Who Needs YIFY Movies? Popcorn Time Torrent Downloads Return, Hoping To Avoid MPAA Pressure

Popcorn Time is back. One month after the immensely popular movie piracy site announced it would stop providing free downloads, a new version of the site has re-launched, proving again how difficult it is for copyright groups to halt a piracy operation.

PopcornTime.io, the most popular of the loosely affiliated Popcorn Time sites, surprised users in October upon announcing it would cease operations, effective immediately. Legal pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America and internal financial disputes were later reported as the causes for the site's demise. Now VPN.ht, the virtual private network associated with Popcorn Time, announced it will revive the torrent movie service without a selection of movies pulled from YIFY/YTS, another site that has since shut down.

Instead VPN.ht Movies will use a customized Application Program Interface, or API, to access a growing list of movies and TV shows, TorrentFreak reported Tuesday. For now users will need to uninstall any existing version of Popcorn Time, download VPN.ht Movies and hope the MPAA doesn't bring down the newest piracy software, as well.

“I am considering a full comeback, I just do not want to release a half working version,” Popcorn Time developer Wally told TorrentFreak. “The popularity of Popcorn Time should be an example for the MPAA to build a future streaming platform that will be open to the entire world.”

Popcorn Time's initial downfall last month coincided with the YIFY shut down – which, again, supplied the selection for PopcornTime.io – and a warning from Google that Kickass Torrents was hosting advertisements that pointed visitors to malicious software.