Times couldn’t be better when it comes to easy access to lots of great entertainment. We can thank the proliferation of broadband use in increasing numbers of households as well as the rapid expansion of the Internet for this. With this plentitude comes issues that concern the safety of our computers and privacy as well as the integrity of our ethics.

For many, ethics and concern for safety are the reasons why they seek out legal movie downloads. Even though your intentions might be in the right place, you may still be making illegal downloads of movies by accident. So there is the possibility of accidental exposure to viruses and spy ware with these downloads.

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 won’t get complete protection from the viruses that are set loose on p2p with the anti-virus program installed on your computer. Your computer is only protected against the specific spy ware and viruses that the anti-virus software was programmed to recognize. Viruses that are obscure, new, or a modified version of something well known, will not be recognized by your anti-virus software.

The rule of thumb for determining whether a movie is legal is that it is probably in the public domain and has no copyright if it is extremely old (a black and white movie is a good indication of this). If the movie is free on p2p and is the latest Hollywood blockbuster, then it got there illegally. It will take a lot of research on your part to locate the odd movie that is the exception to this rule.

So getting safe and legal movie downloads from a p2p network is not as simple as turning on a TV set. If you’re worried about threats to your computer and your personal information, then you aren’t enjoying yourself. If you are researching movie copyrights, you’re doing work rather than relaxing.

Perhaps it’s worth your while finding a well established movie download site that guarantees the legality and safety of all of their downloads and doesn’t fix you up with p2p downloading. No guarantees about safety or legality can be made by a movie download membership that sets you up with p2p. You are on your own if you’re using p2p networks.