One of the developers behind the popular torrent application Popcorn Time says he’s here to stand up for consumers who aren’t satisfied with the service they’re getting from streaming options like Netflix, Shomi and CraveTV.

“We’re trying to show everyone that this is how great a media service platform can be,” says Robert English, who lives in the Barrie, Ont.-area, and is one of three known Canadian developers currently working on the official version of Popcorn Time. “And it’s a community. So the community says what they want, not what the business thinks will make money.”

English, who is in his early-20s and goes by the handle KsaRedFx in the online world, has become a spokesman for the official current version of the application, which was first launched by a group of Argentine developers a year ago and then branched off into multiple clones, or “forks,” after the original version got shut down.

Popcorn Time has gained massive popularity over the past year, earning millions of users because of its clean interface, huge selection and ability to give users the chance to stream movies and TV shows while paying absolutely nothing.

It’s definitely on the industry’s radar, as Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently acknowledged it as a competitor in a public letter to shareholders, where he called Popcorn Time’s rising usage in the Netherlands “sobering.”

Last week, six versions of Popcorn Time were taken down by Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. But English says it’s next to impossible that Popcorn Time will ever be brought down permanently.

“You’re not going to shut us down,” he says. “We’re open source. It just goes back up in less than five minutes flat. I mean, we’re all over the globe. We could be back up in under a minute if it really needed to be.”

After thinking about it, English softens his comment slightly, saying that Popcorn Time could only be back up in five minutes if the conditions were ideal and one of the team members reacted right away. But even in the worst case scenario, he says it could still be back up in a day. And there’s a backup plan in place.

“We’ve built in ways so that if we ever do get any kind of trouble, or shut down, we can swap people (users) over, and they just continue enjoying their content.”

English says that he puts full-time hours into the application, but gets paid nothing for it. He works with about 20 other developers from around the world on the application, and says that they won’t accept donations or advertising money. He hopes that his work on Popcorn Time will nudge Netflix to change the way it does business.

“Just take some notes on what we’ve done, and what people like,” he says, when asked if he has a message for the streaming giant. “We want to change the game. We want to make it awesome for everyone – not just people that live in the States and have access to Hulu, Netflix and HBO.”

A representative for Netflix wouldn’t comment on this story, and instead referred us back to the public letter from Hastings as the company’s official stance on Popcorn Time.

In a recent poll on the Toronto Sun website, 56% of readers said they’d be willing to try Popcorn Time, with 19% claiming they already had. Only 25% said that they wouldn’t consider using it.

The legal danger with using Popcorn Time is that when you click on a title, you’re simultaneously downloading it and seeding it – which means that you’re distributing copyrighted material to other people.

“To the uninitiated, it looks like the perfect way to watch content and not pay for it, but what’s going on behind the scenes is quite disturbing on a number of levels,” says Carmi Levy, a tech analyst with London, Ont.-based Voices.com, who’s been tracking Popcorn Time for the past year.

Levy says that because the application looks so legit, many users might not realize that they are actually distributing content while using it.

“It can literally turn my unassuming grandma into a high-stakes illegal file distributor, unbeknownst to her,” he says.

Still, Levy says he’s intrigued to see how Netflix responds to Popcorn Time’s rise in popularity, emphasizing that piracy can often force industries to move in new directions.

“We can very safely assume that Netflix is watching this from a front-row seat,” he says, adding that he thinks the company will beef up their film and TV show offerings and start providing more first-run content.

In the end, English says that he’s not trying to boost his own online cred by working on Popcorn Time.

“I’m just there to work on something for everyone, and make it awesome, and try to prove to other corporations and businesses that you can do something like this,” he says. “I mean, we’re a team of 20 people and we do it in our free time. Imagine what would happen if you had a team of full-paid programmers behind it?”

Twitter: @SeanDFitzgerald

sean.fitzgerald@sunmedia.ca