Popcorn Time, the famous pirate movie and series streaming app, has become over the years one of the main enemies to be defeated for the film industry. Despite repeated court rulings, the site has always found a way to come back. However, a group of several independent studios is determined to bury Popcorn Time for good.
If you’re interested in movie and TV piracy at all, you’ve probably heard of Popcorn Time. This pirate app offers thousands of films and series, all in the greatest illegality of course. Very quickly, the service established itself as the target for the film industry. Some court decisions have resulted in the closure of the site … Temporarily anyway.
As an open-source project, Popcorn Time keeps coming back in a new version. The site returned to version 4.0 in March 2020 on macOS, Windows, Linux and Android after several successive closures. And precisely, the response of the film studios is not made to wait.
Just days after the return of Popcorn Time, several studios like Fallen Productions (The Fall of the White House), Voltage Holdings (Don Jon, Dallas Buyers Club, Colossal) and Millenium Funding (Rambo, Expendables) decided to attack in justice the hacker app, but also the company Wicked Technology, owner of the VPN partner of Popcorn Time VPN.ht.
Also read: Popcorn Time hacker app to return to the chagrin of the movie industry
American studios want to do everything to stop Popcorn Time
And precisely, this same group of independent studios is at the origin of a new summons. The plaintiffs have asked a Virginia federal court to demand millions of dollars in damages from Popcorn Time for copyright infringement. This request concerns 21 films, for a total loss of 3,150,000 dollars. Added to this is a request for an injunction on the part of the applicants, who wish to oblige ISPs to block access to all Popcorn Time domain names, including popcorn-ru.tk., the most widely used version today.
So far, no federal court has issued such a freeze order in a piracy case, but the filmmakers argue that this option is possible under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). Indeed, section 512 of the DMCA allows to order ISPs “to block access to a specific and identified online location outside the United States ”. In addition, the complainants also wish that search engines like Google prevent people from accessing Popcorn Time domains by deleting the results.
It remains to be seen whether the tribunal will accept all of the plaintiffs’ requests. If so, we could indeed witness the end of Popcorn Time for good.
Source: Torrent Freak