Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Popcorn Time 4.0

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 229 posts

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#131

Post by michaelmrose »

sbarre wrote: post #119
pachico wrote: post #44

I'm a huge fan of swing manouche (jazz style developed during the '40s). I can't find albums in legal sources that I can instead find in Nicotine++ (a Linux version of the old Soulseek). What should I do? Accept that I won't find it? I remember once writing to an Aussie record label asking for a copy of an old album of Brett Garsed. They told me I wouldn't find it here in Europe nor they had the means to send it to m…

I mean, one of the answers to your question is in fact: "accept that you do not get to consume that media". I'm not advocating for or against what you are choosing to do, but the position of "it's my only choice" is not really accurate. You have no inherent right to that media. Popcorn Time and other P2P file sharing tools are convenient, but let's not be hypocrites about it, they enable illegal behaviour and allow y…

You in fact have no inherent right to control other people's computers.

It's hard to justify why you think that creators have a right to the contents of your hard drive and wallet. I don't remember being party to the social or legal contract that created such rights nor realistically do I have a voice in changing it.

If society says that as a poor person in addition to having less of everything else I ought to enjoy less movies, music, books, games then perhaps society can go to hell.

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#132

Post by criddell »

olah_1 wrote: post #72
rafaelvasco wrote: post #39

If it's not on Netflix or any streaming provider, I have no choice but to pirate it. Plain and simple. Most media content is still outside the main providers.

Pro-tip: You can now digitally rent basically every movie from Youtube or Amazon. Services like https://www.justwatch.com/ make it easy to not break the law. I used to use Popcorn time all the time, but honestly it kinda feels good to not steal /shrug

There are a surprising number of movies that aren't available on any streaming platforms.

https://johnaugust.com/2018/missing-movies

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#133

Post by 1_player »

dylan604 wrote: post #112
pachico wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing to feel sorry about! I don't know how I could have missed that but I'm so lucky it ended! Having said this, I still find myself entitled to search for copies of cultural material I like :) Still, too lazy/don't have the time to do it.

> I still find myself entitled I think that sums it up pretty well. Thanks for at least being honest about it.

Is it being entitled wanting to be entertained by a piece of art or media?

That is its very purpose.

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#134

Post by belorn »

awicz wrote: post #4

Serious question about torrents: How is this not stealing? I'm not trying to be judgemental. I certainly don't have any room to do so as I used Napster and the likes back in the day. Now with the advent of Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, etc, I'm genuinely curious to know the moral argument for using services and platforms that utilize torrents to distribute media other creators are actually trying to sell? Edit: Appare…

A genuine inquiry should get a genuine answer. Let me try to provide one.

Copyright law with its duration of 95 years after the authors death is practically universally seen as the result of money being transfer from large companies into the control of politicians that voted in favor of the law. Normally when laws get written as the result of money changing hand we call it corruption, but as the supreme court have show, that is not always so.

Some people have tried to fix the problem from within, but the US political system makes third-party initiatives like that rather hard. Internationally, the result of the corrupt process spread through international trade agreements where nations has to either implement the same laws or risk getting trade sanctions from the US, and thus internationally nations has accepted the same corrupt law in exchange for getting through trade deals.

There is no moral ground for following current copyright law except blind following. Instead what we get is individual moral decisions where for example a person might feel it being acceptable to view 95 minus 1 year after the authors death old video on youtube, but find it wrong to view a recently released cinematic movie. Each person uniquely define when, where and how they feel copyrights exclusive monopoly is morally defensible and when it is not. The result is that you get about as many different moral view on the issue as there is people.

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#135

Post by joombaga »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #100
gerardnll wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'... it's hard to decide if that new movie just out is worth spending $15 on. Might be crap.' As well a restaurant might be crap too, or a website or mason work... look up reviews before buying.

If you go too a restaurant and the food is really terrible, then you can refuse to pay, send a dish back, get a reduction/waiver of the bill - even the best places get it wrong sometimes. Anyone ever got money back from Amazon/Apple/whoever because a movie they sold you sucked?

> Anyone ever got money back from Amazon/Apple/whoever because a movie they sold you sucked?

IDK, I'll find out within 72 hours. I just asked Microsoft to give me my money back for Dynasty Warriors 9 (I'd call it broke as fuck, but it's probably subjective).

I did once get a refund request for a Toy Story 4 ticket because the director and I happen to share some names.

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#136

Post by hysan »

CJefferson wrote: post #102
1_player wrote: post #7

Say what you will about stealing, illegality, unsavouriness. If the film industry would collectively take their head out of their arses and provide such a simple interface and wide catalogue to the masses, they would make hundreds of billions. I would literally pay $50 a month for an official and legal version of this. The end users don't really care that it is not possible because "legal reasons". This app proves ot…

An official and legal version of this wouldn't be $50/month, it would be more like $200/month. It includes movies from every major company, and films while they are still in the cinema.

To me, $50 seems more realistic because of data caps. You simply cannot stream enough content nowadays without forking over more money to ISPs. Pricing would become a balancing act. It’s an interesting thought experiment to wonder how those two giants would battle out the responsibility of bandwidth.

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#137

Post by josho »

beatgammit wrote: post #99
awicz wrote: post #4

Serious question about torrents: How is this not stealing? I'm not trying to be judgemental. I certainly don't have any room to do so as I used Napster and the likes back in the day. Now with the advent of Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, etc, I'm genuinely curious to know the moral argument for using services and platforms that utilize torrents to distribute media other creators are actually trying to sell? Edit: Appare…

Legally, it is stealing. However, just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong. However, you could also think of it like the digital equivalent of sharing. If someone purchases a movie or TV series on physical disks, they could loan it to you without breaking the law. In fact, they could even make a copy of the disk and not break the law. The only way to break the law this way is by having multiple copies…

> Legally, it is stealing

No it isn't. If I steal your bike you no longer have a bike. You no longer have the benefits of using it for transportation, society is worse off. As you explained copyright is very different from that. So, let's not call these 2 different things the same.

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#138

Post by dylan604 »

1_player wrote: post #133
dylan604 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still find myself entitled I think that sums it up pretty well. Thanks for at least being honest about it.

Is it being entitled wanting to be entertained by a piece of art or media? That is its very purpose.

Having wants is not being entitled. Thinking that one deserves and should have everything one wants is being entitled.

The purpose of art or media is whatever the creator wants it to be. If they are an artist creating solely for the purpose of making art for be people to enjoy, then your premise is acceptable. If the artist is trying to earn money for their work, then that is their choice. If the artist wants to release their work for the world to enjoy, there are legit ways of doing that and protecting it so that other cannot prevent that free enjoyment.

I know I'm tilting at windmills with this topic on this particular website, but creating art isn't free and nobody has the right to be entertained by it just by being (either the work or the viewer) be default.

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#139

Post by basch »

1_player wrote: post #7

Say what you will about stealing, illegality, unsavouriness. If the film industry would collectively take their head out of their arses and provide such a simple interface and wide catalogue to the masses, they would make hundreds of billions. I would literally pay $50 a month for an official and legal version of this. The end users don't really care that it is not possible because "legal reasons". This app proves ot…

I'm going to link to one of my old comments and a reply from fouric - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21482394

>I think the bigger issue than paying for multiple services is duplicate licensing. If I sign up for DirecTV, Amazon Prime, and CBS how many shows am I triple licensing? If all these companies want me to sign up for multiple services, there needs to be a way for them to pass "already licensed" information to each other, and pro-rate their bills accordingly.

>ATT, Comcast, Disney, CBS already own almost all the historical content. Id rather pay a small licensing fee to those 4 and then be able to watch their content on any platform, rather than deal with multiple middlemen that have CBS, Comcast, Disney, ATT licensing costs built into their product price. IF I select DirecTV/ATT as my "licensing manager" then any time I sign up for Disney+, Peacock+, CBS All Access, I want a discount off one of the two ends (would make more sense to give all my subscription info to DirecTV and get a DirecTV discount. Then DirecTV can go to Disney and say "17% of our customers dont need to pay Disney licensing costs, weve adjusted our payment to you accordingly.)

> fouric: This is actually really important. While it's immoral to take the results of someone else's work without compensating them, it's also immoral to charge your customers multiple times for the same product.

It would really benefit the viewer to decouple "what am I licensed for" from "what app do i need to play this" and just allow my media player to access all my libraries regardless of which licensing/billing manager and video player I choose to use.. Movies Anywhere, Vudu, Roku, Apple and Amazon have made some progress on this front, but its still way too convoluted.

Re: Popcorn Time 4.0

#140

Post by shirakawasuna »

fernandotakai wrote: post #106
wlesieutre wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using PIA, but they were purchased recently by Kape Technologies so I'm not sure if I'll re-up when my subscription expires. Where I'm at right now is they're probably more trustworthy than Comcast, and less likely to do something like selling my IP address -> personal identity to advertisers. https://www.hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sol... They say it doesn't change anything, but with VPN service…

i signed up for PIA using paypal (i thought i was just setting up my payment source, but they fully created an account) and they sent me an username + password in plain text via email. i cannot trust a company that does that.

Mullvad is better
Post reply on HN