Should 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.
I 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.
Well, 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.
It just occurred to me. It's probably completely unlikely, so I'll put my tinfoil hat on for a moment...
What is the possibility that Github was DDoSed by agents working in or for the movie industry because of Popcorn Time, attempting to either disrupt development or access?
I know, I know. It's outrageous. Unlikely. Crazy, even. But to say I'd be surprised this day and age would be a bit of an overstatement...
The movie/recording industry has actually been known to use DDOS attacks. IIRC, they hired a company in India to launch a DDOS against some cyberlocker, which prompted Operation Payback.
Considering the resources required to DDoS a site like Github these days, and the sheer amount of motivation you'd need to achieve even a 30 min takedown ... I and my tinfoil hat are right there with you.
Well, differently to (mostly) pirate sites, GitHub hosts a ton of projects, how should they know that this is related to Popcorn Time? If they have any specific clue, they is quite a risk that they publish that and get real problems.
It'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...
I 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.
Sadly, 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.
Only 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
It'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.
Probably 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.
Hey 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.
Well, 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.
I 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.
* 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.
I 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.
Well, I like to keep decent ratios (usually 3), which would keep my asymmetric home connection too busy - whereas my cheap VPS can do 1Gpbs (burst). And in my experience, the Pi doesn't handle well heavy random IO over the USB/ethernet bus - I had downloads with 20-40% of blocks corrupted upon verification.
And of course, while I don't consider it a problem where I live, removing the torrenting from your connection to a VPS in the Netherlands reduces the chances of having legal problems.
And the VPS isn't a dedicated seedbox - I'd still use it for my email server (Spamhaus' PBL prevents me from sending from my home connection), Tiny Tiny RSS hosting, website hosting, etc.
Nobody 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.
Did 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.
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.
Is it surprising that an appication used to stream torrents, is primarily used for piracy? No, no it's not, and this is why I'm scratching my head. They knew from day one, before they wrote a single line of code that the application would be used for pirating movies. For this reason, I assumed they had a plan, because surely no sane development team would put forth the time to setup this project, and then act surprised at the first legal threat, and close up shop.
I'm not sure surprised is the word I'd use to describe their sentiment. I'd guess rather that they originally planned to back down at the first sign of legal threats. Popcorn Time has been circulated as an experiment, not a business, and in that sense it was a success. Also, the code isn't going anywhere, so it's not as if all this work was for nothing.
The team that built it isn't acting surprised. I'm a little bit surprised that something more severe didn't happen, such as some of the developers being targeted specifically. All for a product that gets data which is already out there and feeds it to you.
But they had a plan - the application is opensource, so anyone can continue it. And since it relies on torrents, killing the swarm is pretty much impossible.
As I was arguing with rayiner on another thread, this is a prime example of what is wrong with the legal industry in the United States especially: shit is so complex that litigation is expensive, so people with more money than you can sue you into oblivion even if the law is on your side.
Another way of looking at it is that, as things stand now, the legal system is just another weapon the rich and influential can use to crush the little man.
Perhaps the plaintiff should be required to contribute all the legal fees for the defendant (up to a maximum). If the defendant loses the lawsuit, he must pay the plaintiff back for his own legal fees in addition to the damages that he must pay.
What about this: you drag me to court, you ask me X millions in damages; if you lose, you owe me X millions. Now that's a lawsuit I would pay for upfront if I think I'm in the right. Even better: many lawyers would probably fight to get my profitable suit pro-bono so they can cash in a big chunk of the eventual damages I would get.
I've suggested before in other threads that legal fees should be contributed to a shared pool and divided equally between both parties, with some minimum contribution set based on income and net worth. This would allow a defendant who is decidedly in the right to survive an attack by a significantly larger plaintiff.
Or what about if you treated all law practice as a public service making all lawyers civil servants? The government would pay for the lawyers on both sides, but you wouldn't be able to buy access to a better lawyer. You'd have the problem of excessive lawsuits, but you can counter that with forcing the losing party to pay a big fine that covers the cost of the lawyers. You would also have the problem of how to assign lawyers to cases, but here it might make sense to use a lottery system, where you never know which lawyer you're getting.
Then all lawyers would be equally terrible. I would rather our laws weren't so complex. One start is to prove there is a victim for something to be considered a crime.
If you link to unauthorized copies, you are an accessory to theft.
The fact that this is still legal is largely historical accident, and is bound to be overturned by one lawsuit or another, or Congressional loophole closing. It's still morally a crime.
I 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.
Yeah 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.
Yes, 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-operator... )
Saying it's been used since the mid 80s doesn't actually serve to convince me I'm wrong. In fact it does the opposite; I'd have thought it was in use longer.
I 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.
We 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.
We 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.
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.
And 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.
And 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.
Not 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.
In 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.
Not only is there different theories to the law, but many laws are also very hard to find.
In Sweden for example, the law is not just the law as it is written in the official book. Any work material related to the creation of law also count as law. In the case of the Pirate Bay trial, this is what the prosecutor had to dug out in order to find something that they could accuse the crew of (The working material described an intent to make it illegal to run a service if it is being primary used for illegal purposes). For example, running a pool bar primary used by a biker gang would make the bar illegal to run.
When it comes to highly political sensitive crimes, it not enough to simply buy a book about the law of the land and read it. Somewhere else, there will be a vague sentence that count as law.
The law and force works so the powerful people can maintain their power, the rich their fortune, and sometime they hang someone so the crowd can be happy, and think the law works.. also.. it eventually locks up marginalized people that dont work in the gears of the big machine.. if you ask them, they will deny it.. and tell what you want to hear.. and you go on with you miserable life..
Kafka my friend.. was there first.. saw it, told us
my friend, what you have just described is society. This is why everyone has to step on everyone else to lift themselves up, out of fear of becoming one of those marginalized people.
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.
As you predicted, it looks like the new "official" repo is here: https://github.com/isra17/popcorn-app and people have already begun work on getting it working again.
For me it just keeps on Buffering viewo..downloading..and then keeps on doing that. I had the same problem with the official version too. The longest I've checked is ~60 minutes and it was right there where it started.
However, for the same file of 1.5GB it took me ~10 mins to download. (Mac)
Thanks for the link to precomplied executables. I gave up on installing as per github instructions since on my OpenSUSE 12.2, running npm returns a strange error ("node: symbol lookup error: node: undefined symbol: _ZN2v811HandleScopeC1Ev") and I can't seem to find a way to install grunt.
The download I have (from before the closing of Popcorn Time) still works. :)
There is one suggestion I have for those developing the forks further: have an option for downloading through Popcorn Time. For those of us whose connections suck, having Popcorn Time vet the quality of videos with the download option would be a killer feature.
326 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 318 ms ] thread[1] https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-time.github.io/commi...
What is the possibility that Github was DDoSed by agents working in or for the movie industry because of Popcorn Time, attempting to either disrupt development or access?
I know, I know. It's outrageous. Unlikely. Crazy, even. But to say I'd be surprised this day and age would be a bit of an overstatement...
http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-outfit-tries-to-erase-hi...
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111014/02583316350/confus...
It did prove once again that demand for easy services is desired but lots of that were also because it was free.
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
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.
It is wonderful how the Internet makes it hard to suppress information.
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.
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.
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.
https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app
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.
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/
[2] https://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/
And of course, while I don't consider it a problem where I live, removing the torrenting from your connection to a VPS in the Netherlands reduces the chances of having legal problems.
And the VPS isn't a dedicated seedbox - I'd still use it for my email server (Spamhaus' PBL prevents me from sending from my home connection), Tiny Tiny RSS hosting, website hosting, etc.
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.
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.
If not, then you were illegally distributing the film while you were watching it using PopcornTime.
Another way of looking at it is that, as things stand now, the legal system is just another weapon the rich and influential can use to crush the little man.
The fact that this is still legal is largely historical accident, and is bound to be overturned by one lawsuit or another, or Congressional loophole closing. It's still morally a crime.
Your claim is no more valid than saying if you tell your friend to park their car illegally, you are an accessory to fraud.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131130/15263725410/surpri...
Not in any real detail anyway.
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.
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.
http://www.regiosfera.com/es-legal-compartir-contenido-en-mx...
In Sweden for example, the law is not just the law as it is written in the official book. Any work material related to the creation of law also count as law. In the case of the Pirate Bay trial, this is what the prosecutor had to dug out in order to find something that they could accuse the crew of (The working material described an intent to make it illegal to run a service if it is being primary used for illegal purposes). For example, running a pool bar primary used by a biker gang would make the bar illegal to run.
When it comes to highly political sensitive crimes, it not enough to simply buy a book about the law of the land and read it. Somewhere else, there will be a vague sentence that count as law.
Kafka my friend.. was there first.. saw it, told us
That's like saying "Sure, we burned down the bank, but we did it for the frustrated account holders."
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.
However, for the same file of 1.5GB it took me ~10 mins to download. (Mac)
There is one suggestion I have for those developing the forks further: have an option for downloading through Popcorn Time. For those of us whose connections suck, having Popcorn Time vet the quality of videos with the download option would be a killer feature.