Popcorn Time Installer Taken Down from Kim Dotcom's Mega for Violating Terms of Service

Yesterday we told you about Popcorn Time, a program that took all the “difficulty” out of torrenting a movie, essentially becoming the movie industries worst nightmare.  Good news for the movie industry came today though: the Popcorn Time installer has been pulled from the site that was hosting it.  Interestingly enough, the site hosting the installer was none other than Kim Dotcom’s Mega.

As for why it was taken down?  The installer was pulled for violating Mega’s terms of service and the developers are currently looking for a new host.  Even if the developers cannot find a web host willing to host their installer they could utilize Bittorrent to allow people to download it. Obviously this slightly increases the difficulty of obtaining the program, but not by much.

The takedown of the Popcorn Time installer from Mega also highlights the legal issues that surrounding the app.  And while the app’s creator isn’t concerned that legal issues will arise because the application itself doesn’t host any movie files (only links to them), perhaps this should serve as a warning — not even Kim Dotcom wants to be involved with it.

Of course as we pointed out yesterday, even though the app isn’t hosting any of the movies, sites have been targeted with lawsuits (and even criminal action) for helping facilitate massive copyright infringement (think ThePirateBay) so I’m not sure how solid a legal ground he is standing on.