breville

I'm sure many of us have occasionally, or maybe frequently downloaded movies from any one of the various torrent sites. The illegality of this is obvious, but my question is in regards to the paid legal availability of newly released movies outside of theaters.

For most people, the first time they can see a new movie is in theaters on its official release date.

Then there are a few movies now and then, which are available via Pay-Per-View on a limited basis before their theatrical release.

And certain privileged people receive DVD screeners of the movies for review before they hit the big screens. This is the only free AND legal way to obtain movies before they're released in theaters, which is why only critics and others in the industry get to see them ahead of time.

All of the above make sense to a degree, but what I don't understand is how certain sites can sell newly released films, apparently legally online. They're only for iphone, ipod, psp, etc., but I don't see how that matters.

How do they get a hold of these movies while they're still in theaters, or at least way before their DVD release date. And how can they legally sell them online?

Mr. Salty

The obvious answer is that they reached a licensing deal with the studio that made the film.

breville

Yeah, I guess that is the obvious answer, but what makes me doubtful is that there are very few sites like this. Extremely few, as far as I know. You would think that because of its apparent profitability, there would be just as many sites of this kind, as there are theaters.

Eddie W

The other more obvious answer is that this is yet another website doing shady things on the internet.

I'll bet if anybody is dumb enough to pay $10 for one of these it's the same camcorder video you can get for free elsewhere. Only harder to tell since you can only watch on lo res devices.

breville

I was dumb enough to pay $10. The quality is low, but watchable. As to their shadiness, they've been around for a long time and even have a good reputation. It's not like what they're doing is legally ambiguous. It's either legal, or it's not. If not, it would be impossible for them to do what they do in plain sight.

Mr. Salty

Another thing, iLounge.com is a very reputable site and I've never seen them selling DVDs or anything like that. Are you sure this was the site itself or some random ad that popped up on the site? What was the movie they were selling? Mainstream or something offbeat?

breville

It's not iLounge, but they have a bunch of movies that were just released in theatres.

DonnachaOne

It's a bootleg site, breville. A very pretty bootleg site, but a bootleg site nonetheless.

Mr. Salty

Yep, if they've poached iLounge's former name then they're a bootleg site. And looking at it, it should be pretty obvious they're selling bootlegs.

breville

How can they sell that stuff out in the open without getting caught? They've been doing it for at least a year, probably much longer.

Groucho

They are probably located in a country with loose copyright laws.

devilshalo

Well, I'll find out when I forward the link to our company's loss prevention.

Groucho

It's occured to me that this thread is just a thinly-veiled attempt to drive traffic to the site in question.

Dan

^ I got that from the first post.

d2cheer

Me too!
IBTL

breville

No. If anything, it's a broadly unveiled attempt to figure out how the hell they're doing that.

I didn't realize my post came off that way, so I removed all references to that site in the posts. Mr. Salty, can you edit your post and remove the quote with the url in it?

I'm trying to understand if they can be something other than a bootleg site. It just seems very strange that they've been doing that for so long with the appearance of legitimacy.

Supermallet

Mod Note: We don't discuss bootlegs at DVD Talk. Please take a closer look at the forum rules for a list of topics we don't allow.