Inside Popcorn Time – the world's fastest growing piracy site
Ordered to block Popcorn Time
"The movie business’ worst nightmare just happened. (…) There was a hole and somebody filled it" wrote Hollywood's trade bible Variety. Torrent Freak, the file-sharing news site, wrote that Popcorn Time’s software “had broken new ground with its beauty and simplicity”. The global film industry is in panic mode about the site.
A British High court recently ordered the country's largest ISPs to block Popcorn Time. Just two weeks ago, Danish police raided the homes of two youngsters who had posted information online about how easy it is to use Popcorn Time. Norway's Rights Alliance just announced that it has started monitoring the ip addresses of the Norwegian users of Popcorn Time and is considering going to court to have it blocked. A court in Israel recently concluded that blocking would be futile, because there are simply no effective ways to defeat the service.
Recent statistics DN has obtained from Popcorn Time indicate that about one in ten Norwegians are Popcorn Time users.
The small application that provides access to all the pirated content available through the site has been downloaded 452,000 times in eighteen months in Norway.
These users will be able to continue to watch films through Popcorn Time even if the site is blocked in Norway, as the Oslo District Court instructed Norwegian ISPs to do with a number pirate sites in a ruling earlier this week.
Pay for Netflix
Federico Abad opens his MacBook, clicks on a little smiling popcorn logo and fires up the projector hanging over his bed. A canvas on the opposite side of the room is covered completely by the pirate site's opening page.
Under the motto "We are unstoppable. Download and enjoy it" a small legion of anonymous programmers has run the site since it originated here in Buenos Aires one and a half years ago.
The man behind Popcorn Time has kept a low profile until now and hidden his identity behind pseudonyms such as "Sebastian" and "Pochoclín" when he has spoken publicly about the service. In his first open international interview, he takes us behind-the-scenes.
– I love Netflix. I pay for it too. But its catalogue in Argentina is absolutely horrible. Even the latest additions they put out are several years old, Abad says.
He currently follows "Mr. Robot" about a misfit hacker who works with the security of large companies he strongly dislikes – USA Network's new series that has gained a certain cult status since its recent release- “Mr. Robot” is not available elsewhere, apart from on Popcorn Time.
The hyperactive black cat Login follows Abad’s movements closely, while the slightly more antisocial Logout is hiding in the apartment where all blinds are pulled down. Lana del Rey, Ane Brun and Aphex Twin songs are streaming out of the flat screen's loudspeakers. The living room consists of a black leather sofa, an iMac, a bar trolley and an arcade game from the eighties pimped up with one terabyte of nostalgic video games.
– Almost all games from that era are there, says Abad. It includes all existing versions of "Tetris" which he plays every day. Pixel Art puzzles hang from the walls. Special editions of Rubik's cubes are on display beside a large flat screen. He has collected them since he competed as speedcuber with a record of 35 seconds.
Soon he will go to his day job, in a bitcoin security vault.
Who owns Popcorn Time?
The community of volunteers is the core of the particular form of organization that has made Popcorn Time possible: Nobody owns the project. And everyone can contribute. The social component is more important than the pursuit of profit in this new, decentralized and networked information economy that also gave birth to Wikipedia.
And everything, including source code, is "open source". Available to all.
– In a regular job there is always someone who tells you what to do. This is more like a round table where everybody’s voice and power is equal. We shared everything and discussed everything. If a proposal was good, we took it.
He adds that the team still had to work in a structured way and have a clear timetable.
– Without a vision, all the helping hands in an open source project can be harmful. So we created a horizon. Any ideas people came up with, we placed them there.
–What was the horizon?
– Do not talk to users in a hard way, always have a soft tone. You had to be able to see a movie with two only clicks and be as clean, fast and user-friendly as possible, says Abad.
Now only a nice logo was missing.
– I wanted a happy popcorn that gave associations to film and television. Originally I called it Popcorn Hour. But when someone on Instagram asked if not Popcorn Time was a better name, we took it, said Abad. The mascot was named "Pochoclín", a diminutive of the Argentine term for popcorn.
Netflix for pirates
It was important to all the developers that no one should make money on the project.
– I would not make money on someone else's efforts. All films have large budgets and many people who work with them. They are not mine. I didn't want to have a bad feeling about it.
– It was "just for the lulz", Abad says. Nothing else than just for fun, often a central motive in the internet's many uncontrollable corners, whether it is used for carefully coordinated hacker attacks or just informal, spontaneous pranks. Obvious to the initiated and often totally incomprehensible to outsiders.
– Using it costs nothing. And we didn't pay anything for the job.
But where does the raw material come from? Who provides the movies? Federico Abad has no clue about the origin of the films that can be viewed through Popcorn Time, beyond the fact that they come from Yify - an anonymous network that releases new movies online with the goal of having the widest possible selection of films reaching as many viewers as possible.
Unlike other file-sharers in the elite division of movie piracy, they are not competing to be the first with the latest films and technical quality is an important priority.
Yify recently changed its name to Yts.
Abad only relates to the fact that films are there on the web, as freely available as magazines in a dentist's waiting room. His design has probably played an important role in making them accessible.
– Many thought it was legal because the page looks so professional. It doesn’t make you think of spyware and other illegal things.
– Then someone described us as 'pirates' Netflix "I thought 'wow, that's true." We made piracy user-friendly.
But soon one of Argentina's most famous directors, the Academy Award-winner Juan José Campanella started attacking Popcorn Hour.
