Why was Safari and Firefox using a debugger player but Chrome wasn't.

Advertisement With the influx of new p2p movie streaming apps like Popcorn Time, and a system for copyright infringement notices about to begin in the UK, I thought it might an apt time to remind you of some basic torrenting safety guidelines. I’m not going to be preachy and pretend I don’t know what you use torrents for, but I am going to ask that you stay safe regardless – both legally, and from a computing perspective. No one wants to end up in prison or handed a hefty fine. Not sure what torrents are?. Please don’t ask me in the comments what the best torrent sites are or beg for private tracker invites. I don’t condone piracy of any kind, and you’ll waste my time banning you.

Do not request or post torrent links or seed requests. For legal torrents try /r/TorrentLinks. Alternatively try /r/IllegalTorrents3, /r/RequestTorrents, /r/DeletedTorrents, /r/TorrentRequest, /r/BTIH, /r/Scholar, /r/Scholar_Advanced, /r/Textbooks.

The Truth About Popcorn Time, Flixtor, Zona (And So On) Popcorn Time set the Internet alight when it was released earlier this year: it was a better experience than Netflix, with a wider selection of all the movies and TV shows you could possibly want, and completely free. The original project was shut down rather quickly, but with the code being open source. However, some users were completely ignorant of where the content actually came from. There is after all, no indication in the app itself of anything illegal (newer clones have added a warning to the download page) – it looks just like a streaming service, with nice DVD covers and a great looking interface. Even users who were aware that the files were obviously of dubious legal origin weren’t necessarily also aware of the underlying technology, believing it to work like any other streaming Internet site. The truth is that the app itself (and all the clones) are based entirely on torrents. When users stream media, the app downloads a torrent file, joins the swarm, and immediately seeds the file back out to everyone else.

Welcome to your personal library of research!

From the perspective of anti-p2p organizations and the companies hired to monitor torrents, this is no different to anyone heading over to the PirateBay and downloading it using a traditional torrent client. Popcorn Time is a just very pretty media index and torrent client in one package. Note: since the original project was taken down, there over the Time4Popcorn clone, including possible attack vectors for malware (though no evidence of it being used for such yet) and the use of a centralised server that could be subverted. Please consider using the clone instead. My point is: don’t be under the illusion that you’re protected simply because you’re using these apps to stream content instead of more directly using a torrent client.

It is exactly the same thing underneath with a pretty interface on top, so every precaution you should take when downloading a torrent still applies when using this new breed of streaming applications – namely. Use a VPN The very nature of peer-to-peer torrent technology means that everyone who attempts to download a file is given a list of everyone else doing the same: you become both the downloader, and uploader. Even if you’ve set your client to never upload, you’ll still be on the list as a peer. It should therefore be obvious that anti-p2p organizations could do the same thing to figure out who is downloading a specific file. Companies are paid to monitor specific torrents by the copyright owners, which they do by downloading it themselves, checking the swarm, and keeping a record of every IP address they see. Your IP address is cross-checked against a known list of ISPs. Your ISP is contacted, and they may be forced to pass on the details of the customer associated with an IP at a specific date and time, or asked to take action themselves (as is the case in America and soon also the UK, sending warning letters to infringing subscribers).