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Popcorn Time is back

popcorntimewar.com

51–60 of 141 posts

Re: Popcorn Time is back

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Control of your audience, first and foremost: the mainstay of the movie business. If you can convince someone to sit still and watch your art for up to 2 hours at a time, you've got an audience. If you can't, you've lost the audience. Its an artistic thing - do you have access to, and can you know about, your audience? This has got to be better than not knowing and not having any control whatsoever - or worse, allowi…

>> "Imagine if Universal embraced Popcorn Time and called their fork "Universal Popcorn Time", and modified it such that their catalog was entirely available. They'd have a real chance against the iTunes/AppStore/Netflix's of the world." What? iTunes, AppStore, and Netflix are stores. Universal isn't competing with them and doesn't need to. They exist to sell Universal's content.

Yeah, they're stores that deliver content, and in which Universal must pay a (not insubstantial) fee to participate.

Just like Popcorn App could be, without that onerous fee that is ..

Re: Popcorn Time is back

#52
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Morality" is self-defined. No doubt they have their interpretation of morality on their side.

Sure, but many share a similar definition of morality. More to the point, the economics are not relative to a point of view. Their project can only succeed, as it stands, if it is used marginally. If everyone used it instead of the competition, content creators would have to change the way they work drastically, and no new content would show up on PT.

There are many more economic models than pay-at-the-point-of-use, so its not clear at all that the project would fail.

Re: Popcorn Time is back

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "Imagine if Universal embraced Popcorn Time and called their fork "Universal Popcorn Time", and modified it such that their catalog was entirely available. They'd have a real chance against the iTunes/AppStore/Netflix's of the world." What? iTunes, AppStore, and Netflix are stores. Universal isn't competing with them and doesn't need to. They exist to sell Universal's content.

Yeah, they're stores that deliver content, and in which Universal must pay a (not insubstantial) fee to participate. Just like Popcorn App could be, without that onerous fee that is ..

Yes but if Universal did that they would then have to build a payment or subscription system into their app and spend a ton of money managing that and supporting it. Or are you suggesting they give their movies away for free on the app? If so then they're better off just letting the stores take a cut - that way they actually earn money.

If they were to give away their movies for free (if that's what you're suggesting) how - exactly - would they monetise that successfully? Unlike the music industry which can make up losses on record sales through concerts and merch their isn't really an equivalent for the movie industry.

Re: Popcorn Time is back

#54

Someone posted a really good article on the being right vs being pragmatic - about it being a service problem as opposed to an ethical one, or something like that. It'd be really handy if someone could post it.

It's like crossing the street.

You might legally have the right of way. Pragmatically however, you need to get out of the way of the moving car.

Re: Popcorn Time is back

#55
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question is: what license is that work released under (GPL3?) and does that license require attribution?

Almost all licenses require attribution, at least at the file level.

Not the GPL. GNU & RMS used to complain about the attribution requirement of the original BSD licences.

Re: Popcorn Time is back

#56
post #19
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which exists solely to facilitate piracy. Let's not use the words the big majors wants people to use. The right wording is copyright infringement and that's it.

Piracy is a well known synonym for copyright infringement. I would agree with you that something like "theft" would not be a good term to use, but Piracy is spot-on.

And people who do copyright infringment have adopted the label. Just look at the Pirate Party and The Pirate Bay.

Re: Popcorn Time is back

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Amazon sell for a loss?

At various times, books, e-books, and kindle fires. Amazon actually shifted the pricing on books and e-books by selling them at below what they were buying them at for prolonged periods of times, and drove rival book sellers out of business by doing so... and then didn't raise their prices.

Do we know if they still sell books at a loss? I'm guessing with their volume and many competitors killed off they have an insane control over their own buying cost and can force that price to now be profitable, but it'd be interesting to know either way.

Re: Popcorn Time is back

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working on a fork with Chromecast support. It works pretty well. Just a bit scared to open source it. Perhaps i will release it under a pseudonym or something. It's ridicioulous that people need to be afraid to release stuff but sadly enough this is the case.

>> It's ridicioulous that people need to be afraid to release stuff but sadly enough this is the case. I'm conflicted on this. The MPAA abuse their power regularly but it's hard to deny it's now easier and cheaper than ever to access and watch movies. That takes away a lot of the justification for piracy and creating tools that facilitate it. Edit: And here come the down votes. Don't down vote if you disagree with so…

Anecdotal evidence alert.

I live in the UK. On Sunday I wanted to watch the new Fargo TV show. I do not own a Television. I went to watch it 'live' on the Channel 4 website. It kept saying my broadband wasn't good enough. Odd. Googled a bit, ah - adblock is causing issues. This needs a new whitelist compared to 4od - fine by me. Sit through 2 minutes of adverts specifically over the web player (bearing in mind the channel I am waiting to watch also has ads - so by watching online I am apparently getting extra, thanks). Miss the first minute of the show but never mind - I was setting up last minute.

30 seconds into the stream, player dies and shows "insufficient bandwidth" again. Hit refresh. Starts new ad cycle over player.

Ctrl+W. Ctrl+T. "Eztv.it". Tab. "Fargo". Tab Enter Tab Tab Enter. Enter.

Within 4 minutes my "too slow" broadband had got the show at what seemed like better quality than the official web player. I also had no ads so I even finished watching the episode before terrestrial viewers despite starting late.

Content delivery still sucks. Maybe my tolerance is too low, but frankly maybe it's worth accommodating that and providing content in an easy and consistent fashion.

I was so impressed by Joss Whedon releasing his movie on vimeo (although I would prefer DLs over streams) that I bought it just to support it.

Re: Popcorn Time is back

#59
post #5
post #2

Editorialized title. I enjoyed the part where they berate the other fork for "ripping off" their UI, which exists solely to facilitate piracy.

> which exists solely to facilitate piracy. Let's not use the words the big majors wants people to use. The right wording is copyright infringement and that's it.

If you are a plaintiff writing a complaint, an interested party writing an amicus brief, a legal scholar writing a law review article, and so on, then indeed the right wording is copyright infringement and arguably "that's it".

If you are speaking outside of a formal legal context, than it most certainly is not the case that "that's it". In ordinary English, we overload and generalize many criminal terms, such as "piracy", "theft", and "stealing" to apply to things that do not meet the precise legal definition of those words.

For example, consider "steal" and its variants. Here are some common examples of usage that are not literally the crime of stealing. Many are not even crimes or torts.

• Someone says they do not like cats and have no interest in having one as a pet. A cute stray kitten shows up on their doorstep, they take pity and feed it. They fall in love with it and keep it. They might say that the kitten "stole" their heart.

• An actor playing a minor role in a play gives a performance that outshines the performance of the stars. Many would say that the actor "stole" the show.

• An employee of a rival company poses as a janitor to gain access to your lab and takes a photo of a whiteboard containing the formula for a chemical that is a trade secret in your manufacturing process. It would be common to say that the rival company "stole" your secret formula.

• When crackers gain access to a company's list of customer email addresses, passwords, or credit card numbers, it is commonly said that the data was "stolen".

• Alice is Bob's fiancé. Mallory woos Alice without Bob's knowledge. Alice elopes with Mallory. Most would find it acceptable if Bob said that Mallory "stole" his fiancé.

• A team that has been behind since the start of the game but wins on a last second improbable play is often said to have "stolen" the game.

I could go on [1].

[1] I believe I once posted a longer list, but HN crashed shortly afterward and had to be restored from backup. My post was lost.

Re: Popcorn Time is back

#60

Someone posted a really good article on the being right vs being pragmatic - about it being a service problem as opposed to an ethical one, or something like that. It'd be really handy if someone could post it.

It's like crossing the street. You might legally have the right of way. Pragmatically however, you need to get out of the way of the moving car.

Or jay-walking.

Legally should should walk to the crossing at the end of the block. But pragmatically you could just run across the road during a lull of traffic.

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