Popcorn Time was developed "in a couple of weeks" by a group from
Buenos Aires,
Argentina, who elected "Pochoclín" (derived from
pochoclo, which means
popcorn in
Buenos Aires parlance) as their mascot. They believed that
piracy was a "service problem" created by "an
industry that portrays innovation as a threat to their antique recipe to collect value", and also argued that streaming providers were being given too many restrictions and forced to provide inconsistent service between countries, noting that streaming providers in their native Argentina "seem to believe that ''
There's Something About Mary'' [1998] is a recent movie. That movie would be
old enough to vote here." Made available for
Linux,
macOS,
Windows and
Android, Popcorn Time's
source code was downloadable from their website; the project was intended to be
free software. Contributors
localized the program into 44 languages. Caitlin Dewey of
The Washington Post said Popcorn Time may have been an attempt to make the normally "sketchy"
ecosystem of
torrents more accessible by giving it a clean modern look and an easy-to-use
interface.
Legality The legality of the various Popcorn Time clients matched that of all other BitTorrent clients plus the additional issues that apply to sites like
The Pirate Bay and
YTS itself, due to the explicit linking to movie content; its website claimed that the software was possibly illegal depending on local laws. In the UK a court order was given in April 2015 to ISPs to block URLs that provided either the Popcorn Time application software (PTAS) or "sources of update information" (SUI), i.e. pointers to torrent-indexing sites. The court found that, unlike previous cases concerning indexing sites directly, neither websites providing the PTAS nor the SUI could be construed to be "communicating a work to the public", since neither contained any specific information about any specific work. It considered it entirely probable that both the providers of the PTAS and the SUI could be held to be "authorising acts of infringement" by users, but this was not the case that the claimants had raised at the hearing. Instead, they had claimed that the providers had been authorising acts of infringement by content-hosting websites, but then that claim had not been made out. The judge, however, found that the Popcorn Time suppliers did "plainly know and intend" for the application to be "the key means which procures and induces the user to access the host website and therefore causes the infringing communications to occur"; and on this basis had "a common design with the operators of the host websites" and therefore shared a joint liability for the copyright infringements (
joint tortfeasance). It was therefore appropriate to order the ISPs to block the websites as provided for by section 97A of the
Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. On May 20, 2015, the government of
Israel blocked all access to the official downloads of Popcorn Time, following a lawsuit from its biggest cable and satellite providers for copyright infringement. Although the download sites were blocked, internet users still possessing a copy of the installation file and/or the program were not affected, and there were other sharing sites that distributed installation files. Less than a month later, the government reversed the ban. On August 17, 2015, the Danish website popcorntime.dk was shut down by
Danish police and two arrests were made. The case has caused controversy given that the website is not affiliated with the Popcorn Time developer teams but only distributed information about the service. As with other BitTorrent clients, the IP addresses of users of the original app or its forks can easily be determined by third parties. In early 2015, many German Popcorn Time users received demands for damages of €815. The high amount was justified by the fact that the application not only downloads but also distributes movies, a fact that not all users were aware of.
Cobbler Nevada, LLC v. Anonymous Users of Popcorn Time: Does 1-11, Case No. 3:15-cv-1550 In 2015, Cobbler Nevada alleged that Popcorn Time users illegally downloaded copies of the
Adam Sandler movie
The Cobbler. The plaintiff attempted to differentiate Popcorn Time from "all technological applications" by claiming that it had no legitimate purposes, however, the evidence in favor of this assertion was the Wikipedia article "Popcorn Time."
Popcorn-Time.no On March 8, 2016,
Norway's
police unit for economic crimes, Økokrim, seized Popcorn-Time.no domain name. The original site did not host the Popcorn Time application but instead had news articles and external links to other applications. The seizure is being contested by the Norwegian member organizations NUUG and EFN.
Discontinuation On March 14, 2014, Popcorn Time's original website and
GitHub repository were removed after
allegations of copyright infringement. It was later revealed by the
Sony leaks that the MPAA did indeed prevent the original developers of Popcorn Time from continuing to work on the program. The developers claimed that the majority of their users were those outside of the United States, and that it was "installed on every single country on Earth. Even the two that don't have
internet access," by users who would "risk fines, lawsuits and whatever consequences that may come just to be able to watch a recent movie in slippers. Just to get the kind of experience they deserve". They also praised media outlets for not antagonizing them in their coverage of Popcorn Time, and agreeing with their views that the
movie industry was
anti-consumer and too restrictive in regard to
innovation. A few days later, members of the original Popcorn Time project announced that they would endorse the popcorntime.io project as the successor to the original discontinued Popcorn Time. == Forks ==