Now with more people working and studying from home as social distancing measures are being implemented, it means that people need to find new ways to keep themselves entertained. Interestingly and coincidentally enough, it looks like the coronavirus outbreak has brought back to life what has been hailed as the Netflix of piracy – Popcorn Time.
For those unfamiliar, Popcorn Time is an online streaming service in which users can stream movies using torrents as opposed to having to download them. This is obviously and very clearly illegal, and we can’t imagine that its revival is anything but coincidental, especially with some users now potentially being out of work and might not be able to afford the luxury of subscribing to legitimate streaming services.
The service originally launched back in 2014 and given its simplicity, it was quickly targeted by the movie industry for a shutdown. Popcorn Time did come back every now and then, and there were even forked versions made available as alternatives to the service, but for the most part, the original service has remained offline for several years.
However, like we said, in the past few days, the service has come back online. Popcorn Time is also now asking its users to use a VPN while using its service to prevent it from being detected by internet service providers, although we wouldn’t be surprised if it were to get shut down again.
Filed in . Read more about Entertainment, Movies, Piracy and Torrents. Source: vice