[liberationtech] popcorn-time

[Natanael]

Bitmessage isn't ideal for this.

Both because it has a rolling blockchain (the data to distribute needs to
be uploaded repeatedly), because the users will need a special client to
download it, and then special instructions to find the file, and because
Bitmessage isn't anonymous to network level attackers (your ISP, the router
you're connected to, etc), and because of scaling problems.

The easiest way IMHO is to have a network of mirror sites hosting it,
reminding people they can download it over Tor.

- Sent from my phone
Den 7 apr 2014 09:50 skrev "ChaTo (Carlos Alberto Alejandro CASTILLO
Ocaranza)" <chato at chato.cl>:

>  Hi,
>
> An answer to the "single point of failure" of having a URL to pull the
> content is to use a secure distribution mechanism.
>
> I think a great candidate is BitMessage, which I have been using for some
> months now: https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page
>
> BitMessage is a secure peer-to-peer communications protocol that allows
> you to broadcast a message (or receive a broadcast message) without
> revealing your IP address.
>
> Cheers,
>
> On 04/06/2014 11:41 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
>
> Hi list,
>      Can some tech liberator out there versed in javascript and video
> streaming please take over the popcorn-time project?  It looks like it was
> developed pseudonymously by at least three teams now which have all
> disappeared (probably due to pressure from Hollywood).
>
> If you haven't heard of it, see:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time
>
> Why should this interest you?
>
> * Licensed GPL v3
> * Has the most user-friendly interface I've seen in a piece of free
> software
> * Runs on GNU/Linux, OSX, Windows
> * Streams downloads efficiently and uses Bittorrent to seed while the user
> watches (with no setup or intervention by the user)
> * Accessibility.  Looks like the project is getting bullied with a game of
> whack-a-mole, probably due to pressure from Hollywood. AFAICT there is no
> new technology being used-- the original devs used mostly pre-existing libs
> to make something that is easy to use.  What everyone on this list can do
> using Transmission and VLC can now be done by non-experts.
>
> How to stop the game of whack-a-mole?
>
> There needs to be something like a "popcorn kernel" team.  It should use
> exactly the same API as the software currently does, but just have a place
> where the user can type in an address from which to pull the content.  It'd
> be pretty easy to host a tracker with one or two public domain titles and
> test with that.  Then if a site like archive.org decides to adopt the YTF
> API to access its public domain videos, users can just add that address and
> start streaming the content.  (And again because they are also seeding this
> helps out archive.org, so it's a win-win.)
>
> That would remove the only controversial line of code-- the url of YTF--
> so that anyone who wants to improve the software may do it without being
> bullied.  Also, if there were a well-known organization dedicated to
> hosting and defending free software that could host the repo and front page
> it would lower the risk of a rogue, suspicious site putting up downloads
> with malware in them. (And each time Popcorn-time gets resurrected at some
> new domain that risk increases.)
>
> The original code is still on github.  Not sure about the other
> incarnations.  It's worth noting that there seemed to be quite a bit of
> activity on each incarnation (bug fixes, improvements) so it might be worth
> it to try to find a link to the most recent incarnation.  (And since it's
> git it should be easy to audit the changes.)
>
> I really wish I knew javascript and node.js.  Then I'd just do it myself.
> :)
>
> Best,
> Jonathan
>
>
> --
> ChaTo (Carlos Castillo) <http://chato.cl/>
> LinkedIn <http://linkedin.com/in/chato> · Facebook<https://facebook.com/chato>·
> Twitter <http://twitter.com/chatox>
>
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