It’s over for Popcorn Time. The film industry has won out over one of its main competitors. Tuesday, January 4, the pirate streaming platform sent an email to many journalists to announce its closure. The farewell note posted by Popcorn Time features a logo with X’s for the eyes, symbolizing death. The acronym “RIP”, rest in peace, in French, is also displayed. In addition, it includes a graph showing the growing interest in the application in Internet searches over time. A table similar to the one that Netflix communicated to its investors in 2015.
Launched in 2014, the pirate streaming application had been hugely successful in providing access to illegal video content. In 2015, Netflix warned its investors to closely monitor the rise of Popcorn Time. Managing Director Reed Hastings said at the time: “piracy remains one of our biggest competitors.”
A tied up legal plan
From a legal standpoint, Popcorn Time’s defense rested in particular on the free availability of their service and on the fact that it was only looking for “torrents” links on the web without directly hosting the files protected by copyright. author.
Despite a streaming offer that has been structured over the past few years, piracy remains a persistent problem to be solved for the film industry. During the Covid-19 pandemic, it only made progress as several films decided to go directly to digital broadcasting without being shown in theaters.
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The film studios continue to fight back, complaint by complaint, but many alternatives to the pirate site are already emerging. If the original team has decided to stop the adventure, it is however not impossible that others take up the torch because the software code of Popcorn Time is freely available on the Internet.
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