Popcorn Time 4.0

I happily pay for Spotify.

I've done for years.

I also, less happily, pay for Netflix. I refuse to pay monthly fees for the rest of them but I'll pay to rent a movie online sometimes.

My issues with this whole thing:

- things I buy (i.e. not rent) aren't really mine and can disappear at any time if the publisher decides so (or just fail to keep their DRM servers alive.)

- massive abuse of copyright for something it wasn't meant for.

- the idea that it is OK to keep Europeans away from huge parts of the collection for no good reason.

As I've said multiple times: I'll happily pay more for media, but there is one rule

- no more subscriptions: anything subscription-based must replace one of my existing subscriptions.

- reasonable prices

Things are possible. One just needs the courage to ask and possibly be told no, and even more courage to proceed if they say yes.

I have personal experience of starting a niche record store with a friend. We were both tired of the music we wanted not being available and decided we'd do it ourselves. Neither of us had any idea about the music industry. We both put in $500 each. Every dime of that was used to buy the initial inventory. We had no money to have a website built (circa 1999). So I learned how to use MySQL and PHP and built one. During the years we ran the business, there were many conversations with artists and record labels. We sold compilation albums where other people licensed individual tracks from labels and arranged them together onto a CD. We even had several discussions about starting our label, but stopped short of that.

The problem likely isn't the money, but rather it would paint a big red target on their back with a legal entity to sue. And it wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft would easily revoke a certificate, even without any legal judgment.

That's the problem with code signing. It's just an attempt to graft the status quo monkeysphere onto the digital realm - you "know" the author of the code, so therefore you trust it completely, because you can sue them post-hoc if they harm you. This doesn't scale to the digital world, but that hasn't stopped these unimaginative power-hungry companies from trying to force us into it.

I'm going to be honest with all of you. You all are doing something that is ethically and morally wrong and statements like this are only way too human attempts to justify the actions of things you know are clearly wrong. You can't find legal sources of swing manouche just like you can't find legal sources of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da vinci. What are you going to do? make a counterfeit copy of the Mona Lisa then buy tickets to the art museum to absolve you of all crimes?

That being said I use popcorn time and stremio and torrents regularly. The difference is, I don't justify my crimes. I'm aware of what I'm doing, I don't need to live in a universe that is a self created moral illusion. I likely will do something unethical if I could hide it and it made economic sense. I am human and, morally, I am imperfect, but unlike most of you, morally, I am aware of my imperfections and I don't try to construct logical scaffolding to lie to myself and others. I can pirate because most people pay for the things I pirate, such a model is only sustainable if most people don't do what I do. Things like popcorn time threaten to change the balance.

If you want to save the world or do better for the world, do not assume that the world is as described by our parent poster pachico. It's not intelligent to assume that people are going to use popcorn time then purchase Netflix to offset some of that guilt (still a crime btw). Assume the world is made out of people who are as pachico really is.. people who are morally grey but make up lies and illusions to comfort themselves into thinking they are justified in their crimes.

I stopped pirating games 10 years ago when my salary crossed a threshold where it wasn't worth my time anymore to pirate a game vs. the convenience to buy it from steam. The way to combat piracy is to create systems that appeal to the previous aforementioned logic.

Spotify was a step in the right direction but it eliminated much of the huge profits made by the music industry. Perhaps those profits were ludicrously too large anyway. Either way, the way forward isn't trying to justify your crimes. It's admitting that hey, we are victims of the tragedy of the commons, we use popcorn time because it's free and easy to use... to combat this situation you either need to take steps to destroy this product or come up with something way better.

> The purpose of art or media is whatever the creator wants it to be.

Your argument is complicated by the fact that a lot of media, and especially for old out-of-print works, the copyright holder is not the person who actually created the work. At best it is a descendant family member, at worst it is a person or corporation who came into the copyright without the knowledge and consent of the artist.