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UK High Court Orders Block On Popcorn Time
An anonymous reader writes: Five ISPs have been given orders by the UK High Court to restrict access to sites offering downloads of popular movie streaming service Popcorn Time – a move which follows complaints from the Motion Picture Association referring to the software's use as a platform for viewing pirated content. According to the new regulation, Virgin, BT, Sky, EE and TalkTalk are now required to block access to popcorntime.io, flixtor.me, popcorntime.se and isoplex.isohunt.to – all sites which link to Popcorn Time downloads. In the High Court order, Justice Birss cites under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, that the 'Popcorn Time application is used in order to watch pirated content on the internet.' Popcorn Time operates as a BitTorrent client, despite its slick user interface, and is used mainly for illegal content – although, as its supporters argue, it is also a handy tool for streaming public domain films. It is unclear how successful the ban will be – the blocked sites are not the only places to find Popcorn Time online. Additionally, at ISP level, it will be challenging to monitor as there is not a single version or developer to seek out, with the code available as open source.
http://gizmodo.com/after-nearl...
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/...
http://www.theverge.com/2015/4...
The judgment is Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & Ors v Sky UK Ltd & Ors [2015] EWHC 1082 (Ch)
The legislation is here
Source code is here
License is GPL3 or later.
It's reputation is Netflix for pirates.
It's great, slick, intuitive interface, great selection of mostly good quality torrents.
It is so slick I would wager a lot of users have no idea it is basically a bitorrent client that downloads a copy of the movie to your HDD and shares it. It looks very professional. It looks like a Netflix variation, much like my smart TVs and Bluray players all have a different Netflix interface. It has a logo that looks polished and very commercial. Their forums are a disaster for trying to find information when something doesn't work right. Earlier in the year they changed cover providers and the temporary bugfix was posted in a comment (not stickied or prominent in any way) and was a bitch to find as it wasn't repeated in any other thread on the topic.
It looks legitimate enough that at least two people I know were astounded when they found out they were 'gasp!' pirating movies 'gasp!' I work on most of my friends computers although I don't work in the industry.
I occasionally find a specific file that just won't work properly or dies in the middle, but it mostly just works.
Series updates can be spotty, Some shows can be weeks behind but others seem to update within hours of broadcast.
A quick mention when you open it that it may not comply with laws in your region that nobody seems to notice. It's great for stuff that isn't on Netflix.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable