{"slug": "popcorn-time", "name": "Popcorn Time", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 4, "warners": 0, "score": 2.712, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2025-12-23", "latest": "2026-04-08", "why": "Popcorn Time back in the day made that hurdle trivial.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 0, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Popcorn Time back in the day made that hurdle trivial.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "wikipedia.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://wikipedia.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Popcorn Time"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 763155504, "item_id": 47697219, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697219", "by": "idle_zealot", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the meteoric success of Popcorn Time", "excerpt": "> it was the convenience of streaming anything at will for a monthly fee that did the trick That's not the whole story, though. There have been many community-driven projects to bring convenient access to copyrighted works to the masses in a convenient way. You may recall the meteoric success of Popcorn Time. Law enforcement shut them down. Without the hand of the state beating down any popular alternative to legal d", "context": "", "use_case": "streaming copyrighted films", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess"}, {"id": 751469714, "item_id": 46966857, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46966857", "by": "Telaneo", "date": "2026-02-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Popcorn Time back in the day made that hurdle trivial.", "excerpt": "> It's also free. Only if you don't care about your time or if your media collection is tiny. Don't get me wrong, I love my 20 TB hard drives full of Linux ISOs, but it's a hard sell on anyone who doesn't have 'dicking about with computers' as their hobby. Regular old piracy using torrents has been a easier sell in my experience, once you can get over the hurdle of getting someone familiar with using a torrent client", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Switch to Linux and the Beginning of My Self-Hosting Journey"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["streaming copyrighted films"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47689648", "title": "The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46964159", "title": "The Switch to Linux and the Beginning of My Self-Hosting Journey", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46675271", "title": "Bypassing Gemma and Qwen safety with raw strings", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46362655", "title": "Show HN: CineCLI \u2013 Browse and torrent movies directly from your terminal", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {"compare": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 763155504, "item_id": 47697219, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697219", "by": "idle_zealot", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the meteoric success of Popcorn Time", "excerpt": "> it was the convenience of streaming anything at will for a monthly fee that did the trick That's not the whole story, though. There have been many community-driven projects to bring convenient access to copyrighted works to the masses in a convenient way. You may recall the meteoric success of Popcorn Time. Law enforcement shut them down. Without the hand of the state beating down any popular alternative to legal d", "context": "", "use_case": "streaming copyrighted films", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess"}, {"id": 751469714, "item_id": 46966857, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46966857", "by": "Telaneo", "date": "2026-02-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Popcorn Time back in the day made that hurdle trivial.", "excerpt": "> It's also free. Only if you don't care about your time or if your media collection is tiny. Don't get me wrong, I love my 20 TB hard drives full of Linux ISOs, but it's a hard sell on anyone who doesn't have 'dicking about with computers' as their hobby. Regular old piracy using torrents has been a easier sell in my experience, once you can get over the hurdle of getting someone familiar with using a torrent client", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Switch to Linux and the Beginning of My Self-Hosting Journey"}, {"id": 746969216, "item_id": 46685576, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46685576", "by": "cadamsdotcom", "date": "2026-01-19", "stance": "compare", "quote": "The counter-argument here is Popcorn Time", "excerpt": "The counter-argument here is Popcorn Time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time) which brings together search and bittorrent with a nice UI and makes piracy a bit too easy. Or Firesheep (https://codebutler.com/2010/10/24/firesheep/) which made impersonating someone\u2019s facebook account a breeze by sniffing their credentials which were sent in clear text (eg. on cafe wifi) and showing them in a UI and made stealin", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bypassing Gemma and Qwen safety with raw strings"}, {"id": 741926896, "item_id": 46370431, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46370431", "by": "scirob", "date": "2025-12-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "could we not bring back popcorn time if it goes over to decentralized github : https://radicle.xyz/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: CineCLI \u2013 Browse and torrent movies directly from your terminal"}]}