Reminds me of the old Gabe Newell (Valve founder) quote:
"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem... If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
Being from New Zealand, it hits us kiwis hard. No Netflix. No Hulu. Even when Cartoon Network uploads to YouTube their videos are often unavailable in my country.
So the next best thing is piracy. You can piss around with DNS settings or wait for the DVDs to be available, but piracy is just so much more convenient.
This quote conveniently leaves out that the pirate's product doesn't cost the end user any money. When would the pirate's service not be more valuable?
As an anecdote I have resorted to pirating Rick and Morty. I love the show, it's amazing really. If you haven't go watch it now. You might think that I am selfish a-hole who wants to rob the creators of one of my favourite shows of their income, but that's not the case. I am simply not located in the right part of the world. Not being an American is a huge hassel when it comes to digital content consumption.
I am willing to pay, nay I would love to pay, for Rick and Morty, but from my research I have found no way, short of VPN + US credit card, to buy a season pass. So you have potential customers who have to resort to piracy because the industry has no interest in distributing to their region. Am I going to buy Rick and Morty when it eventually comes out in Sweden? Not very likely as I will already have watched all episodes.
The same holds true for The Walking Dead, thankfully HBO has started releasing episodes of Game of Thrones the same day in Sweden as in the US and I can and am paying for that.
Also cinemas are really becoming hostile. I have to subject my bag to inspection. I also risk arrest every time I take phone out. They also ask me to leave my laptop at reception...
That seems like an odd statement considering that one of the biggest draws of Steam is the cheap prices and sales. I find it unlikely that there would be so many $5 games were they not facing competition from the pirates.
Ironically enough it's Steam that sometimes region locks games. Take the recent Thief 4 release that was region locked in Europe much to the dismay of fans who we're artificially prevented from even playing pre-order copies while the US Steam had no such restriction.
I hate that quote. I don't think it's a service problem or pricing problem at all. The problem is that humans are incredibly selfish. However Valve has very cleverly come up with a service and pricing solution to that problem.
I can understand why movie studios and copyright holders in the US would be worried, Popcorn Time lets you watch movies for free much like a traditional streaming service like Netflix offers. However, as an Australian, I see it very differently.
In Australia there is nothing that comes anywhere near as close as Netflix. We have cable TV in the form of Foxtel, but the price is about $110 AUD per month to get the good movie channels and channels with popular shows on them. Then we have the up and coming Fetch TV service which offers a somewhat good alternative to cable, but nothing like Netflix or Popcorn Time does. There is no online service like Netflix in Australia.
Sure, the price point is one thing, but I think Spotify has shown that an all you can eat premium service at a decent price can help reduce piracy. When Spotify launched in Australia a little while ago, I stopped downloading music because Spotify was faster and more convenient, many of my friends did the same.
Americans have a good range of choice when it comes to legal options for movies and TV shows. People in Australia, New Zealand and other countries, not so much and this is why torrents and applications like Popcorn Time will continue to be the best alternative until content licencing for music and movies/tv is sorted.
You can quite easily purchase Netflix in Australia if you feel bad about piracy, and also dislike the options available to Australians. I'm unsure on the legality (probably a grey area), but the point is you can pay money and support the service. (Edit: using a DNS service like Getflix.)
I live in Australia too and signed up for Netflix a few months ago. It's a bit of a hassle to signup and requires the use of a paid service to handle the DNS/location checks, but it does work very well.
I completely agree with you on Spotify, though it is annoying to see that the complete catalog isn't available to an Australian account. I've considered starting over with a US-based account using gift cards, but haven't tried it yet.
Is Spotify cost prohibitive with Australian mobile data plans though? I know with the amount of music I listen to, my plan would be quickly reached if I swapped to Spotify instead of my local music.
Also, the network availability (especially on train networks) where I'm generally listening to music probably means that my song is going to cut out.
Around the house, Spotify is great (or an alternative like the just launched iTunes Radio) but out and about I still think there's a big market for local music files.
It's based on libtorrent (C++), Golang, and Python.
The major difference is that since it's based on libtorrent, it has good performance (even on low end CPUs like the RPi) and tries _very_ hard not to weaken the swarm too much (even though it uses sequential downloading).
So this means it runs on Mac, Linux, Windows and even Android and Raspberry Pi (OpenELEC).
>“We don’t host anything, and none of the developers makes any money. There are no ads, no premium accounts, and no subscription fees or anything like that. It’s an experiment to learn and share.”
Famous last words. The Pirate Bay has made the same defense, but companies and law enforcement generally don't seem to care.
I would be shocked if they aren't sued or even prosecuted within the next year or 2. Not that that's a good thing, just that being this open and carefree about it will probably come to bite them in the ass later.
Looks like it's basically a mashup of the YFTY torrents api, a few other APIs for subtitles/metadata, and the peerflix nodejs lib for streaming the torrents. Done in node-webkit. The first commit was only 20 days ago, according to github (could have rebuilt history of course), and the most recent 3 hrs ago at time of writing. Seems pretty active.
It looks like "they're watching you" through Google Universal Analytics[0]. Not sure if that's something to be concerned about.
Their first commit on GitHub may only have been 20 days ago, but they certainly started working well before that. Their initial commit had a lot in it.
Why can't I pay to have legally something like this? I want it!
I'm a Linux only user. What do I have right now? Well, Flash player + outdated DRM technology (HAL is been dead for a while, Adobe don't care) or play with Wine to run software that the vendor won't support in Linux.
And after tackling the outdated DRM issue with flash and paying for a movie stream in Google Play, the best I can get is 480p. Really?
I realize this is an open source project, but I would steer far clear of contributing any code to it. This app is no different than Napster. From a civil perspective, its creators will be found liable for contributory infringement. But that's just the beginning. They will also likely soon experience a paramilitary style Kim Dotcom-esque raid on their homes and offices, where they will be arrested and face decades in prison.
I am not sure what the point of releasing this app and making it accessible in the US is. The FBI serves at the pleasure of large US corporations, and on their request will turn these guys into cannon fodder.
"[torrenting] isn’t necessarily safe unless you’re using a virtual private network to mask your whereabouts."
I find it really frustrating that TIME can publish such incorrect information that could directly lead to the detriment of its readers. I've also seen a couple people in HN saying a VPN is the "safe" way to torrent. Unless you're sure a VPN service won't comply with subpoenas or you've paid in bitcoin, it's not safer than not using one.
I would really love if they offered a "bitcoin payment" option where the studios who own the rights to a film can opt to get paid. That way all the studio would have to do is set up a bitcoin wallet and the developers would publish the wallet associated with a movie so that people consuming music can voluntarily pay for what they consume.
Legally, most studios may not be able to take advantage of such a payment option because of arcane licensing contract clauses, but most indie filmmakers without such a burden could.
Ideally such a feature would come with some sort of agreement that a studio absolves its right to pursue legal action upon payment of some reasonable amount (like $2-$4 for a movie and $1-$2 for a tv show).
> “We don’t host anything, and none of the developers makes any money.
That has not posed a problem for those going after others in the past.
As soon as a large enough entity takes notice they'll run, either because there is a case to answer or because they can't afford the legal team required to prove there is not a case to answer.
They are not located in USA (nor UK, which seems to be very servant). In Europe, they could have problem if they were making money off this service. I doubt it's more strict in South America. The worst that could happen in my opinion is that someone will assfuck ICANN and they will seize the domain somehow.
Couldn't the same be said for open source torrent clients/libs which are fairly popular? I don't see anyone going after those, even though they also don't have money for legal teams.
I've tried it a few times recently, and its pretty awesome.
The takeaway I have from this is that if hollywood chose to embrace this sort of thing, they would solve distribution costs (seed vs host). Their cost will be contained to just marketing and production. Be gone with the archaic contracts and let people get the content when they want it in a way that makes sense for everyone.
Does anyone know how it works if they don't host any data? In order to stream a movie from a torrent, you'd need to download chunks of the video file sequentially started at the beginning in order to buffer and stream it. I thought BitTorrent required chunks to be downloaded in a random order.
On a related note, what's the story behind MovieTube[1]? It streams many movies that are still in theaters. I can't find out anything about it, but word about it is making its way around my neighborhood and I'm telling people it's not wise to use it.
So it looks like the key API that Popcorn Time uses is YTS. So I guess that will be the target of any attempts to disrupt the service.
The entertainment industry is going to have to fight hard to remove geo-locking, content siloing by producer, and other barriers to consuming their service in the coming years to catch up with piracy's ease of use. If there's no barrier to entry for the laymen to pirate then it will get worse for the producers.
In my limited experience it seems that torrent clients were all trying to migrate towards this and be a media browser first, torrent client second. The end result was user flight to the next upcoming torrent client.
So was this a torrent client to start with?
For the end user how does this compare to websites like stream-tv.me which aggregate links to tv shows? Those links lead to generally poor resolution shows, but not unwatchable. TV resolution with some HD resolution. Have there been cases where content providers go after the users of those sites? (I have a friend who uses them...)
Zona seems superior. Not only they let you pick among many different torrents for a particular movie, they also let you view TV Shows, TV channels and listen to music.
Edit: I've just tried Popcorn Time, and it looks like it stutters on 1080p video...
The eternal question which makes piracy unsuitable and complicated for me: what about subtitles? As soon as you need to download it separately it's a no go. It should be one click to activate a perfectly synced subtitle in at least English.
[+] [-] kosei|12 years ago|reply
"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem... If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
[+] [-] pippy|12 years ago|reply
So the next best thing is piracy. You can piss around with DNS settings or wait for the DVDs to be available, but piracy is just so much more convenient.
[+] [-] kevinchen|12 years ago|reply
That is all.
[+] [-] nlawalker|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elyrly|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] K0nserv|12 years ago|reply
I am willing to pay, nay I would love to pay, for Rick and Morty, but from my research I have found no way, short of VPN + US credit card, to buy a season pass. So you have potential customers who have to resort to piracy because the industry has no interest in distributing to their region. Am I going to buy Rick and Morty when it eventually comes out in Sweden? Not very likely as I will already have watched all episodes.
The same holds true for The Walking Dead, thankfully HBO has started releasing episodes of Game of Thrones the same day in Sweden as in the US and I can and am paying for that.
[+] [-] altero|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiggy2011|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Springtime|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greyskull|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] forrestthewoods|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DigitalSea|12 years ago|reply
In Australia there is nothing that comes anywhere near as close as Netflix. We have cable TV in the form of Foxtel, but the price is about $110 AUD per month to get the good movie channels and channels with popular shows on them. Then we have the up and coming Fetch TV service which offers a somewhat good alternative to cable, but nothing like Netflix or Popcorn Time does. There is no online service like Netflix in Australia.
Sure, the price point is one thing, but I think Spotify has shown that an all you can eat premium service at a decent price can help reduce piracy. When Spotify launched in Australia a little while ago, I stopped downloading music because Spotify was faster and more convenient, many of my friends did the same.
Americans have a good range of choice when it comes to legal options for movies and TV shows. People in Australia, New Zealand and other countries, not so much and this is why torrents and applications like Popcorn Time will continue to be the best alternative until content licencing for music and movies/tv is sorted.
[+] [-] interpol_p|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajtaylor|12 years ago|reply
I completely agree with you on Spotify, though it is annoying to see that the complete catalog isn't available to an Australian account. I've considered starting over with a US-based account using gift cards, but haven't tried it yet.
[+] [-] joshschreuder|12 years ago|reply
Also, the network availability (especially on train networks) where I'm generally listening to music probably means that my song is going to cut out.
Around the house, Spotify is great (or an alternative like the just launched iTunes Radio) but out and about I still think there's a big market for local music files.
[+] [-] adamnemecek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kilian|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sroerick|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steeve|12 years ago|reply
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174736
It's based on libtorrent (C++), Golang, and Python.
The major difference is that since it's based on libtorrent, it has good performance (even on low end CPUs like the RPi) and tries _very_ hard not to weaken the swarm too much (even though it uses sequential downloading).
So this means it runs on Mac, Linux, Windows and even Android and Raspberry Pi (OpenELEC).
[+] [-] felipebueno|12 years ago|reply
Thank you for this awesome project. Can't wait to see it running on my RPi. =)
[+] [-] meowface|12 years ago|reply
Famous last words. The Pirate Bay has made the same defense, but companies and law enforcement generally don't seem to care.
I would be shocked if they aren't sued or even prosecuted within the next year or 2. Not that that's a good thing, just that being this open and carefree about it will probably come to bite them in the ass later.
[+] [-] rattray|12 years ago|reply
It looks like "they're watching you" through Google Universal Analytics[0]. Not sure if that's something to be concerned about.
Sources:
https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app
https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app/blob/master/pack...
[0] https://github.com/peaksandpies/universal-analytics
[+] [-] tarblog|12 years ago|reply
https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app/commit/342c94a2a...
[+] [-] e12e|12 years ago|reply
https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/
[+] [-] reidrac|12 years ago|reply
I'm a Linux only user. What do I have right now? Well, Flash player + outdated DRM technology (HAL is been dead for a while, Adobe don't care) or play with Wine to run software that the vendor won't support in Linux.
And after tackling the outdated DRM issue with flash and paying for a movie stream in Google Play, the best I can get is 480p. Really?
Seriously. Make it happen. Take my money.
[+] [-] downandout|12 years ago|reply
I am not sure what the point of releasing this app and making it accessible in the US is. The FBI serves at the pleasure of large US corporations, and on their request will turn these guys into cannon fodder.
[+] [-] ddod|12 years ago|reply
I find it really frustrating that TIME can publish such incorrect information that could directly lead to the detriment of its readers. I've also seen a couple people in HN saying a VPN is the "safe" way to torrent. Unless you're sure a VPN service won't comply with subpoenas or you've paid in bitcoin, it's not safer than not using one.
[+] [-] malandrew|12 years ago|reply
Legally, most studios may not be able to take advantage of such a payment option because of arcane licensing contract clauses, but most indie filmmakers without such a burden could.
Ideally such a feature would come with some sort of agreement that a studio absolves its right to pursue legal action upon payment of some reasonable amount (like $2-$4 for a movie and $1-$2 for a tv show).
[+] [-] dspillett|12 years ago|reply
Really? This seems somewhat naive to me...
> “We don’t host anything, and none of the developers makes any money.
That has not posed a problem for those going after others in the past.
As soon as a large enough entity takes notice they'll run, either because there is a case to answer or because they can't afford the legal team required to prove there is not a case to answer.
[+] [-] rplnt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikolak|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Duhck|12 years ago|reply
The takeaway I have from this is that if hollywood chose to embrace this sort of thing, they would solve distribution costs (seed vs host). Their cost will be contained to just marketing and production. Be gone with the archaic contracts and let people get the content when they want it in a way that makes sense for everyone.
[+] [-] psychometry|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mountaineer|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.youtubeonfire.com/
[+] [-] spyder|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arg01|12 years ago|reply
The entertainment industry is going to have to fight hard to remove geo-locking, content siloing by producer, and other barriers to consuming their service in the coming years to catch up with piracy's ease of use. If there's no barrier to entry for the laymen to pirate then it will get worse for the producers.
[+] [-] __pThrow|12 years ago|reply
So was this a torrent client to start with?
For the end user how does this compare to websites like stream-tv.me which aggregate links to tv shows? Those links lead to generally poor resolution shows, but not unwatchable. TV resolution with some HD resolution. Have there been cases where content providers go after the users of those sites? (I have a friend who uses them...)
[+] [-] davexunit|12 years ago|reply
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy
[+] [-] usaphp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikevm|12 years ago|reply
Edit: I've just tried Popcorn Time, and it looks like it stutters on 1080p video...
[+] [-] frakkingcylons|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dav-|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hierro|12 years ago|reply