We are currently living in a golden age of easy access to information and entertainment. The Internet’s rapid emergence as well as the adoption of high speed Internet access in greater numbers of homes is responsible for this. With this plentitude comes issues that concern our ethics and the safety of our computers and privacy.

The issues of safety and ethics are the main motivators for those who use legal sources of movie downloads. Whatever your reasons may be, you still could be getting illegal movies unintentionally. With these downloads come the possibility of accidental exposure to spy ware and viruses.

It isn’t enough to stay away from amateurish and spammy download sites. It’s possible that you’re getting movies illegally even though you’re using a legitimate download membership at a professionally deigned web site. It can still happen even if the business owner has honest intentions and you have paid a membership fee.

So how is this possible? If the membership site offers access to a ridiculous quantity of movies (millions) for modest a fee of about $25, then he’s probably setting you up with the means for accessing and downloading movies off a peer to peer (p2p) file sharing network. He is doing nothing illegal since there are an almost infinite number of downloads on p2p and the knowledge and means to exploit p2p is certainly worth the fee.

When you know enough about using p2p to get yourself into trouble, the problems begin. The stage is set for damaging your computer with a virus or suffering from identity theft because of spy ware if you use p2p naively without an awareness of the associated risks. Unbeknownst to you, those movies that you’re happily downloading were uploaded illegally.

You can’t count on 100 percent protection against all of the viruses that reside in p2p networks with your anti-virus program. These programs can detect and protect your computer from only the specific spy ware and viruses that they have definitions for. New, obscure, or modified viruses will elude your anti-virus program.

The only rule of thumb for knowing whether or not a movie is legal for download, is that if it is a very old movie (preferably in black and white) then it is probably in the public domain and is therefore legal. A movie is illegal to download if it is a recent Hollywood blockbuster and if you find it for free on a p2p network. A lot research will be required if you’d like to find the exceptions to this rule of thumb.

Downloading legal and safe movies off of p2p networks is not the most relaxing thing to do at the end of the day. Life is too short to be worrying about the safety of your personal information and of your computer. You’re doing work rather than relaxing if you are researching movie copyrights.

Perhaps it’s time to look around for a real movie download site that guarantees safe and legal downloads and has nothing to do with p2p networks. A movie download membership that sets you up with p2p cannot make any guarantees about safety or legality. If you are downloading movies from p2p file sharing networks, you are on your own.