Piracy software heads to the 21st century
Put another way: services like Popcorn Time, which allows users to stream torrented movies, and the OpenEmu gaming app are bringing piracy into the 21st century. And both of those tools are free to use, partly because that might allow them to avoid any legal troubles and partly because asking people to pay for something that allows them to access everything else they want at no charge would be breathlessly oblivious.
The point is that these tools are advancing piracy software enough to make watching a few movies or playing a few games seem less like an ordeal and more like a pleasure. For anyone used to finding their content on the Pirate Bay or — see if you get this reference, millennials — LimeWire, using these tools is like graduating from a Betamax player to Netflix.
In Popcorn Time’s case, it’s almost exactly like using Netflix.
What started out as an experiment for a group of friends soon developed into something much bigger. Popcorn Time now has 20 collaborators on Github and continues to expand at a rapid pace. Developers from all over the world have added new features and within 24 hours it was translated into six languages.
Read the full story here: http://pando.com/2014/03/11/piracy-software-heads-to-the-21st-century/