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Goodbye Popcorn Time

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Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would lawyers be toasting champagne? They could have made money from a lawsuit.

Proof that their intimidation 'services' work will sell more intimidation services.

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

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#83
post #64

> Popcorn Time as a project is legal. We checked. 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.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#84

It doesn't matter. The code is already out there. 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 alrea…

[deleted]

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#85
post #73

I thought it was decentralized enough that you just needed the software for the job. Seems like it used a centralized point since I can't use it now.

Really? It's working fine for me. What problems are you having?

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#86

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.

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 surpris…

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.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#87

Anyone interested in the app can still build it from their repo. https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app

If I wasn't on Comcast I would try this out.. 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,…

Put.io "Seedbox As A Service" should work pretty well for that purpose

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#88

On the topic of pirated content, I was an early contributor to the Veronica Mars movie Kickstarter, and I received my "digital download" today. It consisted of a link to sign up to two separate websites to download a specific player that would stream the video for me on supported platforms only . Also, the HD version might not be available right away. I checked and the torrent of the HD version had been online for 30…

I think it boils down to the psychology of "something to gain" vs. "something to lose". New creatives who are kickstarting and bootstrapping lean towards the former, and are fine with relinquishing control if it means they get sales at all. Old guard suits are banking on a statistically predictable return rate, and focus on reducing risks to that return, even at the cost of additional short-term profits or long-term goodwill.

Of course, the fact that Veronica Mars was kickstarted puts a hole in my theory. :) I'm guessing that its stakeholders are still partially in the old guard mindset, and/or they're trusting Hollywood's "best practices" for digital distribution. (They may also be under pre-existing contract restrictions for the Veronica Mars IP.)

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#90

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.

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 surpris…

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.
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