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.

Comments

I hadn't heard of PopcornTime until now...

[rHBa]

...I think I'll fire up the SOCKS tunnel and check it out.

Re:I hadn't heard of PopcornTime until now...

[pslytely psycho]

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.

While we're on the topic... Grooveshark

[QuasiSteve]

http://gizmodo.com/after-nearl...
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/...
http://www.theverge.com/2015/4...

When are these idiots going to learn?

[popo]

The Internet is a big place. Restricting access to a few sites is effectively useless.

Re:When are these idiots going to learn?

[pslytely psycho]

"the space between the ears of media executives, their lawyers, and the judges and lawmakers in their pockets is bigger.. even more vast than the empiness of space itself."

So their heads are like the Tardis....this explains a lot. Too bad it wasn't filled with intelligence instead of being a vast desert.

Someone going to link one here?

[Chrisq]

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

Link here. Better still link - Facebook - Twitter - Tumblr... and see if the ISPs dare to block these

Re:Someone going to link one here?

[Neil_Brown]

Facebook - Twitter - Tumblr... and see if the ISPs dare to block these

It would be interesting to see what would happen. Injunctions under s97A can be imposed on "service providers", which is defined very broadly, as " any person providing an information society service", so not just telcos.

My feeling is that the copyright industry would attempt to secure injunctions against Facebook, Twitter and so on, if they had entities in the jurisdiction. Both Twitter and Facebook do, as both have offices in London. However, they are not the entities providing the services, so it would be interesting to see how a court might rule — if the European Court's approach of Google Spain was followed, their proximity to the service provision might be sufficient to bring them within scope...

Re:Someone going to link one here?

[AmiMoJo]

I use a VPN for all internet access now, to block Virgin Media's blocks and their spying. The VPN provider is based in another European country, so presumably this legislation would be unable to force them to block any sites. Their local laws don't allow VPN providers to be forced to do blocking, although ISPs in that country are currently under legal assault by the copyright industry.

Re:Someone going to link one here?

[Neil_Brown]

The VPN provider is based in another European country, so presumably this legislation would be unable to force them to block any sites.

This can perhaps be unpacked a little:

• Does the UK legislation permit a court to injunct a VPN provider?
• If so, could an injunction be obtained in the UK against a provider based overseas?
• Does the UK legislation permit a court to injuct a UK-based ISP (Virgin Media) to block access to a VPN endpoint?

My gut feeling would be that, yes, a VPN provider would probably be a "service provider" for the purposes of s97A. Could an injunction be obtained in the UK against a provider overseas? Not my area of expertise, but I suspect that the copyright industry would attempt to claim that the infringement takes place in the UK, and you connect to the VPN from the UK, so the UK does have jurisdiction. I don't know whether that would succeed and, even an injunction were granted, whether it would be easy to actually enforce it before the courts of whatever country from which your VPN service is provided — although, noting that it's "another European country", that would probably be easier than if it were somewhere remote.

Could VM be ordered to block access to a particular VPN service? In principle, yes, as the use of a VPN or not would seem to be irrelevant to the test:

The High Court ... shall have power to grant an injunction against a service provider, where that service provider has actual knowledge of another person using their service to infringe copyright.

If the "actual knowledge" requirement can be made out in respect of one connection, routing the same data via a different path once it exits the ISP's service would not seem to make a difference. However, an injunction against a VPN provider where there is clear non-infringing use would seem disproportionate — which probably means that a mainstream VPN service, used by corporates, is more likely to survive than a service named "usethisvpntoinfringecopyright" or the like.

But I could be wrong, of course.

Re:Someone going to link one here?

[Neil_Brown]

does a service that is used to enhance privacy and block spying have enough non-copyright-infringing uses to make a block disproportionate.

Until such a case goes to court, it's anyone's guess, really. Where the service encourages infringement, or "authorises" it, I suspect that it would be easier to make a case for blocking than if it were entirely neutral, even if it was used for entirely lawful activities too.

Finally an honest assessment in the /. description

[NaCh0]

A public domain movie can be watched technically but how many public domain movies are in the top 100 most watched list?

Free software is awesome. Too bad the same can't be said for free music/movies.

Anybody remember?

[Anonymous Coward]

Back when the IWF came around, "this is the only thing we'll ever block, honest". Then it was porn in general, for everybody. Then it was torrent sites. Oh, and the anarchist's handbook got targeted too. Now this. What's next?

The UK is building their own digital Hadrian's wall at the behest of several special interest groups. How long before the "pro-EU" lobby becomes a big enough interest group to suppress "eurosceptic" views? Signs are, closer than you think.

Re:Anybody remember?

[Anonymous Coward]

Euroskeptic views SHOULD be suppressed. Anyone opposed to the EU should be arrested and silenced. People don't know how good they have it. I'd take prosperity and safety over "freedom" anytime. And so should you. If you're not smart enough to know what's good for you, let better people decide it and shut up.

Re:Anybody remember?

[nukenerd]

No, I think he's being funny. Mod GP funny, someone, please.

Judgment and legislation

[Neil_Brown]

The judgment is Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & Ors v Sky UK Ltd & Ors [2015] EWHC 1082 (Ch)

The legislation is here

Pretty slick application

[Anonymous Coward]

I hadn't heard of Popcorn Time until very recently, although I'm living in Thailand and my standard means of obtaining digital media of any sort is piracy.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to use uTorrent or Deluge plus eztv.ch, yts.to, kickass.to, and/or the Pirate Bay to get just about anything that I want. From very old TV series to brand new movies (sometime BEFORE theatrical release) to PC games to eBooks, I almost never get a desire to search for something and then fail to find it.

BUT, Popcorn Time puts that (at least the TV and movies aspects) into an interface that my mother or grandmother could easily use. I would recommend it to my family and/or remote desktop install it for them, but they live in the US so threatening letters from ISPs (and worse) seem like more of a risk than they are here in piracy hotspot SE Asia. A VPN or other solution might take care of those concerns, but on the other hand it would also detract from the ease of use, which is the main attraction of Popcorn Time.

If you're savvy enough to know and manage those risks (or if you live in a place where they aren't a concern), Popcorn Time is well worth checking out. Just a couple caveats:
* Go for popcorntime.io, not the other fork (popcorn-time.se or "Time4Popcorn"). The .io one is 100% clean in my experience, but I hear the others have adware/malware.
* Biggest downside of Popcorn Time in my opinion is that it has no option to seed beyond the duration of the time that you are streaming/watching the videos. I'd happily designate a 1-2TB drive or partition to Popcorn Time / torrent cache and allow PT to seed up to a target ratio or beyond if I'm a critical seeder of the file. I set up PT to keep its cache persistent so I can let uTorrent manage the seeding, but it is a by-hand multi step process to import PT stuff into uTorrent because PT puts everything into subfolders created with the filename of the torrents it downloads (which are a long hash of alphanumeric characters). If PT streamlines that process or just implements better seeding, I'll switch to it as my primary means of video torrenting.

Re:Pretty slick application

[thegarbz]

A VPN or other solution might take care of those concerns, but on the other hand it would also detract from the ease of use, which is the main attraction of Popcorn Time.

You mean like clicking the little red lock on the top of the popcorn time window and that's it?

Even with the VPN side of things they have you covered. Popcorn time includes a VPN service which you can access natively from the client. I'm not sure about the quality of the service itself but for ease of use it looks like it can't be beat.

Where's the source code?

[TheManInTheMoon]

I, like many others, had not heard of Popcorn Time before it was so successfully advertised by the British Legal system. I now wonder where the source code is hosted, and under which open source licence.

Re:Where's the source code?

[Dr_Barnowl]

Source code is here

License is GPL3 or later.

Re:Never heard of this... downloading

[infolation]

I would really like to be in court to hear a Judge with a posh educated English accent say the words:

"Popcorn Time"

Easily circumvented

[mrbester]

Change DNS to OpenDNS, avoiding resolution by ISP.

Re:And YouTube?

[Opportunist]

Banning YouTube might not be easy. Normal people are using it.

Re:And YouTube?

[Opportunist]

So if you want to protect something from your government, get your coworkers, your neighbors, your parents and every other "normal" person you might know to use it heavily.

Re:Why are they trying to get sites blocked?

[thegarbz]

Illegal in what country?

Childporn is a bit different due to it being almost universally illegal and Interpol are happy to organise global raids on providers. But Popcorn Time? It's nothing more than a bittorrent client + IMDB client bolted together with a built in media player. It's open source and no more or less legal than utorrent or any other bittorrent client. My guess is if they get sent a take down notice they'll send back a photo of their extended middle finger.