Sunday, October 3, 2010

The Issues With Using Pirated Films

By Eduardo Lester

We live in a world of on-demand satisfaction. To an extent, whatever you want, you can get and with home theaters becoming a social staple for families, the ability to download a movie that you want at the moment you want to see it is seductive.

Whether it is done illegally through file-sharing software or legally, as with downloading a book into your Kindle, there's an increasing market for downloading the movies you want straight into your hard drive. Many people are still skeptical, worried that any movies they watch will be bootleg copies, or somehow their computers will be at risk from the act of downloading.

This way of thinking, in the beginning, was true. Almost all online movies that were bootleg copies usually recorded by camcorder of the movie screens, much like what is sold on street corners. If you watch these films you're committed infringement on copyright.

What puts you at danger is if a government agency were to crack down on a movie downloading site, every site records the IP addresses of the computers that have visited it. To get out of a lot of trouble, a site owner would be very willing to hand over those addresses for more lenient sentence.

Does this scenario ever happened? Yes, not with movies. The rampant file-sharing of music has resulted in the music industry cracking down on individual customers by instigating large fines instead of bringing arbitration into the mix. With all of this experience in terms of music, it's logical to assume that movie downloading customers will be the next target.

Using the internet to download anything is potentially full of risks, especially with websites advertising free-to-you movie downloads. The reason that a site wouldn't charge you anything for a particular service is that they want to actually take something from you; in this case it's the insertion of adware and spyware into your computer.

What is spyware? It's a malicious software that downloads onto your computer and records your actions on line. This can include recording keystrokes that can give away your passwords on a myriad of websites and open the door to having your identity stolen. Adware is not as malicious, but is a nuisance that can slow down the performance of your computer by inundating you with pop-up ads on the misguided thought that it will make you want to purchase one of the items.

To make sure that what you're doing is legal and safer, it's best to use websites that charge a fee for joining. Many websites charge only one-time fees at around $40 for unlimited downloads, much like the music site Napster. The fee will most likely protect you from inadvertently downloading any adware or spyware because of the added virus protection that many of these sites contain.

The convenience of the internet is a wonderful thing and you can have the entertainment experience that you want, just make sure that you use a legitimate service in movie downloading. A little homework can go a long way.

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