Illegal Movie Streaming App Shuts Down, Fans Resurrect It
UPDATE: Popcorn Time has made a triumphant return! Fans of Popcorn Time (not the original creators) resurrected a version of the site using the original code, which the founders made public after shutting the site down. TechCrunch has more details.
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Popcorn Time, we hardly knew ye.
Just a few days after the new app arrived on the scene with its incredibly easy-to-use interface giving you access to the entire Internet storehouse of illegally uploaded movies and TV shows, it has shut down.
The creators of the Netflix-like software have not identified themselves but appear to have explained the shutdown in an anonymous post on Medium under an account where they had earlier touted the software’s availability.
“Our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And that’s not a battle we want a place in,” the unknown authors wrote in a March 14 post. The authenticity of the post could not be confirmed. But a check of the app did show that the service was no longer operating.
Thousands of current movies and TV shows are available on the Internet in downloadable digital files via the file sharing network called BitTorrent. But watching the pirated shows requires sorting through various files of unknown quality and downloading them entirely to a computer or other device, a process that can take 10 to 20 minutes or more.
Popcorn Time presented a friendly front end displaying pirated movies and, with a single click, streamed the content instantly onto your computer screen. The software included warnings that its use might not be legal in some countries.
Once major media outlets, including Yahoo Finance, publicized the app’s capabilities, usage spiked, as did angry rhetoric from copyright holders in Hollywood. Downloading of the app itself was interrupted and then restored earlier this week due to a change in the website where it resided, but the service was operating for those who had the app until Friday.
