A year after Popcorn Time ’s “death and resurrection show,” news broke that the app is increasingly accepting pirated movies online . The service is adopting a peer-to-peer streaming system so that its user base (which is growing by 100,000 people/downloads per day) can host the required data. “Making all data available via P2P means that Popcorn Time will no longer rely on domains and central servers, but only on its user base,” says an anonymous software engineer. “After everything we’ve been through, this will be our sweetest revenge and our biggest victory.”
Wired reports that the app will use the same P2P protocol for streaming as BitTorrent, so that if the central servers go down, the service itself can remain up and running without a hitch. Another upcoming addition will release software updates for the app via P2P downloads, which use “cryptographic signatures” to ensure that no malicious code replicates within the community.
The full interview is a really interesting read, and the software engineer seems particularly cocky about the app's functionality, as well as how long he can ignore the law in this way. Reading this interview, you might be reminded of the behavior of the original Pirate Bay, before the shutdown and subsequent lawsuit. We all know how it ended.
