Popcorn Time previously just showed open domain films in the screen shots. The new one has pictures Game of Thrones and company. It looks like they have stopped pretending this is not for piracy.
Now, for morality to be on their side, they need to publicly advocate and work on a better way to remunerate the content creators. Of course, they could go rogue and act exclusively out of spite for big media, arguing parasitically that how the content creators make money is none of their business.
> work on a better way to remunerate the content creators.
No one gets rewarded for this. The content creators have the exclusive right to establish their pricing terms. Other entities can make offers, of course, but copyright law gives them the exclusive right to establish pricing and distribution.
And they don't want to talk about it. They don't think they have a problem.
Let's say I live in an Eastern European kleptocracy. Let's say it's fairly impossible to purchase things legally. What about showing them that I'm actually worth it. If people set up a way to actually donate to the content creators anonymously, we could prove that we aren't actually kleptomaniacs and show what a donation system would actually reap for them. They won't sell it to me legally after all.
Sure, but many share a similar definition of morality.
More to the point, the economics are not relative to a point of view. Their project can only succeed, as it stands, if it is used marginally. If everyone used it instead of the competition, content creators would have to change the way they work drastically, and no new content would show up on PT.
He implied that was the job of the popcorn time team, it's unlikely that they could or would be able to implement or influence renumeration (beyond the influence of producing the popcorn time platform). It's also not clear that all content creators would need to be renumerated, certainly not to the level that some are today, and it's not clear that a delivery platform has or should have a direct role in the chain of consumer->artist payments.
It's a "brave new world" out there, traditional models are changing and no one really knows what the new models will look like.
We would have to look at similar areas where creators are not paid. For example, most YouTube videos are created with unpaid labor. This does not seem to affect their quantity. Quality varies, but payment does not seem to be the defining factor of quality videos.
> If everyone used it ... no new content would show up
This is to me a bit disturbing. When we say this, we are announcing to the world that culture has inherently no value what so ever. The only way to create value from culture is to prohibit poor people from participating, thus creating an artificial divide that benefits those who have over those who haven't.
Governments are the one who enforces this divide with copyright law, so in the end its government that dictate that this philosophy is the one and only truth. I just don't believe that in 2014, we can't find value in culture beyond prohibit people of private, non-conflicting usage.
>it protects poor people's work from being appropriated by rich people
No it doesn't. Major corporations like Target and H&M rip off small designers all the time. Litigation is expensive, and unfairly favors wealthier parties.
I dunno, Mozart kept producing great music without copyright. People would still go to movie theaters for the social experience .. they'd also keep going to concerts for the same reason.
Or they could correctly argue that the existence of big media is a massive net negative for the welfare of humanity, and anything that diverts money away from the industry is good for the world. Not that piracy seems to put much of a dent in the revenues of Hollywood, unfortunately, but if it did, that would be more than adequate moral justification for supporting Popcorn Time.
>Not that piracy seems to put much of a dent in the revenues of Hollywood
What do the revenues of Hollywood have to do with anything "moral"?
"Hollywood" (or the movie industry) is a risk taking enterprise. They put money up front to create art that they believe will offer a positive reutrn for their investment. Sometimes it produces good things, sometimes it produces dreck.
The question is, why does Hollywood need to fail for a moral victory? There are a variety of routes to produce and distribute your own film, go ahead and do it. Hollywood doesn't preclude you from making a successful independent film anymore than Microsoft precludes you from making a successful software application. Adam Carolla just crowd-sourced his latest film based on a script.
Of course, in the case of independent anything, you get/have to take all the financial risk up front. That's a downer (or impossibility) for most people, and partially why Hollywood exists.
First, the destructive effects of having the media cartels lobbying for restriction of freedom in the name of protection of 'intellectual property'; those are sufficiently well known that I probably don't have to elaborate on them here.
Second, modern media are junk food for the mind, exploits for security vulnerabilities in our motivation systems. It's not easy to pick up on this, because e.g. watching a movie seems to make you happier for the couple of hours while you're watching it; what you don't notice is that it rewires your brain so that the entire rest of your life is that little bit less happy. Studies have shown that, taking both prevalence and magnitude of the effect into account, watching television is the single strongest determining factor in quality of life, with the effect being monotonic: the less television you watch, the happier you are. At least one study corrected for confounding influences by comparing otherwise similar neighborhoods in Third World cities where television had become available versus where it had not, and the effect was striking: where television goes, quality of life takes a nosedive.
Couldn't book-reading also be similar? Both book-reading and TV-watching take the participant out of the facets of reality and immerses them into another world.
Granted, some could argue that book-reading is an intellectual activity because our brain is processing language, but I'm not so sure reading Nora Roberts could be considered an intellectual activity (nothing against Roberts, but the type of people who seem to read her book don't seem the intellectual type).
Why I hope they don't just stay rogue? Because having a self-sustainable, transparent industry that actually tries to protect users benefits everyone in the long-run.
Creators would accept such an industry because they could do what they love for money, and users would accept it because they would obtain entertainment while knowing where the money they spend goes, and knowing that the work will go to the public domain after a reasonable amount of time.
Sorry, I should have clarified. I meant this: "arguing parasitically that how the content creators make money is none of their business"
I was just wondering your thought process here. It seems that you think piracy is a bad thing, when I see it as a good thing. Who cares about the industry? We have more and higher quality music, software, movies, and TV than ever because of piracy. And for free! Shouldn't that be celebrated? We can now focus on spending our money on more pressing things like food, shelter and health care.
Sure, some people can't make money off of direct sales of copies but markets change. We can adapt. Just look at Chance the Rapper, he gave both albums out for free (never charged a dime) and he's rolling in dough because of features and concerts. Also I'm pretty sure he's not at the mercy of a record company, either.
edit: clarification