What happened to Popcorn Time?

Remember the popcorn Time? If you are, or have been, an active user of streaming , the Netflix, Amazon Prime Video e balloon play, for example, knows that, before the popularization of legal means, the popcorn Time it was the choice of many people who didn't want or couldn't pay for subscription services to watch their favorite movies and series.

But now, with the rapid rise of streaming and easy, high-quality content, popcorn Time was losing space and nowadays there is almost no talk of conversation circles anymore. Where will the popcorn Time? In this article we will know the history and destiny of the program.

History

O popcorn Time was developed – according to its own creators – “in a few weeks” by a group from Buenos Aires, Argentina, who elected “Pochoclin” (derived from “pochoclo”, which means popcorn in Buenos Aires jargon) as its mascot.

The group believed that piracy was a service problem created by an industry that portrays innovation as a threat to its former value-gathering recipe and also argued that service providers streaming received many restrictions and were forced to provide inconsistent services across countries.

made available for Linux, MacOS, Windows e Android, the program's source code and executable installer was made available on its website for any user to access, download and install the service on their machine; the project was conceived to be free software. Employees also localized the program in 44 languages.

In a matter of a few weeks after its release, the popcorn Time became the service of streaming most popular unofficial media on the Internet, with users spread around the globe and a large library of movies and series that grew more and more thanks to the contributions of its community of participants.

Legality

The legality of the various clients of the popcorn Time matched that of all the other customers of the BitTorrent, plus the additional issues that apply to sites like The Pirate Bay and himself YTS, due to the explicit link to the content of the film.

In the UK, in April 2015, a court order was given to ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to block URLs that provided the software of the Popcorn Time (PTAS) ou “update information sources” (SUI), i.e. pointers to torrent indexing sites. The court found that, unlike the previous cases concerning indexing sites, neither the sites that provide the PTAS nor the SUI could “communicating a work to the public”, since none contained specific information about any specific work.

He considered it completely probable that both the providers of the PTAS as for SUI could be considered “authorizers of acts of violation” on the part of users, but that was not the case that the complainants had raised at the hearing. Instead, they claimed that providers had authorized infringements by content hosting sites, but that claim had not been made.

The judge, however, found that the suppliers of the popcorn Time “clearly knew and intended” that the application was the key means that acquires and induces the user to access the host site and therefore causes infringing communications to take place; and on that basis it had a common project with the operators of the hosted sites and therefore shared a joint responsibility for copyright infringements (joint torture). It was appropriate to order the ISPs block the sites, as provided for in section 97A of the Copyright Designs and Patents ActOf 1988.

On May 20, 2015, the government of Israel blocked all access to official downloads of the popcorn Time, following a lawsuit from its largest cable and satellite providers for copyright infringement. Although download sites were blocked, internet users who still had a copy of the installation file and/or program were not affected, and there were other sharing sites that distributed installation files. Less than a month later, the government reversed the ban.

On August 17, 2015, the Danish website popcorntime.dk it was closed by the Danish police and two arrests were made. The case caused controversy, as the site is not affiliated with the developer teams of popcorn Time, but only distributed information about the service.

As with other customers BitTorrent, the IP addresses of users of the original app or its forks can be easily determined by third parties. In early 2015, many German users of popcorn Time received claims for damages of €815. The high amount was justified by the fact that the app not only downloads but also distributes movies, a fact that not all users knew.

Discontinuation

But even shrouded in so many controversies, the popcorn Time was still going strong, thanks to the help of the user community. That was until March 14, 2014, when the original site of the popcorn Time and the repository GitHub were abruptly removed, with the developers stating that despite the unexpected media coverage the software attracted, they simply wanted to move on. According to them:

“Our experience has put us in the doorway of endless debates about copyright infringement and copyright, legal threats, and the dark machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And this is not a battle in which we want a place.”

It was later revealed by the leaks of Sony that MPAA actually prevented the original developers of the popcorn Time continue to work on the program. At the time, the MPAA considered having “achieved a big win in shutting down Popcorn Time's top developers” through an action that required collaboration on three continents, with the aim of preventing the popcorn Time become a “great threat to piracy”.

The developers claimed that most of its users were from outside the United States and that it was installed in every country on Earth. Even the two who don't have Internet access have users who risk fines, lawsuits, and whatever consequences may come just to be able to watch a recent movie in the comfort of their own home.

Popcorn Time's Legacy

After the original developers discontinued the program, other teams forked the original source code of popcorn Time and continued development independently. These groups continued to use the name "Popcorn Time", but in addition to the project, these “variants” of the program are not associated with the developers of the original application.

Despite this, the developers of popcorn Time original had members who joined the project popcorn Time, and endorsed this initiative as the successor to the old program. Stable versions can still be obtained from the Internet, but the service is no longer supported as it used to be and does not guarantee a good user experience.

However, even if the popcorn Time already be “Breathing Through Appliances” on the Internet, it is undeniable the importance that the service and program had for the future of streaming. O popcorn Time highlighted the need for this type of application for media consumption "on the go". Despite using illegal means to offer movie and series content to its users, the high demand showed other companies and services that offering packages with affordable plans could be a good business strategy.

That's how we saw the bloom of the Netflix and the birth of many other services of streaming current as Amazon Prime Video, HBO Go, balloon play, between others. In addition, high competition increasingly encourages a greater number of services and more varied media catalogs, serving all types of users.

It is interesting to note that even with the decline of illegal movie and series sharing services and the rise of legalized services with affordable prices, the streaming “pirate” has not yet died. O Stremio is a spiritual successor of popcorn Time which is accessible for almost all platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS) and has a very extensive catalog of media content.

The great differential of Stremio in relation to popcorn Time The original feature is that, instead of relying on a single database that searches for users who have the content you want to broadcast, the program has several add-ons that can be installed and customized.

Of course, just as the popcorn Time, Stremio it also suffers from problems with the legality of sharing and transmitting media content, so it never hurts to remember that piracy is a crime! Therefore, always prioritize legal services that offer the content you are looking for.

Thanks to the wide variety of applications and platforms of streaming legal systems that currently exist, there is no reason to resort to the world of illegality. Unless you want to go to court or risk damaging your machine or device with malicious software – a danger still present in pirated streaming programs.

Evolving rapidly, we went from consumers of physical media to digital media and now it looks like the streaming came to dominate the entertainment market. We owe such a revolution to the creation of independent programs like popcorn Time, which encouraged the media industry to seek new consumption options for its users.