Legality of watching films that are streamed ?

said site put locker.bz

is it legal to watch movies ?

are you paying the copyright owner for the privilege?
Have they given permission?
Does it seem too good to be true?

If you answered yes to any then it will be.

No.

If I was unclear – yes illegal

Regardless of the legality the quality of the couple of streaming films i just checked out was too crap to watch. I’m out

Everything on the internet is illegal. Didn’t you know?

If it is Illegal(dubious BTW evidenced by the fact its only uploaders that are getting targeted) but even if it is illegal it’s unenforceable.

Muppetwrangler, you’re just looking in the wrong places.

PS the dodgy streaming sites will generally fill your computer with malware, so I’d tend to avoid those(or have a comp for that dedicated purpose).

TBH just download the HD versions from torrents if you want to, better quality and can be watched offline.

Or, I don’t know, pay for them? It’s not like films cost tens of millions to produce and keep thousands of people employed or anything…

unknown – Member
Or, I don’t know, pay for them? It’s not like films cost tens of millions to produce and keep thousands of people employed or anything…

imo, it’s not impacting on their jobs. People stream/download dubiously yes, but I’d argue that atleast 90% of dodgy feeds would not turn into revenue if it was impossible to access them for free.

Oh, so it’s a victimless crime, that’s OK then. Who gets to decide which crimes are victimless again? TBH I know what you’re saying, but personally I still think it’s morally wrong, and I think the loss of revenue is likely to be a lot more than you imagine.

I think multi million pound fees are morally wrong. Who gets to decide on morality?

Morality isn’t absolute, but taking something you haven’t paid for seems pretty black and white to me.

If you look at it in simple terms like you are then maybe, i don’t see it as simple though so have no problem with it. It’s not the same as stealing from someone IMO. It’s a different marketplace that has no physical produce and wouldn’t otherwise exist.(for want of a better explanation).

Or another way to look at it if you can’t decide on the moral question – If you haven’t got the balls to walk into HMV or Asda and take it without paying why think its ok because it’s online?

Because if it wasn’t available online at the touch of a button I wouldn’t be interested in it. It’s the availability of access that makes me watch half the crap I watch online. If it wasn’t there I wouldn’t be paying for it or looking to watch it. Hence its a false idea that dodgy downloads would relate to revenue and is therefore theft.

BTW I’m not averse to paying for things, I still pay to go to the pictures regularly and have a Netflix account etc.

That’s a point actually if they wanted to stop it all tomorrow they could, create a 20 quid Netflix version that has up to date content and I’d pay for that no problems, I do that with spotify and I’ve no downloaded mp3s since I started that.

So ultimately the problem is with the movie companies model. They still want a pay as you go model for new content to maximise revenues, they are being far too greedy with that.

taking something you haven’t paid for seems pretty black and white to me.

land?
water?
air?

Because if it wasn’t available online at the touch of a button I wouldn’t be interested in it.

Bingo.

The way I look at it is, I spend as much money as I’m able to on media-based entertainment. We have a Billy bookcase full of CDs, two more full of films and TV box sets on DVD and Blu-ray, a couple of shelves of Xbox 360 games (and a nearly full 250Gb hard disk in the console). We have shelves upon shelves full of books, and three monthly magazine subscriptions. I’ve got a list of games in Steam which must now be pushing three figures, most of which I’ve never downloaded let alone played. We have a TV licence, a Sky subscription, a LoveFilm subscription and a Spotify Premium subscription. I’ve got a couple of hundred quid’s worth of plastic instruments for Rock Band / Guitar Hero. We go to the cinema semi-regularly.

In storage upstairs I have laserdiscs, games for the Playstation 1 and 2, Dreamcast, GameCube, Atari 2600.

No longer with me are a raft of games for the ZX Spectrum and Atari ST, about 300 books I took to the charity shop recently, boxes upon boxes of VHS cassettes which ended up at the tip because the charity shop wouldn’t take them. There’s probably other stuff I don’t even remember.

So is it fair to assume a 1:1 relationship when calculating lost revenue from illegal downloads?

Over the years, I’ve copied a lot of stuff. At school, I had C90s full of copied Spectrum games, as did everyone else. In the 16-bit era, I went to a weekly “computer club” in Manchester which was basically a mass piracy session. Copy everything you can, as quickly as possible.

Did all this equate to a loss of sales? On the face of it yes, but as a kid all my pocket money went on games pretty much; if I couldn’t copy games then I wouldn’t have bought any more, I’d just have played fewer. Did the several hundred Speccy games I must’ve copied directly equate to several thousands of pounds of lost revenue from a thirteen year old schoolboy? I don’t think so. Half of the time, a new tape would be an afternoon’s entertainment filled with the excitement of what might be up next, a frustrating hour getting it to load, ten minutes of actually playing it before turning it off never to play again and moving on to the next game. The majority of the crap on the tapes we’d never have bought even if we’d been able to.

As an adult, I’ve copied / downloaded stuff, liked it, and gone out and bought it. Sometimes, several times over. For example, I’ve bought Escape From New York on VHS, Laserdisc and DVD, and will almost certainly buy it on Blu-ray if they ever release a decent transfer. I initially saw the film on a pirated video at a mate’s house; that’s several sales as a direct result of piracy.

It’s quite easy to put on your best ex-Radio 1 DJ voice and bang on about copyright theft in the same breath as murdering old ladies, but the bottom line is that for me at least, I simply cannot spend any more on entertainment than I already do. The games, film, music, TV and publishing industries have all had more that their pound of flesh from me already.

The stuff I download I’m either already entitled to or is available for free in other channels, or I have no moral compunctions about doing so as it’s something I’d never have paid money for anyway. Eg, I once spent the best part of an evening battling with official channels trying to get a TV show to play on the TV. Nothing exciting, just something my OH had missed, probably hosted by Bruce Forsythe. Trying to get iPlayer to either stream to the Xbox or Blu-ray player or download in some sort of sensible format that I could play on them just proved impossible; even if you did get it to sort of work, you got legged up by DRM licences or it was in such low resolution cataract-o-vision as to be unwatchable. After several hours’ wrangling I went “bugger it”, jumped on Isohunt, downloaded a HD copy in about fifteen minutes and we were away. Watched it, deleted it.

Technically, that’s an illegal download. Who’s the victim here? Not the BBC, I pay my licence. Box set resales? Like I’m going to buy “Celebrity Come Dancing on Ice in the Jungle Factor: the Complete Series” in order to get hold of that elusive eighth episode. Sky? They get their money irrespective of what I do or don’t watch. The only crime I’ve committed here is to circumvent a frankly shit viewing experience in order to watch something I’ve already paid for (and is available for free) on my terms rather than theirs.

… my arse.

thanks for all the input

so streaming is okay then…

That’s really up to you to decide really. Some think it is, some don’t.

Perfect take, Cougar. I spend as much as I can on music, and books, and going to the cinema. I don’t download music from torrents, or movies, because my broadband isn’t really up to it, and I’ve got loads of dvd’s I’ve never got around to watching, plus a mate has much more disposable income and buys lots of music, and gives me a DVD loaded with new stuff every so often. Books I buy when I can afford them, but I’ve found sites with lots of SF books that I’ve downloaded for free, and have no qualms about it, for the simple reason virtually all the books are no longer in print, and haven’t been for decades, in many cases, and nobody seems prepared to do them as legit ebooks, so nobody’s really a loser.
Except possibly the author’s estates, but if they can’t be arsed to make books available, those who want easily carried digital versions of books bought back in the 70’s are going to get them where they can.

Books are one thing I always buy. Dunno why I just see them as different. Obviously if out of print or out of copyright it’s a different story, but generally I’ll buy the book or the kindle version.

I might consider it if the owner of the car got to keep the car too! 😉

I think there’s a clear distinction between what’s legal and what’s right. Of course I don’t think it’s wrong to download something you already own or is available elsewhere legally, or a book that’s out of print. I’ve done that myself.

What I don’t agree with is the “they haven’t lost anything because I wouldn’t have bought it anyway” argument. With respect, I think you’re kidding yourself if you think that having free access to copyrighted material stops people from buying it. I know people who freely admit they don’t buy sky sports because they can stream football games for free. I’d also guess what the younger generation who grew up with the internet are way more likely to believe they are “entitled” to movies and music for nothing.

Bottom line, it’s not like robbing a handbag off an old dear, but personally I don’t think anyone is entitled to a film/book/game/album unless they’ve paid in some way.

Sure. I wasn’t talking about “people”, I’m not people. I was talking about my personal experiences, for every ‘me’ there’s someone who would be appalled at copying media and someone else who would never buy media ever if they could rip it instead. Whether or not my middle ground is “typical” I’ve no idea, but I suspect I’m not wholly atypical.

TBH just download the HD versions from torrents if you want to, better quality and can be watched offline.

+1, we pretty much only watch torrent HD stuff. Eg my brother gave me the DVD box set of Breaking Bad, but it was actually easier to just download the whole lot and and watch the files (DVDs are stuffed full of annoying controls, menus, adverts, trailers, anti-piracy crap).

That’s actually a really good example.

If you download a torrent of (say) Breaking Bad, you’re committing a crime because you’re watching it without paying for it. So far so black and white. But if your mate buys it and then lends it to you, that’s perfectly fine? You’re still watching it without paying for it.

The difference I suppose is there’s only one copy in use at any one time. So what happens when, if I’m watching disc 4, I lend disc 3 to my mate?

If I watch a movie with my partner, am I expected to buy two copies?

I just have the DVD set away to someone less tech-savvy and they can put up with all the bundled crap you get with the actual programmes.

Cougar, whilst Im not a fan of the BPI and the US equivalent etc, I think the analogies often used are irrelevant.

Its not a matter of depriving someone of something (steal a car) or equivalence between shared uses (wife vs funkybunny55 in Stockholm) or even copies in use.

Its all about the permission of the licence.

Copyright law conveys the rights to manage the use of some artistic output. When you pay for music or a film you are buying a specified right of use which can quite sensibly permit sharing a film with the wife but exclude hosting it for a mate in stockholm to watch it.

The idea that the media that holds the art has something to do with the copyright theft is only any use for helping the more intellectually challenged members of society grasp copyright matters. In reality the media is irrelevant.

Fair use is based on the extension of licensed rights not how many copies of your 8 track you can do before you’re classed as officially naughty 🙂