Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk
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Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk
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Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk
#2I understand the sudden deletion of the repos, but why are the devs being compelled to not speak? Are NSLs being issued for PT developers?
Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk
#3I understand the sudden deletion of the repos, but why are the devs being compelled to not speak? Are NSLs being issued for PT developers?
Optimistic: lawyer advice
Pessimistic: Hollywood thugs
Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk
#4Popcorn Time is _this_ close to being the Napster of Film, Hollywood must be literally shitting bricks. Someone has probably taken it upon himself to threaten these devs in a nasty (and perhaps illegal) way. Surely the story will come out eventually.
In the meantime, Popcorn Time is fully available to download. So I'm not sure what genie they're putting back in the bottle....
Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk
#5It would be great if a developer beyond the reach of the Western legal system would take this project up with a self hosted repo. Code is speech. It's a terrible precedent for devs to be afraid to have code (including me after reading this). This is where the myriad of outdated laws and prosecutorial discretion bites: it's impossible to know where the legal line is.
__ Addition: My view on the savvy modus operandi here (I'm a lawyer when I'm not a developer). If you give someone any kind of reason to sue you, you're essentially handing them a stick. It's much worse if they can afford to hit you with it and you can't afford to defend yourself. The people threatening to sue these guys are almost certainly making silence a condition not to sue. This isolates the devs from people who could support them, and has the added effect of intimidating other devs with the unexplained "disappearances".
Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk
#6Popcorn Time is _this_ close to being the Napster of Film, Hollywood must be literally shitting bricks. Someone has probably taken it upon himself to threaten these devs in a nasty (and perhaps illegal) way. Surely the story will come out eventually. In the meantime, Popcorn Time is fully available to download. So I'm not sure what genie they're putting back in the bottle....
It's a curious state of affairs. I'd love to know how it all went down, as I've never seen things this weird even in the piracy world...
Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk
#7Popcorn Time is _this_ close to being the Napster of Film, Hollywood must be literally shitting bricks. Someone has probably taken it upon himself to threaten these devs in a nasty (and perhaps illegal) way. Surely the story will come out eventually. In the meantime, Popcorn Time is fully available to download. So I'm not sure what genie they're putting back in the bottle....
The threat could be nothing more than suing for copyright violation. The fines for that are insanely high, and evidence of such is not necessarily hard to collect. After all, it's highly unlikely the devs were developing Popcorn Time without using it themselves.
Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk
#8I have a different theory.
I think everyone who touches it gets a payout. Think about it--legal threats tend to make people angry. Especially anti-intellectual property types. By the odds, shouldn't we be seeing a Streisand effect? Being set for life, though, now that's a good motivator to keep your mouth shut.
Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk
#9I have a different theory. I think everyone who touches it gets a payout. Think about it--legal threats tend to make people angry. Especially anti-intellectual property types. By the odds, shouldn't we be seeing a Streisand effect? Being set for life, though, now that's a good motivator to keep your mouth shut.
And consider all of them saying "moving on to other projects" + a gag order... An interesting theory, I'll give you that.
If I was offered a payout, with the condition of not talking about it at all, I'd probably take it. I don't care about piracy enough, personally.
Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk
#10I have a different theory. I think everyone who touches it gets a payout. Think about it--legal threats tend to make people angry. Especially anti-intellectual property types. By the odds, shouldn't we be seeing a Streisand effect? Being set for life, though, now that's a good motivator to keep your mouth shut.
An interesting theory, but the problem with it is that the pool of potential devs is effectively limitless (well, not really but it might as well be). They would have to pay me multiple $10ks to stop dev and shut up. And offering that to 100 or 1,000 devs starts getting really expensive. I don't know. Certainly the first few groups it would work, but... if the cat ever got out, everyone would be lining up to develop it, and it would be easy for the cat to get out.