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Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

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Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#71

Post by Dylan16807 »

return0 wrote: post #69
lvs wrote: post #12

There would be less incentive toward this kind of piracy if content producers and distributors could get their collective acts together with more liberal licensing. Popcorn Time is winning because it's easier to use and find content than any pay service. Like anything, you compete by making a better product/service -- not by complaining that your competitors are unfair. Of course, they are certainly unfair here, but…

You are asking for the impossible, people are not going to pay for what they can always get at better quality for $0. Fans are happy to curate the art the like and will always do a better work , and for free. The only thing that might make sense is if they distributed an original instead of a copy, i.e. a different movie to every user, a different song etc. Copyright is just not compatible with the digital world, it…

It's easy for people making money off of distribution to do a better job than fans. But they're largely stubborn or lazy.

Hell, they could copy popcorn time and provide some beefy servers, as a simple example of how it's not anywhere near impossible.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#72

Post by StavrosK »

return0 wrote: post #69
lvs wrote: post #12

There would be less incentive toward this kind of piracy if content producers and distributors could get their collective acts together with more liberal licensing. Popcorn Time is winning because it's easier to use and find content than any pay service. Like anything, you compete by making a better product/service -- not by complaining that your competitors are unfair. Of course, they are certainly unfair here, but…

You are asking for the impossible, people are not going to pay for what they can always get at better quality for $0. Fans are happy to curate the art the like and will always do a better work , and for free. The only thing that might make sense is if they distributed an original instead of a copy, i.e. a different movie to every user, a different song etc. Copyright is just not compatible with the digital world, it…

> people are not going to pay for what they can always get at better quality for $0

Sure, but I already pay Netflix. If I had to pay a bit more and it included everything that's on Popcorn Time, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#73

Post by bbcbasic »

sroerick wrote: post #3

Does anybody know what it would require to fork Popcorn Time to only support Creative Commons and public domain content? I've spent a lot of time boycotting copyrighted works and I'd like to have a nice user interface to do this.

Being pedantic: CC works still have copyright.

Depending on your country I think it may be impossible as a creator of something to give up your copyright. Based on what I have read here on HN before.

But CC comes with permissive licensing, which I guess is what you are filtering-in with your boycott.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#74

Post by return0 »

StavrosK wrote: post #72
return0 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are asking for the impossible, people are not going to pay for what they can always get at better quality for $0. Fans are happy to curate the art the like and will always do a better work , and for free. The only thing that might make sense is if they distributed an original instead of a copy, i.e. a different movie to every user, a different song etc. Copyright is just not compatible with the digital world, it…

> people are not going to pay for what they can always get at better quality for $0 Sure, but I already pay Netflix. If I had to pay a bit more and it included everything that's on Popcorn Time, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Then download the torrent and tip the producer somehow. Why pay for another service that is clearly not needed? I actually thought someone should have already built a startup selling 'virtual tickets'.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#75

Post by donut2d »

rhino369 wrote: post #37
lvs wrote: post #12

There would be less incentive toward this kind of piracy if content producers and distributors could get their collective acts together with more liberal licensing. Popcorn Time is winning because it's easier to use and find content than any pay service. Like anything, you compete by making a better product/service -- not by complaining that your competitors are unfair. Of course, they are certainly unfair here, but…

Amazon Instant and iTunes work pretty well and have almost anything that Popcorn Time has. I really doubt people are doing Popcorn time because it is easier. Not paying anything is a huge feature.

Amazon Instant Video on PS3 and on my Vizio is pretty bad. Slow, unresponsive interface, very difficult to accurately skip ahead, not a great selection. Netflix does a great job interface wise, way better than Amazon Instant Video.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#77

Post by madez »

xnull6guest wrote: post #68
madez wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Popcorn Time is _not_ the same thing, as I've described in my previous comment. You seem not to read very well.

> Popcorn Time is at its heart just a torrent client using streamed torrent download to pipe the result into a media player. > You can just feed a torrent file or a magnet link into Popcorn Time and it will play. This is what I intended to mean by 'the same thing'. Can you expound on technical reasons why it is different in such a way that advertising is not possible or is not likely?

The described technology is independent of the source of the torrent. Their relation is similiar to the relationship between a program and an OS. Yes, the OS permits the usage of the program but the OS is not responsible in any way for the program nor does it imply that the OS wants to make money off the profits of the program.

The moment Popcorn Time adds Ads, there will be a fork without them.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#78

Post by forrestthewoods »

lvs wrote: post #12

There would be less incentive toward this kind of piracy if content producers and distributors could get their collective acts together with more liberal licensing. Popcorn Time is winning because it's easier to use and find content than any pay service. Like anything, you compete by making a better product/service -- not by complaining that your competitors are unfair. Of course, they are certainly unfair here, but…

I call bullshit. Absolute bullshit.

If I gave you a credit card that gave you unlimited access to digital content you probably wouldn't be complaining. Certainly not if you live in the US or much of Europe.

If you have a $69 AppleTV then iTunes is a spectacular user experience. Search for almost anything you want and hit play. If it didn't cost $5 to rent a movie it's superior to torrents.

This is where someone chimes in with something snarky related to offline viewing (airplane) or not living in the US and having access to less comments. This is true. It's also largely irrelevant. If you think those are the primary reasons users torrent then I'd challenge you to back it up with statistics.

For Americans in particular the primary reason to pirate content these days is selfish greed.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#79

Post by xnull6guest »

madez wrote: post #77
xnull6guest wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Popcorn Time is at its heart just a torrent client using streamed torrent download to pipe the result into a media player. > You can just feed a torrent file or a magnet link into Popcorn Time and it will play. This is what I intended to mean by 'the same thing'. Can you expound on technical reasons why it is different in such a way that advertising is not possible or is not likely?

The described technology is independent of the source of the torrent. Their relation is similiar to the relationship between a program and an OS. Yes, the OS permits the usage of the program but the OS is not responsible in any way for the program nor does it imply that the OS wants to make money off the profits of the program. The moment Popcorn Time adds Ads, there will be a fork without them.

> The described technology is independent of the source of the torrent.

This also applies to bittorrent.

> The moment Popcorn Time adds Ads, there will be a fork without them.

I understand what you mean. You're thinking I'm claiming the ads would go inside the client? If you look up the chain of conversation, I said that the ads would go on the website that hosts the magnets/torrents.

We see the same thing with bittorrent. Ad free clients. Ad bannered websites. We should expect the same with popcorn time websites.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#80

Post by xasos »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #78
lvs wrote: post #12

There would be less incentive toward this kind of piracy if content producers and distributors could get their collective acts together with more liberal licensing. Popcorn Time is winning because it's easier to use and find content than any pay service. Like anything, you compete by making a better product/service -- not by complaining that your competitors are unfair. Of course, they are certainly unfair here, but…

I call bullshit. Absolute bullshit. If I gave you a credit card that gave you unlimited access to digital content you probably wouldn't be complaining. Certainly not if you live in the US or much of Europe. If you have a $69 AppleTV then iTunes is a spectacular user experience. Search for almost anything you want and hit play. If it didn't cost $5 to rent a movie it's superior to torrents. This is where someone chime…

Wow, that was harsh.

Why is the rationale for Americans pirating 'selfish greed'? People, in general, pirate because it's free and really, really easy.

There are many cases where services like Spotify and Netflix have reduced piracy. People are lazy, and if you can make it easier and more seamless than pirating, most people won't mind shelling out a couple of bucks a month for paid service.

http://www.slashgear.com/netflix-piracy-rate-goes-down-when-... http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/04/21/canadian-tech-leader...

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