Sue the makers of the app - that makes some sense, if the court agrees. But the users? I wonder how these Does are identified - just an IP?
Sorry, but I would come to the opposite conclusion. While conceding that I have only a limited understanding of how Popcorn Time operates, my assumption is that it is a Bittorrent client with a streamlined, user-friendly interface. If so, it is merely a tool, which has both infringing and non-infringing uses. On the other hand, if the actual users of the software are employing it for infringing purposes, then that is on them, and they should be held accountable for their actions.
Makes sense.
VPN, which you also advertise for here on BoingBoing, would solve very many of the issues people might risk with programs like this.
PrivateInternetAccess is an excellent one which has been covered on a number of tech sites due to their excellent privacy policies, lack of logging, and cheap prices. You can even pay with giftcards, which can be purchased with cash - if you need the extra privacy. I pay around $3 a month for it, which gives me faster internet at work, and (surprisingly) sometimes at home. Maybe Comcast doesn’t process/shape VPN traffic the same way as unfiltered?
I can’t bring myself to go for PIA - despite their privacy policies, they also scoff outright at things like warrant canaries which most other VPNs use, making me wonder if they’ve already been served with National Security Letters or the like and so therefore can’t legitimately use them.
Paranoid, quite possibly, but then that’s probably not a vice if you’re looking at VPNs.
They already admit that they have been served with warrants for data multiple times. But there is no data logged, so nothing to turn over. What would be the point of the canary? To show you that the same nothing was turned over, but in secret?
I watched Survivor, I’d call it more of a Milla Jovovich movie. Really got annoyed by the end, where so much would have been resolved with a conference call from a cell phone.
You don’t go to a VPN provider with a request. You tap the upstream and correlate sequences of packet sizes.
…traffic analysis can tell even what pages you are fetching if you are using HTTPS, from known sizes of served objects. The protocol should add padding.
The Cobbler is actually a pretty decent movie… Just sayin.
Popcorn time, from the end user POV looks almost exactly like Netflix. You open it up, it spends a few seconds loading, then there’s just a grid of movies. You clicky on the movie, it spends a few seconds getting the first chunk and starts playing.
According to wikipedia and a few other sources the entire catalog displayed in Popcorn time is supplied by the release group YiFi, which doesn’t do legally licensed stuff. It does high-demand, popular stuff. This app is meant to be used for infringing, and there’s really no legitimate use for it because the end user doesn’t have the ability to point it at, say, Big Buck Bunny (unless that’s something YiFi’s released, which I doubt, since anyone can watch that for free on youtube in 4k at 60fps legally and for free, so there’s no point in YiFi spending time and energy sourcing, encoding and distributing something so widely available already).
It actually sources from 2 different trackers. They’re in the midst of implementing a plugin system so you can use any site there is a plugin for.
You can also copy/paste magnet links in from any site you would like, which works better on most files when you find a larger swarm, or want to watch something more obscure. Loading a magnet link with multiple files allows you to choose which file to load, so you can select specific episodes.
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