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from the we-show-the-movies-you-don't-want-to-watch dept.
mendax writes:
A New York Times op-ed reports:
A team of web designers recently released an astonishingly innovative app for streaming movies online. The program, Popcorn Time, worked a bit like Netflix, except it had one unusual, killer feature. It was full of movies you'd want to watch. When you loaded Popcorn Time, you were presented with a menu of recent Hollywood releases: "American Hustle," "Gravity," "The Wolf of Wall Street," "12 Years A Slave," and hundreds of other acclaimed films were all right there, available for instant streaming at the click of a button.
If Popcorn Time sounds too good to be true, that's because it was. The app was illegal - a well-designed, easy-to-use interface for the movie-pirating services that have long ruled the Internet's underbelly. Shortly after the app went public, its creators faced a barrage of legal notices, and they pulled it down. But like Napster in the late 1990s, Popcorn Time offered a glimpse of what seemed like the future, a model for how painless it should be to stream movies and TV shows online. The app also highlighted something we've all felt when settling in for a night with today's popular streaming services, whether Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, or Google or Microsoft's media stores: They just aren't good enough.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by willyg on Friday March 28 2014, @01:29PM
THIS!!!
People with technical savvy had already found the solution to the crappy streaming feeds and crappy selection, and the solution often contained some form of the letters tee pee bee. People found it provided what they wanted at a cost they could accept. It had the downside ( for some ) of being illegal in many locations.
However, these technical people probably also assisted other less technically endowed people to access this solution by means of the USB data drive - in the form of spinning rust or crappy NAND memory or a bluetooth enabled data exchange. After all, almost everyone has a need for what someone else can provide, be it sex, drugs, food or even daycare, and a particular arrangement of data bits can have a value, and that arrangement can easily be a non-monetary means of exchange.
The ship left port and sailed off a long time ago, but the content industry missed it, and still denies it even happened.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 29 2014, @02:38AM
In many ways I am grateful to this vast multitude of less technical users, many of whom appear oblivious to the legally-questionable status of their online sharing. It is this very multitude that provides an ample pool of seeds on the rare occasion I do want to torrent something.
For years I've been helping people that had trouble with their computers. Now those same people are flocking to "share" files. It's rather nice - they are helping me out for a change!