Popcorn Time, the 'Netflix For Piracy,' Is Back Online (theverge.com) 31
Popcorn Time, the highly popular and extremely-easy-to-use "Netflix for piracy" service, came back Tuesday after a years-long hiatus. The move comes as people around the world are quarantined or being asked to stay in their homes during the coronavirus pandemic. Motherboard reports: Popcorn Time allows people to stream movies using BitTorrent, without actually downloading the movies or worrying about finding a tracker to use. Essentially, it removes any torrenting learning curve, allowing people to (illegally) stream movies and television shows from an easy-to-use app. Because it's so simple to use, Popcorn Time became instantly popular upon its release in 2014 and was immediately targeted by the movie industry. The service was shut down multiple times by court order, police raids, and IP blocks all over the world between 2014 and now; the open source app was forked several times and has worked intermittently, but has been largely offline over the last few years.
Within the last couple days, a new version of Popcorn Time popped up on Popcorntime.app, version 4.0. The new app works just as well as earlier versions of the app, is free, and implores people to use virtual private networks to avoid having their use of the app detected by their internet service providers. The app has been released while many around the world are quarantined, and also comes at a time when piracy is becoming more popular, generally speaking. Other versions of Popcorn Time are also currently active, but the user interface of this one and its release appear to be closely affiliated with earlier Popcorn Time projects, based on domain redirects and urls.
Within the last couple days, a new version of Popcorn Time popped up on Popcorntime.app, version 4.0. The new app works just as well as earlier versions of the app, is free, and implores people to use virtual private networks to avoid having their use of the app detected by their internet service providers. The app has been released while many around the world are quarantined, and also comes at a time when piracy is becoming more popular, generally speaking. Other versions of Popcorn Time are also currently active, but the user interface of this one and its release appear to be closely affiliated with earlier Popcorn Time projects, based on domain redirects and urls.
Trustworthy? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Trustworthy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, since disk space is dirt cheap, why not just download the BitTorrent file? You don't have to keep it after you're done watching.
Which is the definition of streaming anyway. (Score:2)
As long as you torrent the blocks in the right order anyway.
But yeah ... kids these days.... If I watch something, and I like it I want to *keep it*.
That is the entire reason why Netflix and Steam will always be usless to me.
(Try running a Steam game without Steam.)
And yes, even Netflix can just vanish. Or merely remove a movie. E.g. because a deal ended. Or their cocaine ran out.
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Instant gratification.
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Also, since disk space is dirt cheap, why not just download the BitTorrent file?
The benefit of popcorn time was that it streamed the torrent while downloading it. It acted more like Netflix and you had only a few seconds to wait before you could start watching.
Not ideal for the network since Bittorrent worked optimally when the distribution of blocks across fellow seeders is random, but when there's enough peers it doesn't matter.
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Could be different laws in play regarding "streaming" vs. "downloading", depending on your jurisdiction.
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In the US there's nothing illegal about downloading or streaming copyrighted content; only supplying it.
Of course, since bittorrent is involved, I'm assuming you're acting as a peer, so you're definitely on the wrong side of the law.
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I can envision the lead post this time tomorrow being "Ransomware Attacks Millions of Systems from Popular Torrenting App." Russia's GDP will double overnight.
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from what i know popcorntime is opensource
but yes, downloading an *executable* is a very bad idea
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that's why we have virtual machines and lite distros like crunchbangplusplus
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Probably no worse than compiling from source and running it. When is the last time you or anyone you know looked through the source of something you compiled to see if there was anything bad hidden in it or a pulled dependency?
I guess you could make the case that if you compile it you at least know you're getting "just the source" compiled, but as long as there's a precompiled binary from a trusted source or even a hash from a trusted source it's all about the same.
Back online? (Score:4, Informative)
It has always been online, anyway the real one is popcorntime-dot-sh. Ignore the rest.
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And the .app registrar is Google, can't imagine they want anything to do with that PR hornet's nest. Guaranteed there's a clause in the registration agreement to allow termination based on (fill in the blank).
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the real one is popcorntime-dot-sh.
It's a SHELL SCRIPT? Man, that program is lots better than I thought.
/tmp/
NOW to break in and add some virus code:
#
# Add virus code
#
echo "Please enter a friends email address:"
read name
echo $0 | mail --subject "This Is Great -- Install Me Now!" $name
mv -f $HOME
echo "Ha, ha -- gotcha."
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This is correct, don't trust people who are JUST IN TIME to save you in a crisis... could be legit, could be BS. Like those Virus tracking apps..
ever wonder (Score:2)
ever wonder when a piracy site is shut down by governments then is reopen if it is a honeypot trap to get ip addresses of all users who download or watch illegally?
Yeah well, entrapment is illegal. (Score:2)
Not that that would stop them, I know.
But an IP address does also not a person make.
I might be downloading via your IP address right now. :)
The FBI might also upload kiddie porn to your IP address right now. :P
Re:Yeah well, entrapment is illegal. (Score:5, Informative)
A honeypot is not entrapment.
Entrapment is when they persuade you to do something illegal that you wouldn't otherwise do.
A honeypot is when they make something illegal seem available and then arrest all who attempt to partake of the illegal stuff.
If they were to advertise a honeypot, and maybe advertise that it's not illegal, then the honeypot might become entrapment. But entrapment has to convince a law abiding person to violate the law.
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Arr, ye mateys! (Score:4, Interesting)
Can we please stop using hate-speech by the organized crime?
If anyone is a thief, then those who erect imaginary artificial scarcity monopolies, to steal from creators and their fans, cause an information dark age and stifle creative output, while not working one bit, other than to abuse people and to snort even more cocaine!
Otherwise we'll end up like we ended up with "jaywalker". (Look it up. Adam ruined it.)
Support creators via Patreon and Kickstarter and Flattr and the like! Let's save artists! Let's kill the media distribution mafia!
(Beware: The thieves got mod points here. Doesn't make them any less of a thief.)
When was it down? (Score:2)
What are you talking about?
Popcorn-time has been working fine for months, there hasn't been any recent downtime.
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So you are a criminal and you are probably a habitual criminal at that. Stealing is just in your nature so you promote your main hobby for the world to see your true character.
file sharing is legal in my country (except for software applications and ... databases! (go figure)).
anyone who buys a cd, a cd player, an ipod, a printer, a computer, etc pays a small tax to 'compensate authors' for that file sharing. it actually goes to corrupt 'artistry mafias' with little to no accountability periodically involved in scandals. we just have different taste for crime. turns out our author associations are the criminals! if you want to support art, best support artists directly.
so, yes, i
Not bad considering current situation. (Score:1)
Had been offline ? (Score:1)
uhh.. (Score:2)
without downloading the movie
uhh, streaming IS downloading the movie, except you're not permantly storing the bytes to one file on your HDD/SSD, it does however store bytes in most cases before showing the videopart itself (buffering)..
hiatus??? (Score:1)