As I was arguing with rayiner on another thread, this is a prime example of what is wrong with the legal industry in the United States especially: shit is so complex that litigation is expensive, so people with more money than you can sue you into oblivion even if the law is on your side.

Another way of looking at it is that, as things stand now, the legal system is just another weapon the rich and influential can use to crush the little man.

Perhaps the plaintiff should be required to contribute all the legal fees for the defendant (up to a maximum). If the defendant loses the lawsuit, he must pay the plaintiff back for his own legal fees in addition to the damages that he must pay.

I've suggested before in other threads that legal fees should be contributed to a shared pool and divided equally between both parties, with some minimum contribution set based on income and net worth. This would allow a defendant who is decidedly in the right to survive an attack by a significantly larger plaintiff.

That would be great except the defendant still has to pay up front.

What about this: you drag me to court, you ask me X millions in damages; if you lose, you owe me X millions. Now that's a lawsuit I would pay for upfront if I think I'm in the right. Even better: many lawyers would probably fight to get my profitable suit pro-bono so they can cash in a big chunk of the eventual damages I would get.

Actually it's not great since a disproportionate part of the outcome of legal proceedings is luck, just like all of life.

legal proceedings works - just that it is really really expensive. Justice is expensive.

Or what about if you treated all law practice as a public service making all lawyers civil servants? The government would pay for the lawyers on both sides, but you wouldn't be able to buy access to a better lawyer. You'd have the problem of excessive lawsuits, but you can counter that with forcing the losing party to pay a big fine that covers the cost of the lawyers. You would also have the problem of how to assign lawyers to cases, but here it might make sense to use a lottery system, where you never know which lawyer you're getting.

Then all lawyers would be equally terrible. I would rather our laws weren't so complex. One start is to prove there is a victim for something to be considered a crime.

Isn't this the model we're trying to move toward in medicine?

Unfortunately the law has to be complex and extremely detailed. You can't really use vague non specific terms when it comes to defining laws.

Somehow people managed to do just that for thousands of years

If by this you mean your life depends on the mood of your king that day, I'm going to have to disagree.

I don't believe you.

Is it surprising that an appication used to stream torrents, is primarily used for piracy? No, no it's not, and this is why I'm scratching my head. They knew from day one, before they wrote a single line of code that the application would be used for pirating movies. For this reason, I assumed they had a plan, because surely no sane development team would put forth the time to setup this project, and then act surprised at the first legal threat, and close up shop.

I'm not sure surprised is the word I'd use to describe their sentiment. I'd guess rather that they originally planned to back down at the first sign of legal threats. Popcorn Time has been circulated as an experiment, not a business, and in that sense it was a success. Also, the code isn't going anywhere, so it's not as if all this work was for nothing.

Where is the code being hosted now?

But they had a plan - the application is opensource, so anyone can continue it. And since it relies on torrents, killing the swarm is pretty much impossible.

The team that built it isn't acting surprised. I'm a little bit surprised that something more severe didn't happen, such as some of the developers being targeted specifically. All for a product that gets data which is already out there and feeds it to you.

Weapons are used to kill people, still they're not illegal.

Hah I predicted this 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379904

Just because your product is legal, but mainly used for illegal purposes really opens you up to a lot of issues. They should have expected this was coming.

It'd be interesting to see what percentage of use cases were for "legal purposes"

I doubt it would be more than zero.

Well, I watched 300 on it, and I owned a copy of 300 it just so happens to be HD-DVD...and at home.

Did your HD-DVD copy came with signed rights to distribute the movie to third parties?

If not, then you were illegally distributing the film while you were watching it using PopcornTime.

owning it in DVD doesn't mean you can download it through torrents. I know this is stupid though...

would it? it's probably exactly what you'd expect. :)

Ok, but who didn't predict this outcome?

Law is about getting as much justice as you can afford.

Perhaps they could've ended the way the Pirate Bay ended.

Pirate Bay looks up to me.

If you link to unauthorized copies, you are an accessory to theft.

The fact that this is still legal is largely historical accident, and is bound to be overturned by one lawsuit or another, or Congressional loophole closing. It's still morally a crime.

No you are not. Copyright infringement is not theft.

Your claim is no more valid than saying if you tell your friend to park their car illegally, you are an accessory to fraud.

Well I had hoped it would end after I got a chance to finish watching Bronson.