Legal movie and TV show downloads

Posted on October 22, 2007
Filed Under Entertainment |

While the recording companies are busy prosecuting their customers for downloading music and other digital media using P2P networks such as BitTorrent and Kazaa, the digeraty have figured a way around the system that is legal and safe to use. It is possible today to stream to your computer most popular TV shows and recently released movies via a number of websites. The sites do not host the digital files on their own servers but rather use online video hubs such as YouTube, Stage6, Metacafe, Megavideo and others.

Users can view these videos by streaming the data to their computer using a Flash player similar to that used by YouTube. Your computer only downloads the data and never uploads it to anyone else’s computer. In a sense, you are not sharing the data with other users and as such you are not violating copyright law. In addition, the player does not store the data on your computer which means no incriminating evidence are left behind. The responsibility for preventing copyright violation rests with the companies hosting the digital files, i.e., YouTube and all the others. Copyright holders can legally request that these files are removed and this often happens. But there is always someone who uploads the files once more and the game continues.

The legality of the sites that actually host links to these videos on YouTube (and the others) is under question. Currently, large media corporations are successful at bringing these sites down by threatening legal action against them although it is not clear that hosting these links to another site constitutes copyright violation itself. The owner of such a site was recently arrested in the U.K. but the case is still new and none knows how it will play out. At any rate, when one site goes down, another surfaces usually with servers in a country that is outside the jurisdiction of North American and International trade law. At the end of the day, the end user is safe from any legal responsibility because as I said earlier, the files are hosted on large video distribution sites which have the responsibility to deal with the copyright issues. If something is uploaded on YouTube then it is Google’s responsibility to remove it and the users who access it via their browser are immune. Even though the movie, TV, and recording industries are having a hard time finding a way to monetize their digital products while releasing them for free online, it is and it will continue to be possible to watch TV shows and movies legally and for free online.

If you would like a list of websites that host links to videos distributed in this manner, then check out the Online Video Guide; the OVGuide also host links to a number of sites placed online by the content owners in an effort to reach the online video audience before it is too late.

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