It seems that Popcorn Time will always pop back to life no matter how many times governments try to take it down.
The infamous BitTorrent client that made streaming movies and TV shows so easy that it was likened to a free version of Netflix was recently taken down, but as of this writing, Popcorn Time is back up and running.
The problem for rights holders, studios and the legal entities that represent them, such as the Motion Picture Association of America, in taking down services like Popcorn Time is that the software is open source so anyone can pick up the code, bring it back to life and redistribute it for everyone else to use online.
For example, in another proclaimed "victory" over Popcorn Time, a Dutch anti-piracy group reached an agreement with two Popcorn Time developers to stop working on the app. It's reported that these two developers didn't seem to be essential members of the core development team for one of the more popular "forks" of Popcorn Time, so the settlement may have been for naught. Nonetheless, the point is that the code on which Popcorn Time is built is free and out in the wild. Take out a developer here, and few more will pop back up to replace them.
Over Reddit, user Luretrix2k posted a thread regarding the return of a fully-functioning Popcorn Time.
"Many of you have seen the article in TorrentFreak about the two guys who were caught by Brein.They had to delete all their accounts, links and stop working on the community version immediately.This will not stop us in any way, but we will not credit any of the people involved to protect them," the redditor says in the post.
The "fix" for Popcorn Time is available for Windows, Mac and Linux-based computers from a new website where the community edition of the program is made available. The original version of Popcorn Time can still be downloaded and the fix manually applied, as well. Moreover, by making use of new APIs, movies and TV shows now show up again as they should when the app is fired up.
Naturally, credit should be given where credit is due for bringing Popcorn Time back, but in this case, security reasons prohibit that. More often than not, this version of Popcorn Time may have a limited life span just like all the other forks of the program. Still, as it is in this case, we're pretty sure Popcorn Time will find a way to pop back up online.
