Popcorn Time is a piracy service that allows people to browse and select from a catalog of movies and stream them immediately. It’s as easy as streaming a movie on Netflix. The growing popularity of Popcorn Time has Netflix worried. In the Netherlands, “it’s now on par with Netflix and far above HBO.” Sure that’s just one little nation, with a population of 16.8 million. But Popcorn Time is gaining popularity all over.
Popcorn Time was developed “in a couple of weeks” by a group in Buenos Aires, Argentina. On March 14, 2014, Popcorn Time’s website and GitHub repository were abruptly removed. The developers said they wanted to move on, and that “our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And that’s not a battle we want a place in.” Since then, two groups have forked Popcorn Time in order to continue developing the program. They continue to use the name “Popcorn Time,” i.e., popcorntime.io, and Time4Popcorn.
