We posted about the open-source, cross-platform, free utility Popcorn Time a few months ago. The original application was taken down after threats by anti-piracy agencies, but was open-sourced which resulted in numerous forks making it virtually impossible to block the application (Don't forget to enjoy behind the scene story in this animated video from the developer shared below).

A new avatar of the app now not only supports Netflix styled one-click, high-quality, movie and TV streaming but also allows user to enjoy the cover of privacy by providing seamless free VPN anonymity. This VPN feature will now automatically mask users' web traffic from their cable service providers, an Android application is also been developed for mobile usage.

Movie piracy just got super-easy with "Popcorn Time", a cross-platform app for Windows, Mac and Linux allowing users to watch latest Hollywood movies streaming to their computers utilizing bit-torrent protocol almost instantly. The utility puts NetFlix to shame, instead of occasional new releases and B-list back catalog provided by Netflix, this ones offers an impressive movie selection catalogue including the latest ones (because they are being offered using illegally shared torrents).

Popcorn Time takes away the technicality limitation of bit-torrent for casual users and offers them a free, simple and cross-platform tool to select latest and other older movies from a carefully curated catalogue and just click on the "Movie Cover" to start watching.

We all know Sony takes business very seriously, and unlike other tech companies takes a very strong stand against anybody trying to circumvent their console security for enabling sideloading or game piracy. Sony sued the well-known Apple iOS hacker George Hotz for releasing the first-ever Playstation3 custom firmware which was the initial step towards letting others enable game piracy for the earlier locked platform. An alleged Sony PS4 jailbreak named Reckz0r has now made it's presence public online claiming to allow execution of unassigned/unauthorized code and pirated games on PS4 exploiting an vulnerability in underlying FreeBSD based Orbis OS. The author goes ahead with sharing all details and files showing users how to "crack" their PS4's labeling this as an tribute to George Hot.

While Piracy is definitely unethical, everybody has a point of view and many of us believe that Piracy is not theft. Anti-piracy agencies have resorted to data figures to show how much monetary loss piracy is costing them, here is another take with the other side of view to these claims complete with numbers.

Full info-graphic after the jump.

The infographic "Piracy is not theft" does an excellent job of how a digital file-sharer evaluates the situation, but the anti-file-sharing organizations MPAA & RIAA sees it otherwise and are now claiming that internet is stealing billions of dollars worth of their property by sharing digital copies of files.

To answer them, and with some creative twist to the situation "Jake Gold" has started an campaign "Send Them Your Money" to send the RIAA/MPAA billions of dollars. Inspired by this incident :

Hundreds of years ago a Japanese judge (Ōoka Tadasuke) handled a lawsuit by a paranoid innkeeper who accused a poor student of literally stealing the fumes of his cooking by eating when the innkeeper was cooking to flavour his dull food. Although his colleagues advised Ōoka to throw the case out as ridiculous, he decided to hear the case. The judge resolved the matter by ordering the student to pass the money he had in one hand to his other and ruling that the price of the smell of food is the sound of money. -- Wikipedia

Jake found a solution :

Let's just pay them the money! They've made it very clear that they consider digital copies to be just as valuable as the original. That makes it a lot easier to pay them back in two ways: a. We can email them scanned images of dollar bills instead of bulky paper and b. We don't have to worry about the hassle of shipping huge quantities of cash.