How To Download Movies and TV Shows Legally and for Free

First I'm going to explain to you how to download movies and tv shows legally and for free, and then I'm going to explain why it's legal and can never be shut down.

HOW-TO

1) Navigate to IceFilms.info.

2) Click on either Movies or TV Shows up at the top of the page, depending on what you want.

3) Then, in the upper-left hand corner of the website, click on "A-Z List". note: clicking on Rating, Release, and Added are also helpful. Release/Added gives you new titles.

4) Click the letter of the alphabet for the first letter of the title, ignoring the word "the" in the title. Example: The Lord of the Rings would be under L.

5) Scroll down and click on the title you want -- or if you're lazy like me, do CTRL+F and search the page for whatever title you're looking for.

6) If you're in TV Shows, click the Season/Episode you want. If you're in movies, continue to the next step.

7) Over to the left you should see a box that says "DVDRip / Standard Def" and it should have at least one source in it. These represent the links to the generic file uploading sites. They have multiple links in case one of the older ones goes down. There's also a High Definition box of sources for some of the titles.

8) Click any source you want. Note that if it mentions Part 1 and Part 2 you need to come back to this step for Part 2 later on. Most DVDRip/ Standard Def movies are roughly 700mb and only require 1 part, however (TV Shows are almost always 1 part, being significantly shorter than movies).

9) You'll see a page that says: "Choose a streaming script" with 2 numbered boxes on it. Ignore both boxes and instead click the link directly below, right after "Proceed to:". This is the direct link to the generic file uploading site where you can download the file. Feel free to share this link with friends.

10) This step will vary depending on what generic uploading site you chose from the sources.. but in general you want to stay away from anything that says "Fast" and "Premium" and stick with anything that says "Slow" or "Regular". That is your free file download. You may have to wait a few seconds, verify that you're human, or do a backflip to get the file download started. For MegaUpload, you simply wait the 45 seconds and then click the giant "Regular Download" button. For 2shared, scroll down and click on the "Download" link right after "Save file to your PC:". Couldn't be any eaiser.

optional-step 11) If you don't know what do with the downloaded files, or they won't play in your media player of choice, I recommend the following media player to play the files: VideoLAN VLC.

LEGAL EXPLAINATION

---Legal Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice---

You've heard of the numerous court cases and raids all throughout the world (mostly in the US) and you're scared it's going to happen to you. One thing that you need to know that they don't want you knowing is that you cannot be charged for simply downloading a copyrighted file. For the technologically illiterate, here's what that means: When you get a file (be it a movie or a tv show or whatever), you're downloading. When you send that file to someone else, you're uploading. Every court case and raid you've ever heard about was because the accused was uploading. Stick to downloading and you'll never get caught, simple as that. Napster, Morpheus, DC, Gnutella, Kazaa, BitTorrent (thepiratebay, et al), and a handful of others, are networks that all depend on users to do the uploading. You download Kazaa because you want some random movie, but little do you know that the software is configured by default to UPLOAD the downloaded file (movie, in this case) to other users just like you. Having upload after (during, really) download enabled in the file sharing software by default is the only way for those mentioned file sharing sites to survive. If everybody disabled their upload, you would have nobody to download from. Having upload on by default is also the #1 reason for getting a court case or scary DMCA letter in the mail. You have to do something a bit more high profile to be raided (and you probably wouldn't be reading this).

Now onto why this method is 100% legal... but you've probably already guessed it: you never upload any copyrighted material -- you only download it. Legally speaking, whoever gave it to you is the one breaking the law. You're in the clear. Here's a breakdown of how it works: user X (NOT YOU!) uploads movie/tv show to a generic file hosting website. There are literally thousands of these sites. They accept any/all kinds of files.. but some have limitations on file sizes, download speeds, downloads per day, etc. These sites get flooded with tons of uploaded files every single day (whether copyrighted or not). Their business is to host files instantly. They make money by offering optional premium subscriptions which consist of faster download speeds, shorter waiting periods, etc. Most if not all of these generic file uploading sites still allow users to download the files for free; you just might have to jump through some hoops to get the download started. Since it is impossible for them to perform their service as a business (instantly host uploaded files of any kind) AND to filter out copyrighted material as it is uploaded, these businesses are in the legal clear for sending you movies and tv shows. The only thing they have to do is respond to DMCA takedown requests. If they fail to respond by taking down the link, only then do they become liable and legally responsible.

Unfortunately, it's not as easy as going to one of these generic file hosting sites and searching for whatever movie/tv show you want to watch. They don't keep a [public] master record of every file uploaded. Obtaining a link to a copyrighted movie/tv show can be done various ways, but here's 3 that stand out:

1) Someone sends you a link on email, instant messenger, or other

2) You use a search engine that indexes lots (but not all!) of the download links (see: here for an example, but there are many others and you can even do it directly on google's main search engine. see: this)

3) You get the link from a website that collects and organizes these links in a public database (this is the method explained in the above howto)

(1) is legal because they are just sending you the link, not the actual copyrighted file. It's also commonly understood that nobody gives a shit about what you and your friend talk about and what links to movies/tv shows you two exchange. You aren't worth the MPAA/RIAA's time. (2) is legal because Google has an "index all, censor later" policy for crawling the web. Just like the generic file uploading websites, it's impossible for them to perform their service as a business and actively censor copyrighted material. (3) is legal because simply serving up a link to a copyrighted works is not the same as actually supplying the copyrighted works. This last one is definitely open to interpretation. For example, the pirate bay was found "guilty of assisting copyright infringement, even though The Pirate Bay hosted none of the files in question and even though other search engines like Google also provide direct access to illegal .torrent files." (source). The Pirate Bay didn't even have "links" in the tradional sense.. they are/were (the guilty verdict didn't really change anything) a BitTorrent tracker.. an explaination of which is out of the scope of this article (read more). Even with the bullshit interpretation of "link sharing" being illegal... it can still only be illegal for the person (or server) who sends the link. You are just the innocent receiver of said link.

Even if icefilms were to be shut down, another site would pop up in it's place in a matter of hours/days.