How to know if movie site is legal?

Question by Mariah: How to know if movie site is legal?
I asked a question earlier about this, and got a couple answers. One guy gave me the links to sites he said were legal, but I’m wondering how to be positive, and what makes it legal/illegal. I’m not familiar with the laws surrounding media, and I’m very curious about this. If site is illegal, is there a place to report it to?

Best answer:

Answer by Perdendosi
(1) Do you get to download new, commercially available movies for free? Then it’s not legal.
(2) Can you pay per download or pay for a “subscription” to view movies? Then it’s most likely legal.
(3) Do they have a copyright policy? Do they take down movies that are infringing? The site’s probably legal, but the material on it may not be.

Basically, if you’re getting something for nothing, you’re commiting copyright infringement. There are exceptions, of course… for example, really, really old movies (1920s or earlier) are likely in the public domain now, so you can download and copy them freely. But pretty much everything else has a copyright owner, so unless the site has licensed the movies, copying them constitutes infringement. The site will not tell you whether it’s legal or not, which is a shame, but if they did, they would be in trouble too.

If there are sites that you’re not sure of, contact the site administrator. You can also report illegal activities to the FBI (they’ll only be interested if people are importing and making a profit off of it) or the Motion Picture Association of America.

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