Article Advise

submitted: Apr 29th 2008 | by: MarcSandford | Total views: 2 | Word Count: 543 | |

We are currently living in a golden age of easy access to information and entertainment. The Internet's rapid emergence as well as the adoption of high speed Internet access in greater numbers of homes is responsible for this. With this plentitude comes issues that concern our ethics and the safety of our computers and privacy.

The issues of safety and ethics are the main motivators for those who use legal sources of movie downloads. Whatever your reasons may be, you still could be getting illegal movies unintentionally. With these downloads come the possibility of accidental exposure to spy ware and viruses.

Avoiding amateurish and spammy movie download sites is not enough. Even when using professional looking web sites that are technically conducting a legal business, it is still possible to download illegally. It doesn't matter that the owner of the download membership has great intentions or that you've paid a fee, it can still happen.

So how is this possible? If the membership site offers access to a ridiculous quantity of movies (millions) for modest a fee of about $25, then he's probably setting you up with the means for accessing and downloading movies off a peer to peer (p2p) file sharing network. He is doing nothing illegal since there are an almost infinite number of downloads on p2p and the knowledge and means to exploit p2p is certainly worth the fee.

The risks begin to build up after you've become a proficient and active user of p2p networks. A naive user of p2p is vulnerable to all of its associated dangers such as odd computer behavior due to a virus, or an odd looking bank balance due to spy ware. And unbeknownst to you, those movies that you're happily downloading were uploaded illegally.

You won't get complete protection from the viruses that are set loose on p2p with the anti-virus program installed on your computer. Your computer is only protected against the specific spy ware and viruses that the anti-virus software was programmed to recognize. Viruses that are obscure, new, or a modified version of something well known, will not be recognized by your anti-virus software.

The rule of thumb for determining whether a movie is legal is that it is probably in the public domain and has no copyright if it is extremely old (a black and white movie is a good indication of this). If the movie is free on p2p and is the latest Hollywood blockbuster, then it got there illegally. It will take a lot of research on your part to locate the odd movie that is the exception to this rule.

Downloading legal and safe movies off of p2p networks is not the most relaxing thing to do at the end of the day. Life is too short to be worrying about the safety of your personal information and of your computer. You're doing work rather than relaxing if you are researching movie copyrights.

Perhaps it's worth your while finding a well established movie download site that guarantees the legality and safety of all of their downloads and doesn't fix you up with p2p downloading. No guarantees about safety or legality can be made by a movie download membership that sets you up with p2p. You are on your own if you're using p2p networks.

About the Author

Check out my review of two well known legal movies download sites that do not rely on p2p networks. One has a great movie selection because of it's ties with some of the big Hollywood heavy hitters. The other doesn't. If you're looking for legal movie downloads, see this review.

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