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Goodbye Popcorn Time

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Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#121
post #93

> Piracy is not a people problem. It’s a service problem. I'd say its a pricing problem. Right now 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is available from Amazon Instant Video at $20. On your popular torrent site virtually the same product is available for $0 + (riskOfGettingCaught * $1,000,000 fine) = $0.000001 ? You can either try to increase the riskOfGettingCaught or decrease the legal price. I think the industry should do w…

LOL. And then if you're Hulu, start cramming ads back into paying users' faces. I miss the days when people threw sledghammers into giant TV screens to free us from this hell. Or was that a movie?

It's not like Apple has ads in their video service today, for their part :)

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#122
post #6

There is an encrypted message [1] in the last commit of their website (popcorn-time.github.io). [1] https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-time.github.io/commi...

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...

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.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sounds interesting. Do you have a link to more information?

http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/movie-industry-launch...

http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-outfit-tries-to-erase-hi...

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111014/02583316350/confus...

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#125
post #111
post #93

> Piracy is not a people problem. It’s a service problem. I'd say its a pricing problem. Right now 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is available from Amazon Instant Video at $20. On your popular torrent site virtually the same product is available for $0 + (riskOfGettingCaught * $1,000,000 fine) = $0.000001 ? You can either try to increase the riskOfGettingCaught or decrease the legal price. I think the industry should do w…

It is a pricing problem, but also a distribution and licensing problem. Netflix for example is not available in most countries of the world, and nor it nor anything like it has all the latest shows and movies on time , some being available many years later. The future is definitely being able to stream all the shows and movies immediately after release anywhere on the web. The problem is it could take 20 years before…

> The future is definitely being able to stream all the shows and movies immediately after release anywhere on the web.

I agree, I wonder though if future Hollywood will be more or less profitable.

Imagine a future where all movies/tv shows were given away for free/stolen, how would they profit?

I think the answer is advertising inside the movie/show. I recently saw this done pretty tastefully in an episode of 'Workaholics' where the group wove some product placement into the story pretty naturally. I was day dreaming about how far they could take this and imagined them freezing the scene and the three of them breaking character/fourth wall to pitch a product and then unfreezing the scene and going back to acting. You could imagine this getting so popular that it eventually becomes annoying and then eventually edited out of any shows/movies.

What I think is even more interesting is the fact that advertising, such a wildly inefficient method, right now props up so many industries.

Imagine if Google released a product tomorrow that was 100% efficient at replacing advertising.. Some sort of beam that just got people to understand/like your product immediately. What would all of these major industries do for revenue?

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#127
post #93

> Piracy is not a people problem. It’s a service problem. I'd say its a pricing problem. Right now 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is available from Amazon Instant Video at $20. On your popular torrent site virtually the same product is available for $0 + (riskOfGettingCaught * $1,000,000 fine) = $0.000001 ? You can either try to increase the riskOfGettingCaught or decrease the legal price. I think the industry should do w…

Apples and oranges. I guess availability (publish time and original language), being able to really download, collect and share a movie, play it without problems (HDCP, Silverlight, smartphone support, ...), not having to get a credit card etc. is way more important to people than you think. Also a flatrate for a specific catalogue is different than buying films, be it positive or negative. Don't forget the people who don't even have the Internet speed to stream high quality, but might download.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#128

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've also backed a couple projects that claimed to give me DRM-free digital downloads of video material.

In one case, what I actually got was a bunch of private web streams, with promises of downloads "someday in the future when it's all finished".

In another case, I also got a rather poor quality web stream with awful subtitles - eventual pirate versions offered a much higher quality product.

It really is sad that even with things like Kickstarter projects, legal digital video offerings still remain awful compared to what you can get illegally.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#129
post #51
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again with 'stolen'.

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... )

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Genius I t…

Interesting! Hadn't thought of that, but it's pretty clever if it is indeed what they're up to.

It is becoming a very viable strategy in the "questionable derivative works" scene to open source the assets before a release in case you are C&D'd.

It is wonderful how the Internet makes it hard to suppress information.

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