Popcorn Time: the ‘Netflix for piracy’ that refuses to die – The Verge

Popcorn Time’s best-known app comes back to life

2016-02-26T10:42:19-05:00

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Popcorntime.io, probably the most popular iteration of slippery movie piracy app Popcorn Time, is back - sort of. Earlier this week, part of the team apparently behind popcorntime.io announced a comeback, four months after being shut down and hit with a lawsuit from the MPAA. Like its predecessor, the new service offers sleek streaming-video apps that play a large selection of pirated movies, all distributed via Bittorrent. But it's being launched at the new popcorntime.sh domain with a more visible awareness of the legal risks its developers are taking.

As noted by Torrent Freak, signs of the new Popcorn Time started popping up earlier thi …

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The Pirate Bay now lets you stream torrents from your browser

2016-02-08T04:49:34-05:00

The best-known torrent site in the world now streams pirated content too. The Pirate Bay has added support for Torrents Time, a plugin that lets users stream torrents directly inside their browser. There's no need to download the torrent itself, or a BitTorrent client, or even the actual content - then lets the whole process run inside Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Chrome, on either Windows or OS X. The system is currently in beta, and has all the usual problems of pirated torrents (namely bad image quality and the need to wait for peers to seed the content), but it's still an extremely simple system.

Torrents Time can be added to any site

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The most popular Popcorn Time fork has been shut down

2015-10-26T05:44:35-04:00

Is Popcorn Time's wild run coming to an end? One of the two biggest versions of the illegal streaming service, popcorntime.io, was reportedly shut down for good last week after a dispute between developers. The website itself is unavailable, the app no longer works, and an official Twitter account announced last Friday (in what it described as "probably" its last message) that users should instead download Butter, a legal version of the app.

Earlier last week, a number of popcorntime.io's core developers left the project, fearing that the proposed inclusion of a paid anonymizing VPN service would lead to legal trouble. (Many people involved …

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A brief history of Popcorn Time, the piracy service everyone’s watching

2015-10-23T12:00:49-04:00

Most of us think of Netflix when we think of streaming movies and TV shows, but over the past year and a half, a competitor has emerged: one that's almost as easy to use, doesn't charge a thing, and - you guessed it - steals everything it streams. That new service is called Popcorn Time, and it's become known as the "Netflix for pirates."

Popcorn Time can be installed on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android, and it basically looks like an iTunes library that's been filled with every film imaginable (including those that haven't been released yet). You just choose what you want to watch, and click play - it's pretty much that simple.

What' …

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Piracy service Popcorn Time now has a legal alternative called Butter

2015-10-23T10:29:16-04:00

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One of the many versions of popular piracy service Popcorn Time has now spawned what its creators promise will be a totally legal version of the technology. Butter, announced today, is a version of Popcorn Time "stripped down of the parts that made people wary" - namely, the parts that let users stream illegally downloaded BitTorrent films in a Netflix-style interface. Effectively, it's a copy of the service's basic infrastructure, separated from its sketchier counterpart to make developers more comfortable experimenting with it.

Popcorn Time isn't a service as much as an idea: a simple tool that hides the messy aspects of finding and downl …

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Popcorn Time for the web returns with a new developer

2015-10-21T15:43:12-04:00

A web version of the piracy app Popcorn Time has been revived for the second time in about 24 hours. The site, called Browser Popcorn, has now moved over to yet another new domain, following the shutdown of its original two domains in the wake of legal pressure.

The site has switched hosts to avoid a takedown

Browser Popcorn is also being taken over by a new developer. The site's creator, a 15-year-old named Milan Kragujevic, tells The Verge in an email that he's handed Browser Popcorn over to a "close friend for a time being until the dust settles, maybe permanently." Kragujevic says that he'll remain involved with the site's development, b …

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Popcorn Time for the web shuts down

2015-10-20T15:52:41-04:00

A version of Popcorn Time built for the web is shutting down after just a couple of days online. Browser Popcorn launched this weekend as a way to stream pirated movies and TV shows from the web, and it began receiving quite a bit of attention last night. Since then, the site's owner, who has identified himself as a 15-year-old named Milan Kragujevic, says he's received a cease and desist order from the MPAA; the MPAA is also said to have gone after his domain registrar and hosting provider, leading Kragujevic to switch the site from one domain to another earlier today. Despite Kragujevic's quick reaction to keep the service online as recent …

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Popcorn Time for the web moves domain after apparent MPAA shutdown

2015-10-20T13:01:56-04:00

The simple new version of Popcorn Time built for the web has moved to a new domain after having its original site shut down. The site was launched over the weekend and allows visitors to easily browse and stream pirated movies and TV shows, but its presence on the web seems to have made it a big target. After gaining attention last night, the original site, called Browser Popcorn, has been pulled and replaced with a message blaming the MPAA for its removal. "Browser Popcorn has been taken down by the E.V.I.L. money-grabbing shitlords of America, The Motion Picture Association of Murica [sic]," writes the site's creator, apparently a 15-year-o …

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Popcorn Time for your browser makes illegal movie streaming even easier

2015-10-19T18:59:25-04:00

A Popcorn Time developer has made it easier than ever before to stream pirated movies and TV shows by placing the streaming service directly in your browser. Popcorn Time, which operates like Netflix but via pirated media streams from torrent sites, was previously only available as a desktop and Android mobile app users had to download. Now you can use Popcorn Time by venturing over to browserpopcorn.xyz, no login required. The website builds on previous attempts to create a browser-based torrent service, like Popcorn In Your Browser, that ultimately failed because they relied on third party services to function.

The browser version was creat …

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Popcorn Time’s creator wanted to make a streaming service for his mom

2015-09-10T04:25:53-04:00

The biggest advantage of illegal streaming service Popcorn Time is arguably that it's easy to use. The app - which is so influential that Netflix considers it a serious competitor - employs the same BitTorrent protocols that have been used to pirate movies and TV shows for years, but wraps them in a sleek user interface, minimizing confusion and lending the enterprise an air of legitimacy. It's perhaps no surprise, then, that Popcorn Time's creator - an Argentinian designer and programmer named Federico Abad - built the software with his mother in mind.

In a fantastic interview with Abad by Norwegian paper Dagens Naeringsliv (Google Transla …

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