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Goodbye Popcorn Time

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Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#151

Post by cettox »

slang800 wrote: post #113
fjcaetano wrote: post #69

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…

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.

I was unaware of that repo yet, it took me 1 hour to get it working though some features was disabled : https://github.com/cettox/popcorn-app and for precompiled executables visit http://kemald.com/pt/popcorn.html

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#152

Post by Noxchi »

I was trying to use Popcorn yesterday and it just plain sucked. I then installed XBMC and XBMCTorrent plugin, and everything was buttery smooth.

Popcorn is built on A LOT of immature technology, which makes it very slow. XBMCtorrent on the other hand uses mature, tested, compiled libraries and platforms.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#153

Post by darkarmani »

Crito wrote: post #142
mentos wrote: 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…

You also need to factor in how much my time and effort is worth to me. I'd much rather spend a few dollars and get a DRM free copy, than spend a few minutes on a shaddy ad/malware ridden torrent site to get a free DRM free copy.

You'll spend more time watching the locked content before the show for most DVDs than it takes to download.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#154

Post by guspe »

api wrote: post #108

I've scanned this whole thread and there's not a single post that is at all critical of the intentions behind Popcorn Time. I guess you're all okay with a world where content creators don't eat. Or do you have a better idea than copyright? If so, by all means let's hear it. I promise you that the person who solves that problem in an accessible way will be the next Mark Zuckerberg, or at least Tim Berners-Lee. Every s…

I agree with you, artists should not starve and deserve our appreciation. Even with piracy, Beyoncé, Jay Z, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence, Steven Spielberg, Justin Bieber, R. R. Martin and many, many other artists and creators are pretty safe from starvation though. Actually, if "to not starve" means being as wealthy as them, I'd say more than 95% of the world is starving right now.

Copyright is making a very privileged portion of the world very, very rich. That's completely unecessary. Artists should earn their living, sure. But they don't need to be filthy rich. To be filthy rich isn't really a "need" for anyone, in any time.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#155

Post by Zigurd »

api wrote: post #108

I've scanned this whole thread and there's not a single post that is at all critical of the intentions behind Popcorn Time. I guess you're all okay with a world where content creators don't eat. Or do you have a better idea than copyright? If so, by all means let's hear it. I promise you that the person who solves that problem in an accessible way will be the next Mark Zuckerberg, or at least Tim Berners-Lee. Every s…

> Maybe the end of copyright as we know it is technologically inevitable. But in the meantime it shows more than a little bit of ignorance, naiveté, and douchebaggery to congratulate each other on destroying peoples' livelihoods en masse.

Let's say we roll the clock back to before DRM was enshrined in what used to be general purpose computing hardware. Let's say we had the option to refuse it. Would you rather have DRM and movies on your now not-quite-personally controlled computer, or would you rather have one less threat vector for pervasive surveillance?

That's the choice. You can hand over control of part of your computer to some very sketchy people and have movies, or you can make the relatively small number of artists who make a living off recorded performances find a different way to monetize.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#156

Post by kalmi10 »

slang800 wrote: post #126
Lambdanaut wrote: post #23

Time to fork and continue development.

Exactly! :D The fork has already begun here: https://github.com/isra17/popcorn-app

If you dump the content of this repo into "%APPDATA%\Popcorn Time\app", the app starts working again without having to do any compiling.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#157

Post by adsr »

zanny wrote: post #136
api wrote: post #108

I've scanned this whole thread and there's not a single post that is at all critical of the intentions behind Popcorn Time. I guess you're all okay with a world where content creators don't eat. Or do you have a better idea than copyright? If so, by all means let's hear it. I promise you that the person who solves that problem in an accessible way will be the next Mark Zuckerberg, or at least Tim Berners-Lee. Every s…

> Or do you have a better idea than copyright? Capitalism. Pay for scarce goods and services on an open market. Since movies / music / etc are digital, and that is a number, and numbers are information, you don't restrict information. Instead, you let the free market handle it - in the absence of copyright, people still want movies, and music, and new creative feats. And those creators want to live off of creating th…

What about FOSS licenses, anyone can simply ignore what for example GPL says and do as they please with the code without copyright. There is simply no case there to fight if it were to happen.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#158

Post by Noxchi »

api wrote: post #108

I've scanned this whole thread and there's not a single post that is at all critical of the intentions behind Popcorn Time. I guess you're all okay with a world where content creators don't eat. Or do you have a better idea than copyright? If so, by all means let's hear it. I promise you that the person who solves that problem in an accessible way will be the next Mark Zuckerberg, or at least Tim Berners-Lee. Every s…

First, lets establish what money is.

How much money you have is proportional to:

* How much value you create

* Your ability / willingness to monetize it

Now lets talk about why most artists are starving. These creatives are in the entertainment niche. Which is very different from the problem solving niche.

1. Entertainment is not a necessity, it is a luxury

2. Entertainment is a low-cost luxury[1]

3. This is a lot of competition in this niche. Remember how I said there are two types of products: Problem solving and Entertainment? Well the problem solving products only compete with other products that solve the same problem. In the entertainment niche, you are competing with every single other entertainment product. Your dopey little fantasy novel is competing with Call of Duty, 50 Cent, Angry Birds, Reddit, Flappy Bird, Facebook, Hacker News, and sex.

* 4. Given points 1 and 2, that means to make money, you HAVE to scale and be popular to many people[1]. Considering point 3, you have to have great content at the very least.

So I hope you can see why most content authors are starving is due to economics and their value creating ability, and not torrenting or spreading of knowledge.

I'm sure you know that the entertainment industry is a feast or famine one. The people on the top make all the money, and the people on the bottom make very little, simply because the barrier to entry for peoples attention is very high and only the best will get it (point 3).

If you're going to sell music, don't quit your day job unless you're sure you're going to be on the "feast" side of the equation.

*[1] Not necessarily. There is a growing model where you give content for free / low cost, then sell high priced ($1000+) goods to your rich, loyal fans (e.g. exclusive signed CDs, etc.).

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#159

Post by gcv »

Could this have been the intent all along? Make a decent first cut of the code, generate a ton of publicity, then generate a ton more publicity — note the vagueness about why exactly they shut down — then leave the code in reasonable working order up on GitHub. Now a thousand hard-to-shutdown forks will bloom.
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