Is this legal? Watching current (still in theaters) movies online?

[Common Sense Party]

http://genvideos.com/


I'm a fuddy duddy, but this just smells to high heaven. Is this going to be the next Napster? That is, are people who download movies from here going to go to jail or be sued down the road?

Or is this perfectly fine, and the movie studios are only too happy to let people watch their movies for free?

[Common Sense Party]

1. Sorry, I thought the link would work.

http://genvideos.com/

[leftyohiolib]

2. i think you answered your own question with this

the movie studios are only too happy to let people watch their movies for free?

[Common Sense Party]

3. Sarcasm. Of course they aren't.

Question is, is this site legal?

[Incitatus]

4. It is violating their copyright.

But the site owners (people who share and provide the copyrighted material) are the people they go after. I don't recall any cases where the went after someone who just downloaded and didn't share.

[Common Sense Party]

5. Didn't they do just that with Napster?

I thought the record companies went after teenagers who downloaded songs.

[Incitatus]

6. With Napster and similar torrent sites

you are downloading from other users. When you download a file it is shared with everyone else unless you change the settings. So if someone downloaded a dozen songs without changing the default settings they are then sharing those dozen songs with many different people. That is how they calculated the loss to the copyright holder and came up with the ridiculous sums they sued for. I'm not going I say you are 100% legally safe by downloading or streaming copyrighted material, but I think it is highly unlikely you will be targeted if you are not sharing.