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Legal Movies Download: Are Your Membership Downloads Legal?

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Written by Marc Sandford

Tuesday, 29 April 2008

by MarcSandford

Never before has entertainment been so widely available to so many people. The adoption of high speed Internet access in greater numbers of homes as well as the Internet's rapid emergence is responsible for this. With this abundance come issues that concern safety and ethics.

For many, ethics and concern for safety are the reasons why they seek out legal movie downloads. Even though your intentions might be in the right place, you may still be making illegal downloads of movies by accident. So there is the possibility of accidental exposure to viruses and spy ware with these downloads.

Your instincts to stay away from download sites that appear suspicious and amateurish are correct but they're not enough. Even using a legitimate download membership at a professionally deigned web site can result in your getting movies illegally. It doesn't matter that you've paid a fee or that the owner of the download membership has great intentions, it can still happen.

So how can this happen? If for a one time fee of say $20 or $30, the web site offers access to astronomical quantities of movies, then in all likelihood, he's setting you up with the know-how and software for downloading and accessing movies from peer to peer (p2p) file sharing networks. Since there really are an almost infinite number of downloads on p2p, he is doing nothing illegal and the means and knowledge to exploit p2p is certainly worth the fee.

When you know enough about using p2p to get yourself into trouble, the problems begin. The stage is set for damaging your computer with a virus or suffering from identity theft because of spy ware if you use p2p naively without an awareness of the associated risks. Unbeknownst to you, those movies that you're happily downloading were uploaded illegally.

You can't count on 100 percent protection against all of the viruses that reside in p2p networks with your anti-virus program. These programs can detect and protect your computer from only the specific spy ware and viruses that they have definitions for. New, obscure, or modified viruses will elude your anti-virus program.

The only rule of thumb for knowing whether or not a movie is legal for download, is that if it is a very old movie (preferably in black and white) then it is probably in the public domain and is therefore legal. A movie is illegal to download if it is a recent Hollywood blockbuster and if you find it for free on a p2p network. A lot research will be required if you'd like to find the exceptions to this rule of thumb.

So getting safe and legal movie downloads from a p2p network is not as simple as turning on a TV set. If you're worried about threats to your computer and your personal information, then you aren't enjoying yourself. If you are researching movie copyrights, you're doing work rather than relaxing.

Perhaps it's time to look around for a real movie download site that guarantees safe and legal downloads and has nothing to do with p2p networks. A movie download membership that sets you up with p2p cannot make any guarantees about safety or legality. If you are downloading movies from p2p file sharing networks, you are on your own.

About the Author:

See my review of two of the best known legal movie download sites. One has a great movie selection because of it's ties with the big Hollywood heavy hitters. The other does not. If you're looking to download legal movies, see this review.

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