If you've lots of people convinced to download a movie illegally, there are some issues you should understand. First, you would be breaking regulations, and your ISP can (and in most cases, will) give your personal information to the authorities. You can also be sued by the companies who own the movie. However, you might not think it likely, there are several news stories available on Google of "casual" peer-to-peer downloaders being sued by huge enterprises. You're also taking a big risk when you download movies from people you don't know. The files are very large, and you wouldn't notice a small virus file that your virus software doesn't catch. It's just not smart.

These days there are places where you can legally download movies. You can rent or buy movies that you download on to your personal computer. There are even places where you can watch free movies online. Right now, there are only a handful of sites available, but as more movie companies and distributors move toward making their movies available as a method to prevent piracy losses, there will be more sites that allow you to rent or purchase downloadable movies.

Amazon. com has a program called "Amazon Unbox Video Retrievals, inches that allows you to rent or purchase movies online and download them to your personal computer. You then play the movie on a special program that you download for free from Amazon. You can also download movies from Amazon on to your compatible TiVo DVR unit or portable video player. You don't have even to attend as long as you would to illegally download a movie : you can start watching the movie while it's still downloading. Purchased videos can be saved to more than one computer. You can only burn the movie on a CD or DVD for backup purposes. You won't be able to play it in a DVD player, and you'll only be able to watch it on one of your registered computers. Space leases start at $2 and purchases start at about $10. There are special deals, discount coupons, and deals offered on a regular basis from Amazon to get discounts on saved movies.

Movielink. com has a very similar program to Amazon. You download a program called Movielink Manager where you can organize and watch your space leases and purchases. Like Amazon, you can only burn Computer games and Dvds to back up your movie. The Dvds will not play in DVD players. Movielink has ongoing special deals including "surprise rentals" for $1 and frequent purchase discounts. Movielink will not work on Flock, Firefox, or Netscape internet browsers. You must use Web browser.

CinemaNow. com even offers space leases and purchases. In addition, CinemaNow offers about 1200 streamed free movies that you can watch online. CinemaNow even offers several movies that, when purchased, Can be burned to DVD to be played in DVD players.

There are advantages to downloading movies instead of booking or buying Dvds. You don't have to worry about losing or marring a rental, late fees, driving to a store, waiting for a DVD to be mailed to you, or getting the wrong movie. You also don't need to worry about marring the Dvds you possess or trying to get scraped Dvds to play with various sprays and machines. You can backup the flicks to be stored elsewhere so one of these don't take up space on your computer and they won't be lost in case of hard drive failure.

By subtracting benefit for S-Video connectors, you can directly link a lot of Pcs or laptops to your television and watch the flicks from Amazon, Movielink, and CinemaNow on your TV. There are also products from companies like X10 that let you broadcast from your PC or TV to other home theatre systems in your home complete with remote control capabilities.

When you want to download a movie, it's worth a few dollars to rent it from one of these sites and legally download the movie. You won't risk law suits, worms, or the horrible remorse you'll feel for breaking regulations!