'Netflix for pirates' in Hollywood's sights
Popcorn Time, the software dubbed "Netflix for pirates" and "Hollywood's worst nightmare", is now in the sights of movie studios as it continues to gain traction among those who find its simple once-click user interface too hard to resist.
What the anti-piracy group does next is anybody's guess, but its chief Willy Johansen has hinted strongly that it plans to send users a "surprise in the mail in the form of a letter" sometime in the next three months.
Elsewhere, the makers of the Adam Sandler movie The Cobbler, Cobbler Nevada, have filed a lawsuit in the US directed at 11 users of the software who are yet to be identified.
The filmmakers want US ISP Comcast to reveal the identities of the users, whose IP addresses they have identified as having used Popcorn Time.
Survivor Productions, who are behind the film Survivor starring Pierce Brosnan, are also targeting 16 Comcast users in a separate case who allegedly used Popcorn Time to watch the film.
Both lawsuits are almost identical in nature, using the the same Oregon-based attorney, Carl Crowell.
Meanwhile in Australia, no such action has been taken, which is likely due to the fact our copyright laws are vastly different to the US and Norway.
In the US, for instance, copyright owners are able to obtain the identities of infringers through a court discovery process.
They can then threaten users with "fines" outside the court process worth thousands of dollars or the prospect of a lawsuit that might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But in Australia the recent case involving Dallas Buyers Club, iiNet and a bunch of other ISPs saw the judge overseeing it stop this from occurring.
If filmmakers were to ever go after Australians, it's likely they would only be able to recoup from the infringer the cost of the film (maybe $20) and their costs of identifying and pursuing infringers through the court system.
Popcorn Time launched last year but was quickly shut down after legal issues arose. It then resurfaced after BitTorrent site YTS dug it up from the grave.
The service offers a Netflix-style interface that streams pirated movies — from latest releases to film classics — without the need to wait for a download to complete using a traditional BitTorrent client, such as UTorrent.
Movie studios in April managed to have websites that offer access to the service blocked in Britain.
Given Australia recently passed anti-piracy, website blocking laws, it's possible similar action might occur here if rights holders launch legal action against ISPs.
