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Goodbye Popcorn Time

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Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#191

Post by zanny »

adsr wrote: post #157
zanny wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But it would also mean they couldn't control the compiled binaries. It takes the profit motive out of software development - you just have to be vigilant enough to make sure you can retrace the source of the software you use.

I'm one of the people that uses the GPL because copyright exists. Without copyright, companies lose the incentive to close their source, because the binaries aren't restrictable anyway so they can't profit off that. It just means they shoot themselves in the foot by not showing the source to others for auditing purposes. It would also mean decompiling binaries would be perfectly legal, and distributing the results of that would be legal too.

I'd rather live in a world where nobody can tell you how to distribute information than one where I can try (and personally wouldn't be able to fight jack in court enforcing it without the FSF's help) to force openness on others for the sake of freedom while international companies profiteer off artificial scarcity.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#192

Post by bmelton »

baby wrote: post #114
nasalgoat wrote: post #80

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…

Wow! Without your comment I wouldn't have seen that Veronica Mars was released! I was also an early contributor but ignored most of their mails since they have a tendency to spam... (which is okay since that's what kickstarter is about). So thanks for your comment, I'm just gonna torrent the movie instead of using my flixster code. edit: I'm streaming in in Flixster right now, I had no problem (didn't have to downloa…

If you ignored the emails (like I did), you might not have noticed that you're probably also entitled to some stickers, and a T-shirt (if you pledged at the $35 level).

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#195

Post by Spittie »

User8712 wrote: post #66
programminggeek wrote: post #34

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…

But they had a plan - the application is opensource, so anyone can continue it. And since it relies on torrents, killing the swarm is pretty much impossible.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#196

Post by adsr »

zanny wrote: post #191
adsr wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But it would also mean they couldn't control the compiled binaries. It takes the profit motive out of software development - you just have to be vigilant enough to make sure you can retrace the source of the software you use. I'm one of the people that uses the GPL because copyright exists. Without copyright, companies lose the incentive to close their source, because the binaries aren't restrictable anyway so they c…

On the contrary I think that's an even higher incentive to close source, obfuscate binaries and add DRM etc. And while someone may be able to copy the binary, they can not create derivative work from it.

It's still going to be a fight, but it will be fought outside of the court rooms without support of the law. To me that sounds like a step backwards, because even more than today that's a fight where a resource heavy megacorp will have an upper hand.

I don't like the idea of someone that creates something great without compensation, put it out for free, only to have the work taken by some large corporation that manages to profit from the work due to large marketing budgets, sales channels and existing customers, while the author remains uncompensated. So it's not an incentive to open source and share personal projects either.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#197

Post by kamjam »

api wrote: post #178
Zigurd wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you come up with that thing, it's the choice we face.

Not really. You kind of missed my point. There is no DRM in my iTunes music, but I paid for it. Apple takes ~30% of iTunes though, so it still stinks, but at least the artist gets something. Part of why I use iTunes is that most of the research I see shows that buying music there or through similar classes of digital music services (and movies, etc., I get those there too) sends a greater amount of revenue to the art…

Before iTunes there was Napster. Without Napster I very much doubt iTunes would ever have evolved. Maybe Popcorn Time is the first step to getting a truly decent movie application that people can purchase through?

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#198

Post by [deleted] »

DanBC wrote: post #171
b3b0p wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also a contributor to the Veronica Mars movie Kickstarter. When I received my email today and found out it was Ultra Violet, I was quite upset. I emailed the address they have listed on the F.A.Q. site with my complaint. I backed the Kickstarter, but in order to watch it on my AppleTV I have 2 options: 1. Purchase from iTunes. or 2. Pirate. The money I spent to back the Kickstarter could have been used for the…

You kickstart something because you want to help them make it, not because you want a product in return. While you could strip the copy protections that's a crime.

[deleted]

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#199

Post by usaphp »

I don't understand why it got so much attention, it looks just like a ripoff from zona.ru, even the frontend website looks similar. And zona has been out there for quite some time already.

Re: Goodbye Popcorn Time

#200

Post by lucb1e »

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…

> Right now 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is available from Amazon Instant Video at $20.

As an aside, that movie is one of the worst I've seen in a long time. I wouldn't consider it worth my time to watch it again if I was given $20.

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