Popcorn Time - app to stream torrent movies

I really regret the upgrade past 10.6.8. I didn’t need it and I failed to see that I was about to lose so much functionality. Boooo. Sorry, /OT

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I agree, the quality is superb. Hope I don’t get arrested, but possibly worth.

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I am a bit disappointed this is on boing.

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Why are you disappointed?

Wow! This is really cool. Finally found a use for my Raspberry Pi - for as long as it lasts anyway.

I won’t make any comments on the legality/morality of streaming torrents, and I haven’t tried this out, but I thought I might leave this here:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174736

It’s a streaming bittorrent plugin for XBMC.

EDIT: After taking a look at XBMCtorrent, it kinda looks to me like Popcorn Time is a frontend for Yify Torrents, and streams movies sequentially. It looks like the XBMCtorrent plugin will do the same thing, although not quite as prettily.

If you’re a Windows user, you can also stream with uTorrent.

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Doesn’t seem to run for me. Launch, then nothing. Mac OS X 10.8.5…
Hmm.

I’ve been coming to this site well over 10 years. I come here not just because it has fun tidbits and things to geek out to but because it has a moral compass. I’ve been a supporter of the EFF on issues of things like privacy to the point where I’ve been questioned at length by the TSA many times about the “Come Back With a Warrant” sticker on my laptop…and I get where this blog leans on copyright and the line between what’s fair use and what’s theft.

I also love that this blog has always supported the ideals behind helping to break new artists or find things that others might overlook in art and culture. I also support and believe in a culture that should be allowed to remix and create new works from other works…

But this type of post points to something I cannot support…and that’s blatant theft wrapped up in this blanket of legalese which winks at us saying…we’re just providing this tool for watching torrented copyright protected material…what you do with it is your responsibility. These type of applications or services only make the arguments for the major studios and the labels stronger that people cannot be trusted to do the right thing, that torrenting is just for piracy, and that we need further legislation to protect rights holders. So we can sit here and read post after post defending technologies like torrenting for legitimate uses, but then this type of post sets that argument back.

Not to mention the commenters here are all gung ho to use this instead of paying your fucking money to watch a movie or TV Show. Now you can debate all day and all night long about how the labels or the studios are greedy and we’re just getting something back from all their blatant ripping off the public and blah blah blah…but in reality that’s just being delusional and justifying bad behavior with disingenuous arguments.

“I agree, the quality is superb. Hope I don’t get arrested, but possibly worth.”

You basically know what you are doing is wrong…but hey…it’s totally worth it.

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I’ve been trying to use this but it just sits on a loading screen. Looking at the network activity, it looks like it’s trying to access a site that Virgin Media has blocked (I can’t see the site it’s trying to get to but it is showing up accessibility.virginmedia.com), which probably means most major UK ISPs will have blocked it too.

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Popcorn Time

I see what they did there. Pass me some.

Yeah…after checking both this and XBMCtorrent out, I can’t help but think that it’s a shame that the one and only use I’ve seen for this tech is for piracy. IIRC the streaming feature was originally intended to be for things like legit ad-supported streams.

As frustrated as people are at websites like Youtube, I would have thought that Bittorrent Live would set the world on fire, or that someone would set up something like a directory of streams that could be linked to, or a curated RSS feed, or something. Instead of watching pirated movies, we could be watching Vi Hart, or Star Trek Continues, or something similar. Clients can already use RSS, several torrent apps can use streaming (if enough non-streaming clients are available), and heck, Amazon S3 allows torrenting of objects up to 5GB. The future is here.

BRB, firing up my text editor (kidding! …sorta.)

It would be nice to see some more legit uses of Bittorrent. Bittorrent Sync is a nice start but let’s get on with it.

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