Streaming or illegal file sharing? If a website wants to install something, be skeptical!

As our cooperation partner checked4you reports, it can be expensive if you use sites like “Popcorn Time”. The consumer advice center helps.

That sounds so tempting:

Watch “Great films without restrictions in the best quality” completely free of charge. Small catch: Before the film starts in the browser, an additional program (plugin) called “ PopcornTime-latest ” must be installed.

On the homepage it says quite large:

“Watch torrent movies instantly”. And where the term torrent is included, it smells like potential trouble! This means that you download parts of a file to your device and then send them from there to other devices.

With “Popcorn Time” you not only watch films (as with streaming, which is usually unproblematic), but you also download parts from the internet and upload them again for other users.

This last point is illegal in Germany for copyrighted things! And it should be clear that basically every movie (no matter how old it is) is protected by copyright.

Just a few seconds are enough to fall into the trap. Many such torrent networks also have monitoring. Special programs save the IP address of your Internet connection and shortly afterwards a warning letter from a law firm arrives in your mailbox. Watching a bit of a film for free costs 900 euros.

If you have received a warning, you should not ignore it, but you should not panic either.

Here are our tips:

  • Don't pay in a hurry! Get advice from a copyright lawyer or the legal experts from the North Rhine-Westphalia Consumer Center . The amounts demanded in the warnings are often set too high. If you live in a federal state other than NRW, you can look for advice here . You should hurry up, because if you let the deadline specified in the warning letter pass, you risk expensive legal action.
  • Don't just sign! The cease and desist declaration provided often goes far too far. You should therefore rather submit a so-called modified cease and desist declaration. The lawyer will formulate this for you.


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )