(Photo: Greg Sandoval)
(Photo: Greg Sandoval)

It was only a matter of time — make that Popcorn Time — before some of the top BitTorrent services began gravitating towards streaming.

Following the success of the outlawed Popcorn Time movie downloader and player and its offspring, Popcorntime.io, some of the world’s top BitTorrent sites are now combining their services with streaming technology. The move is likely to simplify their interfaces and the file-sharing services more attractive to mainstream film and TV viewers.

The Pirate Bay, one of the oldest, most popular and storied of the torrent sites, made news on Friday by adopting technology from Torrents-Time. It’s a browser plug-in for Windows and Mac that enables people to access torrents via a web page. No need to worry about external torrent clients, or downloading content. Bingo. Nearly as simple to use as YouTube or Netflix.

Now, according to the news blog TorrentFreak, other torrent sites will adopt Torrents-Time streaming tech. They include Torrentproject.se, Videomax.is and Online.porntime. KickassTorrents, the most popular torrent site on the web, is expected to roll out its own streaming offer via Torrents-Time this week, TorrentFreak reported.

Streaming is how the average person wants to watch movies and TV shows online. Netflix and Megaupload helped prove that. When Popcorn Time emerged and later Popcorntime.io, their ease of use helped turn them into public sensations. Respected publications, such as Esquire, called Popcorn Time a “Netflix for pirated movies.”

One of Hollywood’s worst fears is that film-piracy becomes as commonplace and widely adopted as it was with music a decade ago. Representatives from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) used to say that there would always be people around willing to pirate movies but that their antipiracy operations would eventually limit the practice to only the most ardent copyright violators. They wanted to turn piracy into a niche, chase it to the fringes of the internet.

So, If anyone should be happy about torrent sites adopting streaming tech it should be Netflix. With its low prices and easy-to-use service, Netflix is the film studios’ best defense against piracy.

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