It has been a month since the immensely popular movie piracy site, Popcorn Time, announced that it would stop providing free downloads, and now a new version of the website has re-launched. The move proves how hard it is for copyright groups to stop a piracy operation.
The most renowned of the loosely affiliated Popcorn Time sites, PopcornTime.io, surprised users in October after it announced that it would cease operations immediately. Later, it was reported that legal pressure from Motion Picture Association of America and internal financial issues were major causes for the site's demise. Currently, VPN.ht, the virtual private network associated with Popcorn Time, announced it would revive the torrent movie service with a selection of movies pulled from YIFY/YTS, which has since shut down, according to International Business Times.
However, VPN.ht Movies will utilize a customized Application Program Interface (API) to access an increasing list of movies and TV shows, Torrent Freak reported. At the moment, users should uninstall any existing version of Popcorn Time, download VPN.ht Movies and hope that MPAA does not work to bring down the latest piracy software.
Talking to TorrentFreak, Popcorn Time developer Wally said, "I am considering a full comeback, I just do not want to release a half working version. The popularity of Popcorn Time should be an example for the MPAA to build a future streaming platform that will be open to the entire world."
The site's initial downfall that lasted a month coincided with the YTS/YIFY shut down, which again supplied the selection of movies for PopcornTime.io. At the same time, Google gave a warning that Kickass Torrents was hosting advertisements that pointed visitors to malicious software.
The footage below explains why Popcorn Time was not working.