Movie Downloads Legal
Downloading movies off of the internet has become a fairly recent phenomenon due to advances in various technologies. Ever since the 90’s people we have observed that people were downloading music from the internet, thanks to an upstart website named Napster. This has caused much legal wrangling due to possible copyright infringements. The music world has resolve this issues to some degree and most download service, Napster included, now work with the artists to insure that they are involve in the revenues generated by downloads.
Originally people started file sharing on these websites seemingly cutting the artist out of the picture. Now movie downloading is going through the same process. Although if fact, studies have shown that this type of “pirating” of intellectual property in the form of a feature film has had virtually no impact on the profits of the big Hollywood movie makers. Even though this is true the movie industry is deciding to make a stand on this issue now to make sure this does not become a problem down the road.
As a result of this some big companies have stepped in to offer movie downloads in a way that will not create these legal issues. In many cases this entails buying a box for your TV that will allow downloading from the company (like Amazon or VuVu) you wish to buy your movies from. Some companies also allow downloading onto gaming consoles (like the Xbox 360 or PSP3). These methods get the movie onto the big screen instead of just being able to view it from your computer. The only problem with this format is that people do not have a transportable film, as is the case with a DVD.
A company called Sonic is now trying to solve this problem for those companies that want to get their customers a legal DVD from the downloads they purchase. The solution is to offer a DVD burner drive that will burn the DVD with CSS coding. The CSS is the copyright coding that makes the DVD impossible to copy for viewing without decoding it. This is how the DVDs that we buy in stores are set up. This helps insure that copyright laws are being followed as much as possible.
As the movie industry tries to protect itself new technologies are emerging to allow people to use the comforts of downloading without risking breaking the law. The problem with buying “the box” is that you are committing yourself to buying from one company. If you can burn a DVD directly from your download you can buy the cheapest download. This will compete directly with all the companies trying to get you on their subscription program, which will help drive prices down everywhere and getting an actual DVD, with all of its convenience will be merged with the convenience of movie downloading.
