For regular, everyday people, the go-to TV and movie-watching service is Netflix. But, for techies who stay in the know and refuse to comply to “the system” by paying that $8/month fee for entertainment, the alternative was Popcorn Time.
Popcorn Time was a free, open source media player that was available on a variety of platforms. It was created by an anonymous group of developers from Argentina and used the bittorrent protocol to stream content. These developers believed that piracy was a problem created by the entertainment industry, an industry that fights against innovation in order to continue profiting from its antique economic model.
Popcorn Time received mass media attention, particularly because it was so easy to use and its legality was so uncertain. Even though the developers claimed on their website that the project was legal (they checked four times!), the service reached its demise on March 14th, when Kim Dotcom’s Mega.co.nz, the host location of the public download for Popcorn time, removed the file.
Popcorn Time’s developers left some parting words on the service’s website: “We became the underdog that would fight for the consumer. Some people we respect, some of our heroes spoke wonders of Popcorn Time, which is a lot more than what we wanted to get out of an experiment we threw together in a couple of weeks…“Our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And that’s not a battle we want a place in.”
It may seem as though all is lost for those poor techie pirates out there, but wait! What’s that in the horizon? Another site stepping up to take Popcorn Time’s place? That’s right! According to TorrentFreak, torrent site YTS will be picking up right where Popcorn Time left off by continuing to develop the Netflix-esque streaming project regardless of media/copyright controversy.
YTS developer Jduncanator explained that it may be in a better position to fight off copyright accusations because the project will be built on YTS’s application program interface, which is basically what specifies how some software should interact with each other. In addition, they explained “It’s our vision at YTS that we see through projects like these and that just because they create a little stir in the public, it doesn’t mean they are shut down.”
Users can begin using this service after installing and accessing the project files now available on GitHub. It is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux.
What do you think about Popcorn Time and now YTS’s service? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!