How to Download Movies Safely and Legally – Movie Website Red Flags

When you can’t find something good to watch on TV, it’s always great to have a few movies on hand that you can watch whenever you want to. There are a number of different sites that you can use to download your favorite movies but unfortunately, many of them are not legal.

If you and your family are avid movie fans and your child spends a lot of time online, it might be a good idea to make sure that they know right from wrong when it comes to downloading movies.

Before anyone in your family uses a website to download movies, you can check whether it’s legal by looking out for the following red flags:

1. Missing contact details.
   Have a look if the website has a ‘Contact Us’ page or has any way for you to get in touch with the website owners, including social media. If not, the website might not be legal.
2. Who are they?
   Are there any pages that give you details about the website and its owners? Most legal websites will give you more information on their services and where they get their movies from. Legal websites will either have permission from the film studios to list their movies or they’ll list movies that fall under a public domain. If there’s no information on where the movies come from, you might want to think twice about downloading anything.
3. The movie selection isn’t great.
   Websites that offer movie downloads will have a lot of new movies all the time. If their selection hasn’t been updated in a while, the site might not be legit.
4. There’s no app.
   Because app stores don’t list apps that would allow users to download illegal content, if the website you want to use for movies has an app, there’s a very good chance that it’s 100% legal.

It’s important to chat to your children about only downloading movies from websites that you have approved as this puts them at less risk of downloading inappropriate or malicious content.

Safe movie download sites

To get you started, here is a list of websites that are safe to use for movie downloads.

• The Internet Archive
• Public Domain Torrents
• Vimeo
• Classic Cinema Online
• Top Documentary Films

If you’re not looking to keep a movie forever, there are lots of movie streaming options such as Showmax and Netflix that are available to South African users.