I’ve heard of a couple people getting sent letters by their internet providers for downloading movies and I was wondering if the same thing can occur for these websites that people watch movies on. Should I be using a VPN while using these websites?
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Generally it is the content distributors they go after (the big fish). It is illegal to download pirated content. The grey area with streaming is that you aren't really ever downloading the entire movie, you cache/buffer a certain percentage of the movie at any given time. Technically this IS downloading, but not the entire file and it get's deleted from temporary storage almost immediately. So, it depends but 99% of the time no. There isn't any legislation specifically in regards to streaming and I don't know what a lawyer would say about downloading only part of a pirated file.
Yeah, I know a bunch of people who have illegally streamed on Kodi/Terrarium for several years with no VPN - and no notification from ISP or anyone. This in U.S. I use these services over a VPN, and they are buggy. I think the studios who can't locate the content distributors hire companies to do DDoS attacks and the like on the big streaming distributors - or at least the the tons of websites they are linking to stream movies for free.
DDoS attacks land you in Jail instant 5 years if caught.
DDoS, jail. Download a movie, straight to jail. You undercook fish? Believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken, also jail. Undercook, overcook.
Hahahahaha love it.
So a website illegally hosting movies for illegal streaming gets a DDoS attack. What are they going to do, call the police?
Their uplink could... Or their uplinks uplink...
Is streaming from torrents the same as downloading them?
Yes, you can get prosecuted.
No, you likely will not because it isn't worth the legal resources for the content providers to go after an individual. Its much more effective for them to go after content providers than end users.
I personally do just to block my ISP from knowing. If copyright holders and or trolls can not or are not monitoring though they will not send you a DMCA notice.
You technically can be but I think it's only happened a couple of times in the most strict copyright enforced countries like the UK or Germany. You would be fine in most countries.
Yes/no.
There is more than one jurisdiction in the world therefore more than one answer
It all depends whose going to go after you...how aggressive your ISP is...is it a real hot movie where the distributor is going to go after you...where is that data physically at...
depends on local law. but usually it works so if you can access it in clearweb and googlefu you are good to go! because someone did not do his job and made a mistake. you users are dumb and so free!
Depends on what jurisdiction you live. There are even cases where the court has said than an IP address is not proof alone of illegal downloading. But ye, use a VPN.
It depends on where you live, I personally use a paid VPN for torrenting. It's better to be on a safer side.
No you cannot. Unlike when you download something, they would have no grounds to do that. Just clicking on something on a website (in this case, the play button) is not illegal, as you are no explicitly telling your browser to download bits of information like you do when you click the download button.
In America, no, this is generally not illegal, unless you are distributing/re-distributing the materials yourself, which is entirely possibly with some of these websites.
Be safe and VPN up anyway.
It's far more likely that you'd just get your Internet cut off or severely throttled.