Popcorn Time is disappearing … once again. But this time, we wonder if the service will rise from its ashes.
Popcorn Time was released in 2014 as a special BitTorrent client. His interest lay in a special app that promised to access the latest Hollywood blockbusters with a media player. The interface with its thumbnails resembled that of Netflix, but the technology behind it was a peer-to-peer data transfer protocol. Explained more simply: as a customer, you are also a content distributor. The data of the movie you are watching is also sent to other users.
Popcorn Time, not to be confused with the free Popcorntimes streaming service, was very popular in its early days. The application quickly acquired the reputation of being above all a tool allowing to access protected contents illegally. The real developers of the application then decided to move away from the project, but since the application was open source, others took over.
Popcorn Time is no longer popular at all
Popcorn Time is no longer popular at all. First, there are dozens of versions of Popcorn Time some of which are infected, hackers use to deceive their target.
The other reason is that many users were not aware that this is a BitTorrent client: as is the case with P2P platforms, they themselves distributed illegal copies to other users.
This hidden pee-to-peer has also led to the sending of warnings. But legally, this is a gray area in many countries …
Finally, the service works fine as long as there are a lot of users. The fewer users there are, the fewer people there are sharing content: series and films take longer to launch, the experience is degraded, it’s the snake that eats its tail.
The latest developers throw in the towel
In short, the last active developers of Popcorn Time have announced that they are abandoning the tool. At a time when the streaming market is becoming increasingly fragmented, with more and more streaming platforms, it is obvious that other tools will take over.
Especially since an heir will not need to start from a completely blank sheet: the community exists, like this section in Reddit, as well as the source code, on GitHub. In short, all that remains is to buy a domain name to support the whole. But as Numerama points out, “ at least, for those who are not afraid to put the rights holders on the back, with all the risks that this implies. “.
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