A website called Joker lets you stream torrent files from your browser without downloading the whole thing. This means everybody who downloads Game of Thrones will have an even shorter wait period between the show airing and finding out where Daenerys put those dragons.
For serial streamers, this is a little slice of pirate heaven… until this shit gets shut down. This is similar to Popcorn Time, aka the Netflix for torrents, which lets you stream torrents… but Popcorn Time lets you choose from a list of torrents, while Joker leaves it up to you; it also has a very smooth implementation.
Popcorn Time has been squashed and resurrected a number of times, but this is taking the streaming torrent concept even further, and I can’t imagine it will have an easy time staying up and running (unless, of course, it’s an MPAA honey pot, in which case, don’t say I didn’t warn you, here is your warning, do not use, caveat streamptor).
Right now, Joker is working well with popular torrent files. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles took just a few seconds to pop up. I tested a less popular torrent (an episode of Cougar Town with two seeders). I still have the page open that says “working”, but it’s been a while, and I’m guessing it’s never going to work. So while Joker says you can stream any file, it looks like they have to be fairly popular to actually play.
It’s not clear who is running this site. There’s a privacy proxy cloaking whoever is in charge when you look up the domain owner, probably because this is getting into some murky legal waters. [TechBlock]
Picture: Joker.org