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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

#21

Post by cmiles74 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #7
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #4

Popcorn 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.

Surely they download at least a bit of a movie to test. Setting up a mock service that pushes open source video might be a technical solution, but that might not matter once you're in front of a judge.

Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk

#23

Post by higherpurpose »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #14
bowlofpetunias wrote: post #13

Replace Popcorn Time with any kind of politically undesirable activity, and it sounds exactly like so many stories from so many totalitarian regimes.

Is 'politically undesirable' the new PC phrase for 'illegal'?

Gagging developers for writing code seems way beyond "legality" to me. They should be able to at least say "I'm being sued for developing Popcorn Time". If your government is gagging you from saying even that...then something has gone terribly wrong somewhere, and yes that does seem like a totalitarian tool when used like that.

Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk

#24

Post by pjbrow »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #14
bowlofpetunias wrote: post #13

Replace Popcorn Time with any kind of politically undesirable activity, and it sounds exactly like so many stories from so many totalitarian regimes.

Is 'politically undesirable' the new PC phrase for 'illegal'?

The doctrines underpinning IP law are flimsy and arbitrary. It's normal for technology to change the balance of power (and the laws that enshrine that balance).

In the current environment, Hollywood's business model is unreasonable, and people know it. Until people think it's reasonable, a lot of them are going to pirate. Technology has changed. Hollywood needs to change.

What should be illegal, is threatening to sue someone for working on code with others.

Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk

#25

Post by ericb »

naterator wrote: post #10
ericb wrote: post #8

I 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…

True, but once the cat gets out of the bag, you can always fall back to the stick-only option.

Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk

#26

Post by drunkcatsdgaf »

Rusky wrote: post #19
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 'politically undesirable' the new PC phrase for 'illegal'?

Is writing Popcorn Time itself actually illegal?

I dont see how. PCT is scrapper with a pretty UI for the most part.

Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk

#27

Post by Joeboy »

espadrine wrote: post #15
pjbrow wrote: post #5

It 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 he…

There is no western legal system. As absurd as it sounds, what went down with TPB shows how laws perspire beyond a country's boundaries. As for what actually happened to PT, it isn't as clear-cut as it seems. I can tell you one thing as food for thought, though. I contributed a minor patch to two forks. I was granted a small amount of dogecoins (about $.10) for one of those contributions. The notion that there would…

I was thinking about approximately this just yesterday. I have a banal coding problem that's in the way of what I actually want to do, and would be prepared to pay somebody maybe a hundred bucks to make it go away. Probably there exists a person with the skills and experience to make that happen easily, and for whom that would constitute a non-insulting payment, but I don't know how to find them. There are open source bounty sites, but I doubt I'm going to find the specialist I need on any of them. So instead I'm going to have to spend hours or maybe days learning stuff I would rather not know about.

Edit: If anybody can make this python call to lilv's swig bindings not segfault, I will give them a hundred bucks:

https://github.com/Joeboy/joeboy-lv2-plugins/blob/master/lv2...

Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk

#28

Post by Touche »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #4

Popcorn 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....

> Popcorn Time is _this_ close to being the Napster of Film

No it's not. The elephant in the room that no wants to talk about is that Popcorn Time doesn't work on a television. Television is where people watch movies.

Back in the late 90s when Napster was a real mainstream thing, people didn't just listen to the music on their computers, they burnt them to CDs and took them to their cars, to parties, etc.

Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk

#29

Post by DanBC »

Rusky wrote: post #19
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 'politically undesirable' the new PC phrase for 'illegal'?

Is writing Popcorn Time itself actually illegal?

Circumventing a rights control measure is illegal and there are probably lawyers who would want to make that case to test it in court.

Re: Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will Talk

#30

Post by evv »

Touche wrote: post #28
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #4

Popcorn 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....

> Popcorn Time is _this_ close to being the Napster of Film No it's not. The elephant in the room that no wants to talk about is that Popcorn Time doesn't work on a television. Television is where people watch movies. Back in the late 90s when Napster was a real mainstream thing, people didn't just listen to the music on their computers, they burnt them to CDs and took them to their cars, to parties, etc.

If I were a Hollywood exec right now I would be sweating bullets. Steam boxes will be hitting the shelves in the next couple of years and then there will be no stopping hackers from bringing the elegance of Popcorn Time to the comfort of the living room.
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