Movie streaming site is like 'Netflix for pirates': Dan Misener

By Dan Misener, CBC News Posted: Mar 11, 2014 9:24 AM ET Last Updated: Mar 11, 2014 3:50 PM ET

Dan Misener
Spark

Dan Misener is a technology journalist at the CBC. He works on Spark, CBC Radio’s technology show, and is also a columnist for CBCNews.ca.

It's been called “Netflix for pirates."

Popcorn Time is a new open source app for downloading and watching movies. It's dead simple: a list of movie genres on the left and a wall full of movie posters on the right. That's it. Click a poster, and you're presented with the option to "Watch it now."

Under the hood, Popcorn Time runs BitTorrent software optimized for streaming. This means almost no waiting for a download to finish; the movie starts playing immediately.

This immediacy and simplicity is by design.

"I have a lot of friends who don't understand torrents and I wanted to make it easy and effortless to use torrent technology," says one of the app's designers, going only by the name Sebastian, in an interview with TorrentFreak.

"It reminds me of Napster. It's so easy," says Gil Zvulony, a Toronto-based internet lawyer who has seen the application.

It may be easy, says Zvulony, but's it's not legal.

"Its primary use is to make copyrighted material available. It doesn't have any other use. It clearly infringes copyright according to the Canadian copyright act."

Screenshots on the Popcorn Time website show movie posters for very old public domain movies such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and The Three Stooges: Malice in the Palace (1949).

But if you actually download the software and look at what's available, it's almost exclusively pirated material, including recent Oscar nominees such as 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, Gravity, Frozen… almost all of it copyrighted.

The Popcorn Time website carries a loud, yellow warning: "Downloading copyrighted material may be illegal in your country. Use at your own risk."

Zvulony thinks the app's creators are playing dumb, and are aware that people will use their software to infringe copyright.

Using Popcorn Time to download and watch movies may infringe copyright, but here in Canada, the financial risk to individuals is small. Back in 2012, Bill C-11 capped damages for non-commercial copyright infringement at $5,000.

"That's really for the worst type of case," explains Zvulony. Realistically, he says, "you're looking at $100 or $200 in terms of damages awarded, which makes it extremely uneconomical for movie studios to go after individual downloaders."

Though BitTorrent has a reputation as a "pirate" tool, it also has many non-infringing uses, such as the distribution of educational content for non-profit organizations. That said, piracy and copyright infringement seems to get the most attention.

For me, Popcorn Time feels significant because of how it pulls BitTorrent movie piracy from a world of sketchy torrent sites full of porn ads and scammy pop-ups into a simple, streamlined interface.

For years, services like iTunes and Netflix have been able to compete with piracy by offering the paid options in a cleaner, safer environment.

With Popcorn Time, it seems as though the bar has been raised on the pirates' side.

"It's like an arms race," says Zvulony. "There's always new innovation."

March 15: Beyond Antibiotics Mar. 12, 2014 12:06 PM This week on Quirks & Quarks, we look at the threat of a post-antibiotic world, and what new strategies researchers are looking at to cope with a world where antibiotics no longer work.

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GMO salmon firm, AquaBounty, applies to sell in Canada

AquaBounty has applied to the federal government to sell its genetically modified salmon eggs in Canada. (AquaBounty)

 AquaBounty, a company that produces genetically modified salmon eggs at a P.E.I. hatchery, has applied to sell its fish in Canada.

The company's latest financial outlook reveals it's asking for approval from the federal government to sell its fast-growing salmon as food in this country.

The salmon from AquaBounty's genetically modified eggs grow at twice the rate of regular salmon, making them potentially lucrative as farmed fish.

The company has said eggs hatched in P.E.I. would be exported to Panama to be grown into market-size fish

The company now says it would like to sell those fish in the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Chile and China.

In November, Environment Canada approved the commercial production of AquaBounty's genetically modified salmon eggs in Canada, as long as the proper precautions are taken.

But environmental groups are taking the federal government to court over the approval, saying Environment Canada failed to obtain and assess all the information legally required to make a decision under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

At the same time, AquaBounty continues to wait for an answer from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as to whether it will be allowed to sell its salmon as food in that country — a request made 19 years ago.

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Cybersecurity expert Eric Filiol drops out of Vancouver conference

A world-renowned French expert on cyberwarfare has withdrawn from a cybersecurity conference being held in Vancouver this week.

Eric Filiol was slated to give a presentation, titled Hacking 9/11, on Friday at the 14th annual CanSecWest in downtown Vancouver. His talk allegedly detailed cyberthreats to critical public infrastructure.

On Monday, however, Filiol announced on Twitter that he was dropping out of the conference out of fear his talk could tip off would-be criminals.

CSW 20014 cancelled talk: It's a personal decision after wise/strong suggestions. Will explain later my decision. Thanks for your support

— Eric Filiol (@efiliol) March 10, 2014

But that explanation does not sit well with some.

Indiana-based security blogger Steve Ragan suggested Filiol is being censored by U.S. and French authorities who felt his hacking research was too sensitive to be made public.

"In this particular instance, you've got a talk that's talking about theoretical attacks that could take place," said Ragan. "Well, so realistic are these theories that intelligence for both France and the United States freaked out. And they advised him against presenting this talk. And, of course, because he's a member of the military himself, he used his gut judgment and did so."

Ragan said it is also possible Filiol is self-censoring, given the intense scrutiny on leakers such as former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

"Now there's an extra layer of precaution and an extra level of examination that's going to go into any type of presentation, research, publication, anything — be it right, be it wrong — that impacts security or national security or infrastructure in any form. And it's only going to get worse because the whole Snowden thing opened a can of worms," he said.

"On one hand, you had people having their eyes forcefully opened to the level of privacy violations and things going on around them," said Ragan. "But on another hand, you expose valuable data-collection assets from the government …. There will be people who won't give their talk for fear of being labelled another Snowden."

Still, conference organizer Dragos Ruiu said the censorship explanation is a bit overblown.

"I would call some of the reaction a little bit knee-jerk," he said. "It is 'Oh my god, the government's involved. Here comes the government with jackboots.' And I don't think that was the case at all here.

"I think that this is just a discussion and a review amongst the people that Eric works with, sort of a joint decision on their part, that this material might need to be studied a little bit further before shining a big spotlight on it."

The conference is being held March 12 to March 14 at the Sheraton Wall Centre.

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