Popcorn Time 4.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#21

Post by deanstag » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 12:44 PM UTC

q3k wrote: post #15

awicz wrote: post #4

Serious question about torrents: How is this not stealing? I'm not trying to be judgemental. I certainly don't have any room to do so as I used Napster and the likes back in the day. Now with the advent of Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, etc, I'm genuinely curious to know the moral argument for using services and platforms that utilize torrents to distribute media other creators are actually trying to sell? Edit: Appare…

We were fine for a while. Netflix killed film/series piracy for me - for a while it literally made no sense. Then, every copyright owner realized they want a slice of the streaming cake - (HBO, Disney+, all the cable networks...) and started making their content exclusive on their platforms. Now, instead of a single Netflix (or anyone else, really) subscription I would have to pay for a dozen, that I would rarely use…

In that case, what is the maximum amount of subscription fee that you are willing to shell out before resorting to piracy?

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#22

Post by mbanzi » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 12:47 PM UTC

awicz wrote: post #4

Serious question about torrents: How is this not stealing? I'm not trying to be judgemental. I certainly don't have any room to do so as I used Napster and the likes back in the day. Now with the advent of Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, etc, I'm genuinely curious to know the moral argument for using services and platforms that utilize torrents to distribute media other creators are actually trying to sell? Edit: Appare…

I don't use torrents etc but to give you a customer perspective: Because of the proliferation of services and the lock-in each one of them is trying to promote, if you want to follow your favourite shows you would have to subscribe to all of them and it becomes expensive very quickly. As an European there is always the problem that some great shows that are available in the US might not be available in your country. To make mattter worse, if you're in switzerland like me you might have the option to watch a show only in German (which I don't speak) and they don't even give you access to the original english soundtrack. Faced with all these annoyances, I canceled them all. If they don't care about the customer experience I don't care about them. I use a (legal) service which allows me to watch on demand any TV show broadcast from most of European TVs in the last 7 days. It works well, it's cheap and most shows have they original english soundtrack. Some other people use torrents or dodgey streaming websites.

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#23

Post by yellow_lead » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 12:48 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #2

Just in time for the coronavirus lockdown that has the major ISPs throttling torrents to nothing due to network congestion.

Demonsaw.com

provides an IRC-router like interface that can be used to share files over encrypted and obfuscated HTTP. Give it a look if you're having torrent problems.

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#24

Post by a_imho » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 12:48 PM UTC

awicz wrote: post #4

Serious question about torrents: How is this not stealing? I'm not trying to be judgemental. I certainly don't have any room to do so as I used Napster and the likes back in the day. Now with the advent of Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, etc, I'm genuinely curious to know the moral argument for using services and platforms that utilize torrents to distribute media other creators are actually trying to sell? Edit: Appare…

https://stallman.org/articles/end-war-on-sharing.html

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#25

Post by captn3m0 » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 12:48 PM UTC

llcoolv wrote: post #3

Or ghettoflix as we call it :D Is this the same repo that is in Archlinux AUR?

Yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22604114

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#26

Post by sz4kerto » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 12:49 PM UTC

awicz wrote: post #14

sz4kerto wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, here (in Hungary) we are paying some extra 'contribution' whenever we buy storage (HDDs, SSDs, SD cards, USB sticks) that is intended to compensate artists and distributors for lost revenue because the assumption is that we'll likely store pirated stuff on them. Therefore downloading is not illegal here (sharing is, which kind of puts torrents into a strange place). The world is a bit crazy, isn't it.

Wow. That is an interesting model! Do you know how they determine how the funds are distributed?

Yes. Almost no money is given to the artists, most of it is eaten by the organization that claims to be representing them and has good political connections.

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#27

Post by esarbe » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 12:50 PM UTC

1_player wrote: post #7

Say what you will about stealing, illegality, unsavouriness. If the film industry would collectively take their head out of their arses and provide such a simple interface and wide catalogue to the masses, they would make hundreds of billions. I would literally pay $50 a month for an official and legal version of this. The end users don't really care that it is not possible because "legal reasons". This app proves ot…

The whole business model of the content industry is based on perverting the idea of copyright and extending it beyond any reasonable limit. And with copyright terms extended to eternity and beyond, they are effectively stealing the cultural intellectual property of every living generation, depriving us of the basic means to creatively comment on our own cultural heritage.

So, I have no problem with "stealing".

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#28

Post by KMnO4 » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 12:50 PM UTC

awicz wrote: post #4

Serious question about torrents: How is this not stealing? I'm not trying to be judgemental. I certainly don't have any room to do so as I used Napster and the likes back in the day. Now with the advent of Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, etc, I'm genuinely curious to know the moral argument for using services and platforms that utilize torrents to distribute media other creators are actually trying to sell? Edit: Appare…

The argument for piracy is always a mix between those who aren’t willing to pay for the media, and those who aren’t willing to put up with the limitations and restrictions of DRM.

Sometimes you can compromise with one side if the other is really good. Spotify is a good example, where it really is more convenient to pay $10 for every song you could ever think of.

On the other hand, there’s no similar buffet-style movie service that has more than 10% of the movies I want to watch.

It’s hard for someone to justify paying $60/month on the four streaming services (since the market is so fragmented) and still not able to watch Iron Man 2 (though 1 and 3 are there)

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#29

Post by rckclmbr » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 12:51 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #13

llcoolv wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not really sure if it is the ISPs' conspiracy or that there is simply a lot more demand than supply. E.g. limited seeding a lot of leeching. Last night I wasn't able to open any of the two bittorrent catalogs that I use (PBay and rarbg).

Oh I don't think it's a conspiracy; I think it's just network congestion. Torrent traffic has been QoSed to hell for a long time (as it should be tbh), so when there's congestion it's the first thing to get dropped. FWIW I'm getting a lot of frameskips from my video chats, so I think it's legitimately congested.

> as it should be tbh

Absolutely not. There are very legal reasons torrents are used (its great for releasing large datasets). Isps should treat all data the same.

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#30

Post by sksksk » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 12:51 PM UTC

awicz wrote: post #4

Serious question about torrents: How is this not stealing? I'm not trying to be judgemental. I certainly don't have any room to do so as I used Napster and the likes back in the day. Now with the advent of Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, etc, I'm genuinely curious to know the moral argument for using services and platforms that utilize torrents to distribute media other creators are actually trying to sell? Edit: Appare…

To me, stealing implies depriving someone of something.

If I take your car, you don't have a car anymore.

If I make a copy of your movie, you still have that movie.

Arguably, you're being deprived of the money from the sale of the movie, but there are already other terms that can be used (piracy, copyright infringement).