

Help children understand that downloading music and movies illegally for free is stealing because it robs its owner of the profit. Teach your children that copyrights grant the exclusive right for those that create music or videos to dictate when copies are made, but more importantly, teach them why it matters. Sometimes it’s difficult for children (and adults) to understand the legal protection that copyrights offer products, and to realize the serious consequences they may face for downloading illegal material. Also, because many streaming sites have developed relationships with movie studios, they are sometimes able to legally show clips or even full-length versions of films. Spotify, Amazon, iTunes, and Pandora all stream music for free and provides links to legal downloads.įor movies, stream shows from legal sites such as network television stations websites (HBO, CBS, Fox, NBC, and ABC), or rent/buy movies online through authorized vendors and dealers like Amazon, Redbox, Netflix, and the iTunes Store. To be sure you and your child are downloading music and movies legally, it is important to go to a trustworthy site, for example, iTunes, 7digital, Amazon, Playlouder, HMV, and Virgin.

Whether or not downloading music and movies are illegal depends on the particular copyright attached to it. We expect access at no or little cost to us, the user, without always considering what that means for content producers.īut if you're intent on you and your family downloading movies and music legally, which of course we always recommend, follow these rules to understand copyright laws and responsibly download media: keep current, keep communicating, and keep checking. But the omnipresence (and expectation) of free streaming media has only confused the issue when it comes to deciding whether its legal (or ethical) to download and stream music, movies, and tv. Peer-to-Peer file sharing sites like BitTorrent and Pirate Bay, today's descendants of those groundbreaking sites, still openly flaunt certain notions of legality. File sharing sites like Napster and Limewire introduced many of these issues by promising what we all knew was too good to be true: free media downloads, whenever we wanted them, without consequence.

We've traveled a long road to arrive at our modern understanding of concepts like file sharing, media piracy, royalties, and copyright.
