Popcorn Time users are now being targeted by lawsuits

Copyright holders have been making examples of unfortunate Internet users who have allegedly shared copyrighted material for years, but most of these lawsuits have been directed at people using BitTorrent clients. However, the company that owns the rights to “The Cobbler,” a terribly-rated comedy that was released last year, is mixing things up by going after Popcorn Time users specifically. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Popcorn Time allows users to stream pirated movies and shows in a Netflix-like manner. 

Over the past several years hundreds of thousands of Internet subscribers have been sued in the United States for allegedly sharing copyrighted material, mostly video. The cases are generally targeted at “BitTorrent” users in general, not focusing on any client in particular. However, this week the makers of the 2014 comedy “The Cobbler” decided to single out Popcorn Time users. Popcorn Time also uses BitTorrent under the hood but unlike traditional clients it allows users to browse through a library of films and stream these from within the application. Popcorn Time is by no means private as users connect to public BitTorrent swarms, which makes it easy for monitoring firms and copyright holders to track down pirates. This also happened to 11 Popcorn Time users who allegedly viewed and shared “The Cobbler.” The makers of the movie filed a complaint (pdf) at a Oregon District Court requesting a subpoena to compel Comcast to hand over the personal details of the associated account holders.