MPAA hunts for clones of Popcorn Time, even with legal content.

When MPAA last year achieved the removal of the popular fork PopcornTime.io , many developers switched to the Butter clone, which is positioned as a platform for distributing legal content.

Through the Butter app, only free movies from independent directors from the vodo.net , archive.org and CCC Media collections are distributed . There are no links to unlicensed content. However, this does not stop the MPAA. Lawyers from Hollywood film studios sent a letter to GitHub with the requirement to remove the PopcornTime.sh repository (fork Butter) and absolutely all Popcorn Time forks in accordance with the DMCA law. The legal program Butter also came under the distribution.

"There are many Forks Popcorn Time, and they are all 100% unlicensed and violate the law," - stated in the letter MPAA .


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In their request to remove PopcornTime.sh, lawyers list several files from the repository that are “most clearly and unambiguously designed” for delivering or searching for unlicensed content. Among them are the package.json and torrent_collection.js files that PopcornTime.sh borrowed from the Butter project.



In fact, it is incorrect to call the package.json and torrent_collection.js “uniquely designed” for piracy. The first is the entry point into the application, and the second corresponds to a function that is disabled by default and makes it possible to add arbitrary torrents for viewing.

Yesterday, the corresponding fortifications of the DMCA were received by administrators of several Butter forks, writes TorrentFreak , including a project that works under the roof of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture. All of them must respond within 24 hours and remove the “illegal” program code.

“We responded to the GitHub administration with an explanation that our project is a fork of Butter, not Popcorn Time, and we believe that it has nothing to do with Popcorn Time and does not contain any copyright infringing code,” said Leo Germani (Leo Germani ), a representative of the Ministry of Culture of Brazil.

Other Butter clones that did not violate the DMCA were also affected.

I need to add that GitHub is very careful about handling DMCA requests. In recent weeks, MPAA sent repository deletion requests several times, and Github each time asked for additional clarifications and clarifying information.