Downloading torrents is now a thing of the past. The newest way for pirates to watch all the illegally obtained content they want, all the while dodging the authorities, is to stream it via Popcorn In Your Browser.
Pirates have been known to get their bootlegged content from a service called Popcorn Time, which can be downloaded into Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS and Android to let users stream all the pirated movies they want. Popcorn Time, found on popcorn-time.se, was taken down at the behest of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), but the site went back up after moving abroad. More than 100,000 users in the U.S. have downloaded Popcorn Time on their devices. The service has around 1.4 million users worldwide.
Popcorn In Your Browser, found on the domain popcorninyourbrowser.net, works very much like Popcorn Time, though it's unclear if the former was developed by the same creators of Popcorn Time. The only difference between the two is, instead of requiring users to download the Popcorn Timeapp on their desktop or mobile devices, Popcorn In Your Browser lets them stream straight ahead from their browser. It works just like Netflix, only pirates don't pay.
Popcorn In Your Browser is a bare-bones website. Users can easily type in the title of the movie they want to watch and the website will bring up a list of suggestions they can choose from. Once a movie is chosen, the site will request the torrent from torrent services YTS or Coinado and will stream the movies immediately. It takes a little less than a minute for the site to obtain movies, but as is expected, quality is not up to par, as some torrents will play immediately, while others are stuck loading forever.
As BGR reports, Popcorn In Your Browser does not come with built-in VPN protection, unlike Popcorn Time, which helps bootleggers cover their tracks with its own VPN service. Not that streaming movies is considered illegal, even if the content being streamed was obtained through illegal means. U.S. courts have ruled that users streaming illegal content are not liable because the content is not found on their computers.
Popcorn In Your Browser also sits in the same gray area, since it does not host illegal content in its own servers, but requests them from other torrenting services. Still, The Pirate Bay held the same argument, and isn't working out so well for the popular torrent downloading site, which has recently been stripped of its most popular .se domains.
