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The Big Difference between Popcorn Time and Chrome or Bit torrent is that while Chrome and Bit torrent are can be made to do illegal things such as pirate movie

The Big Difference between Popcorn Time and Chrome or Bit torrent is that while Chrome and Bit torrent are can be made to do illegal things such as pirate movies, Popcorn Time is explicitly made with the intention of illegally pirating movies. The screenshots provided basically show that Popcorn Time is not just an app for legally playing content. It would be very difficult to argue to a judge "This app was not designed for the purpose of pirating movies" when these screenshots are right next to him/her. Now let's say Popcorn Time has a configuration file that, by default, just happens to point to sources with illegal content. The question (which I don't have the answer to) is is Popcorn Time responsible for that configuration file? Would Google be responsible if a button on Chrome just happened to point to child porn which they don't control? Would, "It is the responsibility of our users not to download illegal content. If they don't want to view child pornography they can disable the clearly marked button in their settings or just not click it" suffice? I'm not a lawyer so I don't have the answer. > Making distinctions like this is dangerous, and allowing speech to be suppressed by corporate interests is a worrying trend. Why does everything have to be a free speech issue nowadays? If you think not being able to share copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holder violates the first ammendment then you should be working towards repealing The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, not stopping it from being enforced. EDIT: From the DMCA: > No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that- (A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; (B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or (C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

api 12y ago
It's sort of like making an armor piercing bullet and arguing that it's for hunting. Sure you could hunt with it, but it'd be kind of pointless unless there are deer wearing kevlar.
darkarmani 12y ago
What technological measure is this circumventing?
AnthonyMouse 12y ago
> From the DMCA DMCA 1201 has nothing to do with Popcorn Time. That covers DRM circumvention (and should be repealed). The theory of liability for Popcorn Time is under the Grokster ruling, if the authors are inducing copyright infringement by promoting the tool for that purpose. The notice and takedown provision is DMCA 512, which is a safe harbor for hosts like Github. It says (roughly) that you aren't liable for copyright infringement of your users if you timely respond to take down notices. But Github wouldn't be liable for copyright infringement anyway because the Popcorn Time software is not copyrighted by the claimants and Github isn't the party allegedly inducing copyright infringement. So Github apparently doesn't have to comply with the notice if they don't want to. Of course, almost everyone complies with all notices whatsoever regardless of how absurd or invalid they are, because the host doesn't have a strong enough incentive to fight somebody else's battle. That's the free speech issue.
- akerl_ 12y ago
  Safe Harbor doesn't give GitHub the authority to decide whether the notice would hold up in court; they need to comply with properly formatted notices if they want to keep their safe harbor status
  - e12e 12y ago
    Is it really that draconian? So, if I find a blog post on github pages that I don't like, I'll just submit a completely bogus claim of copyright infringement, and it'll be gone? (I realize that fraudulent DMCA takedown notices are supposedly illegal, in order to "prevent" such abuse). As implied by other comments, this is clearly not a valid notice: it would either have to be a claim that the code itself was infringing, or that it constitutes a DRM circumvention tool (like DeCSS). Neither is the case here, as far as I can tell. In any case, if this software is illegal under the DMCA, so would the "cp" command be -- as it can be used to make copies of copyrighted contents (note that neither tool circumvents DRM).
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
> is explicitly made with the intention of illegally pirating movies. Intention is a quality of the author, not a quality of the work. In the real world governed by the laws of reality, an object or tool or even bundle of software has no intention. It's just a thing. Claiming that the intention can magically transfer through the object is like some 21st century form of shamanism. I reject such stupid notions. If, generally speaking, this software is used to commit illegal acts, then it is those acts which are illegal, not the tool that is used in the commission of the acts. By banning the tools, you're not preventing the illegal act... you're preventing anyone from using it for legal acts, and cementing the idea that it is only used for those things illegal. But we're not even really talking about banning it... that would cost too much in lobbyist bribes, too much political capital, too much time and effort. Instead, we're going to twist existing laws to pretend that somehow someone else's code can be censored because of some unfounded ideas about what the code does. That's a chickenshit move if ever there was one. > If you think not being able to share copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holder violates the first ammendment then you should be working towards repealing I no longer trust that our government represents its people well enough for that to be possible. And I reject the idea that you can just set me off on impossible quests and that if I refuse them you win the argument.

api 12y ago

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

darkarmani 12y ago

What technological measure is this circumventing?

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

> From the DMCA DMCA 1201 has nothing to do with Popcorn Time. That covers DRM circumvention (and should be repealed). The theory of liability for Popcorn Time is under the Grokster ruling, if the authors are inducing copyright infringement by promoting the tool for that purpose. The notice and takedown provision is DMCA 512, which is a safe harbor for hosts like Github. It says (roughly) that you aren't liable for copyright infringement of your users if you timely respond to take down notices. But Github wouldn't be liable for copyright infringement anyway because the Popcorn Time software is not copyrighted by the claimants and Github isn't the party allegedly inducing copyright infringement. So Github apparently doesn't have to comply with the notice if they don't want to. Of course, almost everyone complies with all notices whatsoever regardless of how absurd or invalid they are, because the host doesn't have a strong enough incentive to fight somebody else's battle. That's the free speech issue.

akerl_ 12y ago
Safe Harbor doesn't give GitHub the authority to decide whether the notice would hold up in court; they need to comply with properly formatted notices if they want to keep their safe harbor status
- e12e 12y ago
  Is it really that draconian? So, if I find a blog post on github pages that I don't like, I'll just submit a completely bogus claim of copyright infringement, and it'll be gone? (I realize that fraudulent DMCA takedown notices are supposedly illegal, in order to "prevent" such abuse). As implied by other comments, this is clearly not a valid notice: it would either have to be a claim that the code itself was infringing, or that it constitutes a DRM circumvention tool (like DeCSS). Neither is the case here, as far as I can tell. In any case, if this software is illegal under the DMCA, so would the "cp" command be -- as it can be used to make copies of copyrighted contents (note that neither tool circumvents DRM).

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago

> is explicitly made with the intention of illegally pirating movies. Intention is a quality of the author, not a quality of the work. In the real world governed by the laws of reality, an object or tool or even bundle of software has no intention. It's just a thing. Claiming that the intention can magically transfer through the object is like some 21st century form of shamanism. I reject such stupid notions. If, generally speaking, this software is used to commit illegal acts, then it is those acts which are illegal, not the tool that is used in the commission of the acts. By banning the tools, you're not preventing the illegal act... you're preventing anyone from using it for legal acts, and cementing the idea that it is only used for those things illegal. But we're not even really talking about banning it... that would cost too much in lobbyist bribes, too much political capital, too much time and effort. Instead, we're going to twist existing laws to pretend that somehow someone else's code can be censored because of some unfounded ideas about what the code does. That's a chickenshit move if ever there was one. > If you think not being able to share copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holder violates the first ammendment then you should be working towards repealing I no longer trust that our government represents its people well enough for that to be possible. And I reject the idea that you can just set me off on impossible quests and that if I refuse them you win the argument.