Popcorn Time, the most popular version of torrent streaming, has been shut down for good.
The application, which became popular for the ease to stream torrents of TV shows and movies, no longer works and the domain that hosted the streaming service is now offline.
Shut down of Popcorn Time all started last week as developers behind the streaming service pulled the plug on the project. Several of the developers decided to quit early last week after a decision to introduce a paid anonymous VPN service.
The developers feared that by adding a paid element to the free streaming service it would open them to lawsuits.
In the past, Popcorn Time lawyers have filtered through copyright infringement cases and laws, they argue that it is essentially a legal program since, users of the program are not actually downloading movies but instead are, streaming them to their computer. Although it provided access to pirated content, Popcorn Time claimed that it did not violate any laws.
In addition, sources close to The Daily Dot also that “some devs grew unsure about their liabilities towards the content the app presented.”
Now, several of the developers are working on another project called the Butter Project:
This new project, hosted on GitHub, is basically your beloved Popcorn Time stripped down of the parts that made people wary. Butter is created so that anyone can contribute to great desktop and mobile apps that allows to stream movies and shows from Bittorrent (and other sources, but more on that later) in a stylish and easy way.
We hope to clear doubts in developers so that we can continue doing what we love: hacking a great experience for our users.
While it looks as though it may be a few months before Butter Project becomes available to the public, Popcorn Time is officially done. Members of the development team behind Popcorn Time told the streaming news outlet Torrent Freak that they lost control of the domain. “I shutdown all the servers, there is nothing I can do anymore. I deleted any logs that can be harmful for any other dev,” he told .
While there are other versions of Popcorn Time, many people argue that these variants are littered with bugs, viruses, and adware.
This is good news for Hollywood studios and executives. Recently, producers started lawsuits against users of Popcorn Time. In fact, the producers of Survivor have sued 16 people who used the torrent software Popcorn Time for pirating the title. Independent Hollywood companies are aggressively trying to stop online copyright infringement.
From Variety:
Nu Image and Millennium Films, the company behind “Survivor,” identified the users by their IP addresses and are seeking their true identities via subpoenas to Internet service providers. Nu Image and Millennium say that the movie has been downloaded illegally “hundreds of thousands of times and counting,” including more than 10,000 times in Oregon, where the lawsuit was filed.
They said that they are seeking to resolve cases for $750 each in damages, even though infringement carries a maximum of $150,000 in each instance.
In their lawsuit the producers identify Popcorn Time as “software that is specifically designed for committing theft,” and say that users accept a terms of service agreement that includes a provision warning that “by watching a movie with this application you might be committing copyright violations.”
“Popcorn Time makes it clear through its terms of service that its users are willfully committing copyright infringement and gives them a clear option to opt out before engaging in criminal activity,” said Avi Lerner, chairman and founder of Nu Image. “It’s time that we hold people responsible for their action.”
Recent Popcorn Time news:
What do you think? Did you ever use Popcorn time? Share with us your thoughts in the comments below!
