Sunday, October 3, 2010

Downloading Films Should Be Done With Extreme Caution

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.

Downloading music on iTunes or books onto a Kindle has made the notion of downloading entertainment mass market. To assume that being able to download a movie is the the next logical step. The notion, however, has always been fraught with thoughts of legality, that perhaps whatever is downloaded is nothing but a bootleg copy that will put a computer at risk and get you into trouble.

These fears were true in the beginning. It took time for the massive file sizes inherent in movies were streamlined as they are today, and the original online movies were nothing more than the most basic bootlegged versions trafficking in both entertainment and copyright infringement.

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 happen? Not yet. But the music industry has cracked down on illegal file sharing, levying steep fines to people across the country in exchange for not prosecuting them in court. It goes to say that logically, file sharing movies is the next step. In fact, a case is under review currently of a man who'd downloaded an unreleased film.

That doesn't mean that abstaining from any movie downloading websites is the way to go. There are still many sites that are both safe and legal. What to watch out for are any websites that promise you everything for nothing. These sites usually peddle in spyware and adware.

Adware is more annoying than anything else and fills your computer with pop-up advertisements on the thought that you will eventually click on and purchase something that you've seen. This can slow down the performance of computer tremendously. Spyware has a more nefarious purpose and does exactly what is implied, it spies on you through the computer. It can register the keys that you type in when accessing something like your bank account. To say that your identity can be stolen is not an intellectual leap.

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.

Wanting something for nothing, especially when downloading movies can lead to consequences that are annoying at least and dangerous at most. There are many good websites that you can utilize for movie downloads - just make sure to do your homework and choose wisely. - 40731

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