Legality of streaming movies

There is no definitive answer for two reasons:

i) Your question is too broad.
ii) Copyright law doesn't make sense.

i) Streaming video is legal in some cases and illegal in others. It boils down to whether or not the copyright holder has given permission for it to be streamed. There are numerous legal streaming video services. Some pay per view, some paid for by advertising in the streams and BBC iplayer paid for by licensing. Most streaming video is illegal, though, because the copyright owner hasn't given permission. If a streaming video site repeatedly states "we're not responsible for content on other sites, we just provide links" or "we're not responsible for what people put on our site, we're just a host", penny to a pound it's full of copyright infringing streaming video.

ii) e.g. It's illegal to back up media you've paid for as a precaution in case the original media is damaged. Or how about this one:

Watch something on legal streaming video website.
Watch it again the next day, streamed from the website again.

That's legal.

Watch something on legal streaming video website.
Watch it again the next day, from a copy of the streaming video that's on your hard drive.

That's illegal.
 
I would have thought it is pretty obvious he wasn't talking about streaming off sites like 4OD and BBC iplayer....
 
ojrules said:
I've googled it and done a forum search but i can't find a definitive answer. What is the legality of streaming a movie off the internet?- regardless of the morals, i'm at uni and my dvd collection is back at home... Is it straight up illegal?


- i guess this thread might get closed soon, and fair enough, but im just trying to get a definitive answer, because that seems pretty hard to come by...
Click to expand...

it's s downloading, which means in this country not worth the hassle of even writing a letter to tell you to stop it.
 
Minstadave said:
Hang on, what is illegal with streaming movies you own on your home server to another computer?
Click to expand...

it's illegal to bypass DRm/copy protection so unless he has a 100 disc dvd changer attached to his home server it would still be illegal.


He owns the original (so surely he has the right to make a backup of it in whatever format he chooses) - he is watching it on his own (not broadcasting it to others)
Click to expand...

You are legally allowed to make a backup however you are not legally allowed to circumvent copy protection/drm to do it.

So you can't on pretty much any software/media.
 
Last edited:
Deluxe1 said:
Would it only be illegal if he was saving it?
Click to expand...

Was wondering this myself - it is presumably a given that the site itself (unless actually run by the broadcaster) is likely breaking the law but unless you're actually making a copy yourself are you breaking the law by viewing it? - the material will only ever exist temporarily, in parts, on your system while you're watching it - it won't actually be stored for use later/copied.

Tis like listening to a track played on a pirate radio station compared with copying a CD....
 
I wonder if anyone understands copyright laws fully :p

It's like you can watch tv shows on things like iplayer, 4od etc etc.
But then would it be 'illegal' to download/stream something from America which hasn't been on TV here yet? And would it be illegal to download/stream something which has been played here but isn't on a 'legal catchup site'
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom