A few weeks ago, several movie companies sued a widely used Popcorn Time fork, as well as VPN.ht.
When the app's official website disappeared a few days later, most assumed that the developers had decided to stop developing it. However, Popcorn Time plans to return.
For more than seven years, Popcorn Time has been a thorn in the side of movie studios big and small.
"Netflix for Pirates" offers an easy-to-use application that opens the door to a library of thousands of movies and TV shows with the ability to streaming.
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) recognized this threat early on and pressured the original developers to stop development of the app. This worked initially but now it's too late as the project is open code and began to grow rapidly by others.
Today, Popcorn Time lives through many forks of the original project. The most popular is PopcornTime.app, which has continued since the original developers stopped, with various new features over the years.
Running such a project is a challenge. Film companies are watching closely and looking for opportunities to close it. Last year, for example, MPA sent a removal notice to GitHub to remove the official Popcorn Time repository.
It was bad news for developers, but it was not something they could not get over. Popcorn Time successfully submitted a request to the DMCA and two weeks later GitHub restored the project.
A few weeks ago another more disturbing one appeared problem. In a complaint filed in federal court in Virginia, several movie companies accused the anonymous operators of Popcorntime.app of massive copyright infringement.
This case continues and the court quickly issued a preliminary injunction to the registrar to lock the domain name so that it can not be transferred. At the same time, the Popcorntime.app website disappeared.
But this weekteam one of the developers of Popcorn Time, told Torrentfreak that the return of the site is planned. How this will happen remains a mystery.
