On 04/07/2014 05:04 AM, Feross Aboukhadijeh wrote:
Jonathan, see: http://webtorrent.io (Still a work in progress)
How does WebTorrent work? https://github.com/feross/webtorrent/issues/39
Feross
Hi Feross,
I believe you missed the point of my post. I am describing a piece of
software that is currently in Beta and provides a thoughtfully designed
two-click interface for users to stream and share content. You have
linked to alpha software that isn't in a working state which happens to
use the same plumbing as the project I described.
So the question is this: how can we protect software like Popcorn-time
from essentially being bullied off the internet? The answer is not to
just to refocus on bigger project that is much earlier in its release
cycle than the one I described. Besides, if your own project gains
traction you'll have to answer this question yourself. If pseudonymous
devs can't resist pressure from Hollywood how will you? Better to
answer this sooner than later.
-Jonathan
? blog <http://feross.org/> | ? studynotes
<http://www.apstudynotes.org/> | ? webtorrent <http://webtorrent.io/>
On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 12:50 AM, ChaTo (Carlos Alberto Alejandro
CASTILLO Ocaranza) <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
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 <http://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
<http://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
--
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