UK Court: ISPs Must Block Popcorn Time Download Sites

The UK has cracked down against Popcorn Time, that neatly organized bit of movie piracy. It is illegal to stream the content offered by it, but that hasn't stopped many and has spurred concerns for as long as it has been around. Following in line with this is a new ruling from the United Kingdom's High Court that requires the nation's top five broadband providers block some sites offering the Popcorn Time download. Whether that will make any difference is doubtful.

According to the ruling, BT, Sky, EE, Virgin Media, and TalkTalk are required to block access to a total of five websites that are offering access to the Popcorn Time download. Of course, and as is commonly the case with the Internet, more download sites will likely pop up to replace them.

The block will only keep those ISPs' subscribers from accessing the Popcorn Time app download itself, but because the app uses torrenting as its method of content acquisition, the service itself won't be affected. Furthermore, those who are using Apple devices can just grab the iOS version.

The ruling came as part of a legal case initiated by Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, Disney, Warner Bros., and Columbia Pictures. In a statement to The Next Web, Popcorn Time's team said:

We're pretty disappointed from the judicial system in the UK and feel pretty sorry for the citizens of England for their basic rights, like the freedom of speech and net neutrality being revoked so easily.

We hope to see some sort of protest from the citizens of the UK against this order, but given how easy it is for the judicial system there to hurt their basic rights, we doubt they will do so.

We find this move they made pretty predictable and we're sure that this is not the last of it. We're working full force now even more than ever on making Popcorn Time fully p2p and soon the software will not be depended on any domain or centralized server to operate.

SOURCE: The Next Web