    - cmiles74 12y ago
      This seems like the more straightforward way to try to kill the project: get Github to stop hosting it. You'd think with the right team of lawyers this would be do-able. There must be something interesting them preventing them from doing this, surely it'd be cheaper than dealing with developers one at a time.
- wpietri 12y ago
  I think Github doesn't have to worry here. Service providers who host content for others generally have safe harbor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicatio... If people were uploading copyrighted material, then Github would be obliged to honor takedown notices. But here, the code's under some sort of public license, so the takedown process wouldn't apply.
goldenkey 12y ago
http://episodeslist.com http://episodeslist.com is an honest alternative where you can stream from Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, iTunes and more
- commentzorro 12y ago
  Way too expensive. I'm willing to pay RedBox prices for a movie and less than half that for a one hour TV drama.
tapia 12y ago
What would happen if suddenly, a very big number of developers (I really mean it... like thousands of developers) began to contribute to such a project. Would hollywood start to sue everyone? And what if some of them would be some "rockstar developers" (like very important for the software world)... yeah... I'm just dreaming, but it would be like the equivalent to a mass protest, that they just wouldn't be able to handle.
- wpietri 12y ago
  It's an existential threat to Hollywood's current business models. They would sue a very big number of developers. Most of whom would fold about 30 seconds after getting the legal paperwork. The few who remained would get crushed. Viacom's YouTube suit ran for 7 years before settlement. And Hollywood is practiced at fucking with the little people; you can see Buchwald v Paramount for an example of how they operate, and one of the rare times they lost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchwald_v._Paramount http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchwald_v._Paramount
- captainmuon 12y ago
  I've been thinking, one should find some mortally ill people in whose name one sets up the repository and website (or just a straight site where you can download all the movies). In exchange one secretly pays their family enough in cash or bitcoin that they don't ever have to worry about money again. If I were filthy rich and had more criminal intentions, I would totally do that ;-)
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Doesn't it seem like TF could simply create their own Repo, build it and start developing on it and see what comes out of the woodwork? Seems like its pretty easy to bait these mysterious forces.
- devx 12y ago
  Yes, I was also wondering if FSF or someone like that could take the project themselves. Let's see who comes knocking. It wouldn't be the first time FSF "facilitated piracy" by building tools like that (see GnuNet, Mediagoblin, etc), so I doubt they would be too afraid to try it.
- lkd 12y ago
  You're overestimating TorrentFreak's commitment to investigative journalism.
llamataboot 12y ago
Mass forking protest? Could we get 1000 new forks of this project by nightfall?
TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
I don't think the industry is silencing them. I think the original devs have gotten scared of being sued and have quickly dropped the project and severed all connections with it.
- lkd 12y ago
  This doesn't explain identical behavior by all later devs. The most reasonable explanation is a common cause.
jokoon 12y ago
sigh

145 points by hashtag 12y ago

I understand the sudden deletion of the repos, but why are the devs being compelled to not speak? Are NSLs being issued for PT developers?

betterunix 12y ago
Optimistic: lawyer advice Pessimistic: Hollywood thugs

nakedrobot2 12y ago

Popcorn Time is _this_ close to being the Napster of Film, Hollywood must be literally shitting bricks. Someone has probably taken it upon himself to threaten these devs in a nasty (and perhaps illegal) way. Surely the story will come out eventually. In the meantime, Popcorn Time is fully available to download. So I'm not sure what genie they're putting back in the bottle....

girvo 12y ago
It's a curious state of affairs. I'd love to know how it all went down, as I've never seen things this weird even in the piracy world...
bryanlarsen 12y ago
The threat could be nothing more than suing for copyright violation. The fines for that are insanely high, and evidence of such is not necessarily hard to collect. After all, it's highly unlikely the devs were developing Popcorn Time without using it themselves.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  I wonder if the way they threatened them is with such a lawsuit...unless they delete everything. But were all the devs (other than the original ones) from US? I don't think copyright fines are as huge in other places. Either way, whoever will be working next on it, it would be preferable if he was from Spain: http://torrentfreak.com/records-labels-lose-big-as-court-declares-file-sharing-tools-legal-140410/ http://torrentfreak.com/records-labels-lose-big-as-court-dec...
- cmiles74 12y ago
  Surely they download at least a bit of a movie to test. Setting up a mock service that pushes open source video might be a technical solution, but that might not matter once you're in front of a judge.
- wpietri 12y ago
  They wouldn't even have to use it themselves. If I understand rightly, "contributory copyright infringement"[1] is the stick they would get beaten with here. My hazy understanding is that if the Popcorn Time folks had wanted to get away with this, they shouldn't have said anything about Hollywood movies. They should have promoted it as a tool for watching all the great publicly-licensed documentaries and fan-made films out there on the torrent network. That would give them "substantial non-infringing use" [2]. And if somebody else published instructions on how to change the configs so you'd also get Hollywood's finest, well, that wouldn't be their fault. Oopsie! [1] http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/question.cgi?QuestionID=268 http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/question.cgi?Question... [2] http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Substantial_noninfringing_use http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Substantial_noninfringing_use
  - sspross 12y ago
    No I like that they pointed out how it should work and if the industry gives me something nearly usefull i'm the first who is paying monthly for it!
Touche 12y ago
> Popcorn Time is _this_ close to being the Napster of Film No it's not. The elephant in the room that no wants to talk about is that Popcorn Time doesn't work on a television. Television is where people watch movies. Back in the late 90s when Napster was a real mainstream thing, people didn't just listen to the music on their computers, they burnt them to CDs and took them to their cars, to parties, etc.
- evv 12y ago
  If I were a Hollywood exec right now I would be sweating bullets. Steam boxes will be hitting the shelves in the next couple of years and then there will be no stopping hackers from bringing the elegance of Popcorn Time to the comfort of the living room.
  - calinet6 12y ago
    If not this, then there will be something else. It won't be long before any digital content is simply available. It will eventually equilibrate into its natural state: a public good, non-rival and non-exclusive in consumption. Eventually, we'll pay for our bandwidth and content in one utility package, track usage in a legal and unlimited way, and divvy proceeds of our utility subscription to content creators based on popularity. A systematic solution is necessary, and the faster we're able to do it, the better.
  - genwin 12y ago
    Pretty sure I could buy a device today that streams wirelessly from my computer to the TV in the living room.
  - Touche 12y ago
    Again, you are underestimating how mainstream Napster was at it's heyday. Steam boxes are going to be a niche of a niche.
- calinet6 12y ago
  This is becoming less and less important. My TV is just a display for a Mac Mini, for example. If I had an AppleTV, I could just mirror the content straight to that. Before all this useful extravagance, I just hooked my computer up to my TV using (gasp) a cable. Worked great, and me and most other people I know, especially those younger than me, are fully used to making this work. Even then, my girlfriend could not care less about even having a TV. She watches everything on her computer and is perfectly happy.
whatevsbro 12y ago
> Someone has probably taken it upon himself to threaten these devs in a nasty (and perhaps illegal) way. Someone, you say? How about just stating the fucking obvious: That "someone" is The US Government, and this is just standard gag-order fare. "Stop developing the app, or we will fuck up your life. Oh, and don't say a word about this to anyone, or we'll fuck up your life." This insanity is obviously unconstitutional (for starters), but since the USG obviously doesn't give a fuck anyway, what with the all-encompassing surveillance and all, this has become just business as usual. Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qpcfZzx8xY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qp...
- jodrellblank 12y ago
  What video is that, "how to completely not understand the way a society works and that you are part of a society"? Edit: The video presenter says "don't pay taxes, don't follow laws". That's like not getting your children vaccinated - a benefit for you in the short term, assuming nothing everything else stays the same. All other people are vaccinated so there's nobody you can catch the disease from anyway. Most people pay taxes so there's no degradation in the local life, but you have more money and more choices. But if there were no taxes and no law for everyone, you wouldn't be able to do that. Rule of law keeps buildings built to a safe standard, keeps food edible, keeps water drinkable, keeps airlines basically safe, keeps employers from abusing employees with low wages and no safety codes, keeps businesses from wrecking and polluting the local town/city environment. How much are you really going to be able to keep of your earnings if you have to personally guard it 24/7 because there's no police, no law, no way to stop someone stronger taking it without followup, and no banks you trust? And how much is that money going to be worth anyway if there's no government to say that it has value by fiat? Who will take your money if they have no guarantee anyone else values it?
  - whatevsbro 12y ago
    > The video presenter says "don't pay taxes, don't follow laws". I agree that telling people not to pay taxes is a bit silly when doing that will get you hauled to jail. But that brings us to the video's point: we should not have rulers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNIgztvyU2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNIgztvyU2U > Rule of law keeps buildings built to a safe standard, keeps food edible, keeps water drinkable, keeps airlines basically safe, keeps employers from abusing employees with low wages and no safety codes, keeps businesses from wrecking and polluting the local town/city environment. There's too much to unpack there. But having no ruleRs doesn't mean having no rules. Besides, in case you haven't noticed, the so-called rule of law only applies to us little folks, not Wall Street banksters, for example. If you commit fraud, you go to jail. If a banker commits fraud, he will face no negative consequences. He'll just be collecting massive bonuses for wrecking the economy. As for the other stuff, if you build a shit airplane and it crashes, you'll have a hard time convincing people to buy more of your airplanes. No one is more motivated to make sure Boeing's aircrafts are safe than Boeing itself. The same applies to food. If your food products harm people, no one will want to buy them, and you won't get any money. But this only works all the way in a free market, where all exchanges are voluntary, and thus, everything is subject to competition. > How much are you really going to be able to keep of your earnings if you have to personally guard it 24/7 because there's no police, no law, no way to stop someone stronger taking it without followup, and no banks you trust? This is a common sticking point, and I was stuck too. But then I realized that whenever someone wants to hurt you somewhere, a police officer will not materialize there to protect you. The government doesn't actually prevent any crimes, it only discourages (ordinary) people from committing them. The same kind of discouragement can be arranged without a government, and will work a lot better because it's based on voluntary co-operation, and therefore can't be bribed to look the other way. > And how much is that money going to be worth anyway if there's no government to say that it has value by fiat? Gold was happily used as a currency for ages, without anyone decreeing that it has value. Money just doesn't work that way. Gold was used exactly because everyone wanted it (ie. it had universal value), it was durable, divisible, and so on. Our fiat currencies only have value because governments force us to pay taxes in them. Otherwise no one would use such unreliable currencies.
goldenkey 12y ago
I don't see why Popcorn time doesn't offer legitimate ways to purchase the content. For an honest TV index with multiple streaming sources, check out http://episodeslist.com http://episodeslist.com It's updated daily.
- nnnnni 12y ago
  It's likely because Hollywood won't LET them "offer legitimate ways to purchase the content". There's a device that will allow normal people to watch new theater movies at home, but it's $500 per viewing after buying the highly-secured $35000 Prima video server. There are also a bunch of requirements that the company checks in person before allowing someone to buy into the service.
  - goldenkey 12y ago
    Fair enough. What about older movies that are available from Netflix or Amazon, iTunes, etc? Popcorn time could at least provide some links for purchasing the media.
    - Touche 12y ago
      What would be the point? You couldn't view them within Popcorn Time. Popcorn Time is not IMDB, it is for streaming movies to watch in the app.
- runeks 12y ago
  I don't watch a lot of films/TV series, so I would totally pay to watch a single TV episode/film. But I'm on Linux, and I don't know how to do that with iTunes, or if it's even possible. Hulu and Netflix require a subscription, which gets way too expensive because I don't watch a lot of stuff, and when trying to purchase an episode on Amazon I'm greeted with the following: > We could not process your order because of geographical restrictions on the product which you were attempting to purchase. Please refer to the terms of use for this product to determine the geographical restrictions. I simply can't find any site that lets me pay to download a movie/TV show episode, so I usually turn to Pirate Bay.

pjbrow 12y ago

It would be great if a developer beyond the reach of the Western legal system would take this project up with a self hosted repo. Code is speech. It's a terrible precedent for devs to be afraid to have code (including me after reading this). This is where the myriad of outdated laws and prosecutorial discretion bites: it's impossible to know where the legal line is. __ Addition: My view on the savvy modus operandi here (I'm a lawyer when I'm not a developer). If you give someone any kind of reason to sue you, you're essentially handing them a stick. It's much worse if they can afford to hit you with it and you can't afford to defend yourself. The people threatening to sue these guys are almost certainly making silence a condition not to sue. This isolates the devs from people who could support them, and has the added effect of intimidating other devs with the unexplained "disappearances".

Spittie 12y ago
I'm honestly surprised that nobody (that I know off) has started to develop a fork while being behind Tor/I2P.
- cottonseed 12y ago
  I agree. But where are they going to host it? Maybe you don't get hit with a lawsuit, but your github repo still gets taken down. Set up a hidden service git repo? Does that scale? How do you accept changes? I'm sure people are making and sharing changes privately. Maybe there is a need for better censorship-resistant code collaboration tools? Some kind of peer-to-peer github that works over Tor.
espadrine 12y ago
There is no western legal system. As absurd as it sounds, what went down with TPB shows how laws perspire beyond a country's boundaries. As for what actually happened to PT, it isn't as clear-cut as it seems. I can tell you one thing as food for thought, though. I contributed a minor patch to two forks. I was granted a small amount of dogecoins (about $.10) for one of those contributions. The notion that there would be a remuneration model behind that rather unique type of open-source project tells a lot about how lacking we are. We miss economic models for the free capabilities we build. Things like Gittip only just emerge, but the way they solve the problem of having multiple people be granted a fair share of buying power based on their contributions don't actually rely on a robust mathematical model, and are very probably flawed at scale. That is true of Gittip, it is true of Flattr (notably irrelevant when dealing with a team), it is even true of the Bitcoin ecosystem, given the absence of a proof for the convergence of its volatility. Those challenges raised by the amazing prospect of a truly decentralized economy are greater than building an app on top of a peer-to-peer network of video distribution. They wouldn't be the first to direct their efforts there, either; a famous TPB member created Flattr after putting his TPB past behind. PS: on the issue of the struggle for equitable remuneration, here is an outstanding blog post by someone working in a cooperative called Igalia; he did contractor work on V8 and Firefox for Bloomberg: http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for-money http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/06/25/time-for-money

ericb 12y ago

I have a different theory. I think everyone who touches it gets a payout. Think about it--legal threats tend to make people angry. Especially anti-intellectual property types. By the odds, shouldn't we be seeing a Streisand effect? Being set for life, though, now that's a good motivator to keep your mouth shut.

girvo 12y ago
And consider all of them saying "moving on to other projects" + a gag order... An interesting theory, I'll give you that. If I was offered a payout, with the condition of not talking about it at all, I'd probably take it. I don't care about piracy enough, personally.
naterator 12y ago
An interesting theory, but the problem with it is that the pool of potential devs is effectively limitless (well, not really but it might as well be). They would have to pay me multiple $10ks to stop dev and shut up. And offering that to 100 or 1,000 devs starts getting really expensive. I don't know. Certainly the first few groups it would work, but... if the cat ever got out, everyone would be lining up to develop it, and it would be easy for the cat to get out.
- ericb 12y ago
  True, but once the cat gets out of the bag, you can always fall back to the stick-only option.
lettergram 12y ago
My guess is that they receive a lawsuit the same time they receive this option. Everyone is shown the carrot and the stick.

bowlofpetunias 12y ago

Replace Popcorn Time with any kind of politically undesirable activity, and it sounds exactly like so many stories from so many totalitarian regimes.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Is 'politically undesirable' the new PC phrase for 'illegal'?
- Rusky 12y ago
  Is writing Popcorn Time itself actually illegal?
  - drunkcatsdgaf 12y ago
    I dont see how. PCT is scrapper with a pretty UI for the most part.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Circumventing a rights control measure is illegal and there are probably lawyers who would want to make that case to test it in court.
    - PeterisP 12y ago
      1) The software that is included in popcorntime isn't circumventing any rights control measure - the bittorrents that it accesses don't include any rights control measures that would need to be circumvented. The people who originally supplied and seeded those may (or may not) have used some software that circumvents rights control measures, but that's not included in Popcorntime. 2) Circumventing rights control measures is legal in my country and most countries globally. Copyright laws as agreed in Berne conventions and implemented in local legislation simply don't mention such measures and their circumvention in any way, they handle just the copyright part. USA has a single very specific law - DMCA - that restricts such circumvention; it has been trying to "export" that concept to other countries through trade treaties; but it hasn't succeeded for the most part; making and distributing such tools is legal almost everywhere - and the legality of using them depends on the legality of actual act you're doing; if you're allowed to make that copy (i.e., personal backups) the the use is legal; if you're not (i.e., for redistribution), then the copying is illegal but the 'rights control measure' doesn't change anything at all and its circumvention is irrelevant.

philtar 12y ago

Anyone have the code somewhere? I'll host it. Edit: Isn't this it? https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app What exactly is the problem?

espadrine 12y ago
This has been abandoned (and the history destroyed) over a month ago. Nobody that has access develops it. All forks of this died.
higherpurpose 12y ago
This seems to be the latest one: https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-app https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-app
- undershirt 12y ago
  Wow, thanks. I just cloned, built, and ran it on Mac. It really works well. That was too easy.

logfromblammo 12y ago

They're being paid off, with silence a condition of the agreement. Seems like the smart thing to do would be to start a new fork and wait for the lawyer and suspiciously well-muscled paralegal with the inexplicable tire iron to arrive on your doorstep. Then take the money. Don't negotiate, just take the money.

orblivion 12y ago

It's bizarre to me that something awful is apparently being threatened against the developers, and yet new forks are not banned from github.

icpmacdo 12y ago
Im not sure how liberal Github is with banning project but I think a possible reason would be they don't want to terminate a project until they get a court order.
- orblivion 12y ago
  Right, and it surprises me that nobody's ordered Github to take them down, since they presumably ordered the project developers to stop.
  - cmiles74 12y ago
    This seems like the more straightforward way to try to kill the project: get Github to stop hosting it. You'd think with the right team of lawyers this would be do-able. There must be something interesting them preventing them from doing this, surely it'd be cheaper than dealing with developers one at a time.
wpietri 12y ago
I think Github doesn't have to worry here. Service providers who host content for others generally have safe harbor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicatio... If people were uploading copyrighted material, then Github would be obliged to honor takedown notices. But here, the code's under some sort of public license, so the takedown process wouldn't apply.

goldenkey 12y ago

http://episodeslist.com http://episodeslist.com is an honest alternative where you can stream from Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, iTunes and more

commentzorro 12y ago
Way too expensive. I'm willing to pay RedBox prices for a movie and less than half that for a one hour TV drama.

tapia 12y ago

What would happen if suddenly, a very big number of developers (I really mean it... like thousands of developers) began to contribute to such a project. Would hollywood start to sue everyone? And what if some of them would be some "rockstar developers" (like very important for the software world)... yeah... I'm just dreaming, but it would be like the equivalent to a mass protest, that they just wouldn't be able to handle.

wpietri 12y ago
It's an existential threat to Hollywood's current business models. They would sue a very big number of developers. Most of whom would fold about 30 seconds after getting the legal paperwork. The few who remained would get crushed. Viacom's YouTube suit ran for 7 years before settlement. And Hollywood is practiced at fucking with the little people; you can see Buchwald v Paramount for an example of how they operate, and one of the rare times they lost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchwald_v._Paramount http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchwald_v._Paramount
captainmuon 12y ago
I've been thinking, one should find some mortally ill people in whose name one sets up the repository and website (or just a straight site where you can download all the movies). In exchange one secretly pays their family enough in cash or bitcoin that they don't ever have to worry about money again. If I were filthy rich and had more criminal intentions, I would totally do that ;-)

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Doesn't it seem like TF could simply create their own Repo, build it and start developing on it and see what comes out of the woodwork? Seems like its pretty easy to bait these mysterious forces.

devx 12y ago
Yes, I was also wondering if FSF or someone like that could take the project themselves. Let's see who comes knocking. It wouldn't be the first time FSF "facilitated piracy" by building tools like that (see GnuNet, Mediagoblin, etc), so I doubt they would be too afraid to try it.
lkd 12y ago
You're overestimating TorrentFreak's commitment to investigative journalism.

llamataboot 12y ago

Mass forking protest? Could we get 1000 new forks of this project by nightfall?

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago

I don't think the industry is silencing them. I think the original devs have gotten scared of being sued and have quickly dropped the project and severed all connections with it.

lkd 12y ago
This doesn't explain identical behavior by all later devs. The most reasonable explanation is a common cause.

jokoon 12y ago

sigh