What’s Preventing Online Movie Streaming
These days, you can practically watch or download anything online. Radio stations are now being streamed live in the internet and so are movies. While it is clear that streaming unauthorized content-may it be movies or music- online is illegal, sites offering free and paid online movie streaming services have been popping up in the cyber world like mushrooms. Because of this, I’m sure I am not the only confused as to whether streaming movies online is legal or not. Common sense would tell you that a newly-released movie being streamed in the internet (days after or even before its release on theatres) online screams illegal all over it. But if there are already a number of paid online streaming sites claiming to offer legal movie streaming, what’s keeping legislators from acknowledging its legality?
For one, the law governing copyright issues is very complicated and too broad to say the least. In the US, copyright infringement occurs when someone illegally reproduce or make profit from distributing any copyrighted media, be it movies, books or music. If this is the case, then it is safe to assume that movie streaming online are illegal since they are being viewed by thousands of users worldwide, with no clear idea indicating whether the copyright of the movie has been bought legally or not. But if it is illegal, why are these sites still in full operation and with the looks of it, more online movie streaming sites-paid and free- continue to emerge on the internet.
While piracy has been an on-going problem even before the conception of the internet, the advancing technology has provided an even better platform for illegal copies of movies and music to be easily distributed to the public. Try browsing the internet, and you will find hundreds, if not thousands, of free movie streaming sites offering the latest movie releases. Although not all of them offer the best copy of the movie, still the movie industry is losing millions or even billions of dollars because of the unauthorized and illegal internet streaming of movies. Since the internet has a worldwide reach, anyone can gain access to the media being streamed online.
What I don’t understand is that, if law makers are not yet ready to get to terms with the legality of internet movie streaming, then how is it possible that Netflix is able to stream and share movies legally for a fee? Knowing this, the copyright law in terms of streaming movies online has just got murkier, at best. Truth of the matter is, there are still a lot of loopholes in the copyright laws. A good example is a copyright lawsuit filed against Zediva, an online movie service that has just been recently launched.
Upon the site’s launch early last year, it became an instant hit. What Zediva does is it that it buys the copyright of recently released movies and then plays the movie on DVD players on their servers and then rent the player for 2 dollars, with the user’s computer acting like the remote. The movies are played on the company’s players one at a time, which Zediva claims give them legal coverage. However, it looks like the law and movie studios are not agreeing with them, since they have been shut down by the US District Court due to an impending case of copyright infringement filed against them.
While the future of Zediva is a bit bleak, at the moment, the company is still positive that they will win the case. The company has come up with two compelling defenses – one gives emphasis to copyright law first sale doctrine stating that anyone who bought copyrighted work assumes the right to do things like modifying its cover or reselling it so long as the copy has been acquired through legal means. Their second argument, meanwhile, states that they the company must not be punished for innovating.
Reading this case got me into thinking that lawmakers must come up with a definitive set of rules as to what really constitutes copyright infringement in the virtual world. With almost everything being distributed, shared and streamed online, if there are online streaming sites that were able to operate legally, then it is safe to say that it won’t be long until legislators finally verify its legality, noting though that movies being streamed were obtained and purchased legally.
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