Well, things just got interesting. Popcorn Time is a new open-source software created by developers in Buenos Aires that lets you stream and watch movies while torrenting them in the background. Yes, this means that while you watch the movie, the app acts as a torrent client and continues to seed and leech it. Now, you may be wondering about the legality of it all, and we must stress here that downloading any copyrighted file is illegal. However, torrents themselves aren’t illegal and are a perfectly valid means to download and share files.
Going through the FAQs written by Popcorn Time’s developers makes it clear that they do foresee their app being used for piracy. To the question “Is this legal?”, they reply “Depends on where you’re from, really. Once again: we’re using torrents, so if you really care, you’d better google what the legal situation around these protocol is where you live.” Also, the developers state that they rely on YIFY (a popular source for movie torrents) for the software’s database of movies. We installed the app from Popcorn Time’s website and saw that indeed, the app’s database was populated with latest movies like ‘Frozen’ and ‘American Hustle’.