Legal Visual Content
The internet provides a way for viewers to obtain many movies ranging from amateur to professional, animated to live action and short to full length feature films. although the movies are usually downloaded from the internet via browser, torrent or P2P programs, they are usually viewed with a media player on the user’s computer and an internet connection is not needed after the download is complete.
Unfortunately the majority of free movie downloads are probably downloads of copyrighted movie material and therefore illegal but there are services which supply legal movie downloads, although usually with a fee. Additionally, any downloads supplied directly from those who hold copyrights over it are also legal.
For legal movie downloads at a price try any of these sites and also look for popular internet DVD rental service Netflix to be offering movie downloads in the near future. Some services are only available to citizens of the USA and some are application based whereas others are browser based.
After copyrights expire, some classic movies become available for free and legal rental. Try these services for classic movies
For clips, trailers and previews, try these sites.
A popular genre of (usually legal) videos is digital videos which are created by internet users just like you and me. Digital videos includes computer created, animated videos (not images) which often utilise Flash or Shockwave technology. Few are full length although full length videos are still included in this category. Digital videos often have an animated appearance much like television cartoons.
Often, websites contain links to digital videos that have been submitted by their creators but it’s also common to find websites which contain digital videos only by the site owner. Digital videos can often occupy an existence like sitcoms – where they are released periodically, follow a storyline, have a continuous format et cetera – but might be more comparable to animated comics.
Sometimes digital video makers actual video footage and pictures and inccrporate them into digital videos and while these videos may contain original work, this renders them illegal.
The following sites contain digital videos (and sometimes other content) in many formats:
- Angry Alien
- Milk and Cookies
- Odd Todd
- Ebaum’s World
- Rather Good
- Auto Films
- Ill Will Press
- Albino Black Sheep
Of course, you can always find movies online for free download and viewing at the author’s websites and it’s easy to stumble across these things online. An easy way to discover a new, amtateur movie/video creator is to browse sites such as Youtube or Myspace Video.
