Is watching movies on a streaming site against policy?

[DaedricSaiyan]

My school has a strict policy against torrenting, but would it be bad to watch movies on, say, putlocker or some other movie site?

[saif235]

Define bad.
If you’re worried about the moral implications of streaming vs downloading content I don’t really know what to tell you.
If you’re worried about the practical issue - “will they catch me and cut off my internet access”: my school also has a strict no torrenting policy, but the IT department has yet to punish anyone for using putlocker, vodlocker, etc.

[cameraphone]

At my university, you get in trouble if you use the network to download or torrent movies or TV shows. But people I know who use special websites to simply stream the material versus downloading it to their computer in some form or fashion never have gotten in trouble.

I’ve never done it, so I can’t really speak about this issue.

[i_wanna_be_Brown]

Illegal streaming is still illegal and pirating. I’m by no means a computer scientist so someone please correct me if I’m wrong but I imagine the reason why people probably don’t get punished is because in contrast to illegal downloading, it’s very hard to monitor illegal streaming. Normal computer use doesn’t involve downloading/uploading gigabytes of data every day. It’s easy to monitor that, and the kids who got in trouble when I was in college in 05-09 were the ones who were pirating multiple movies/games a day on a consistent basis and got in trouble not because the school “knew” they were pirating, but because the activity was clearly abnormal and that was considered sufficient evidence to issue a warning, followed by temporary ban, followed by permanent ban. Without looking at what websites students are using (which I’m pretty sure no school does), how do you differentiate someone watching a legal streaming site like netflix/hulu vs. an illegal streaming site when they’re going to use similar bandwith and such?

[PengsPhils]

Illegal streaming is still illegal and pirating. I’m by no means a computer scientist so someone please correct me if I’m wrong but I imagine the reason why people probably don’t get punished is because in contrast to illegal downloading, it’s very hard to monitor illegal streaming.

@iwannabe_Brown

Uploading things to stream is illegal. Watching things uploaded for streaming is not, most of the time.

When the user downloads even part of a file — called “pseudo-streaming” — it counts as a copy of copyrighted material, which is illegal. And when the user streams content as a “public performance” — namely, when it’s shown to a substantial number of people outside the normal family circle and its close acquaintances — it also constitutes a copyright violation.

Outside of these cases, accessing unlicensed streamed content is generally legal.

On the other side of the screen, however, uploading or posting unlicensed streamed content is illegal — even if it’s free…

As far as tracking, the school can easily see the websites that are visited on their network - if they see any website they can see what IP visited it, and go from there. It’s not because they can’t do it, but because it’s not illegal.

http://www.businessinsider.com/are-streaming-sites-legal-2014-4

In summary, stream all you want!

[i_wanna_be_Brown]

And when the user streams content as a “public performance” — namely, when it’s shown to a substantial number of people outside the normal family circle and its close acquaintances — it also constitutes a copyright violation.

Wouldn’t this apply to basically all users of streaming sites? What’s the threshold for “substantial number?”

As far as tracking, the school can easily see the websites that are visited on their network - if they see any website they can see what IP visited it, and go from there. It’s not because they can’t do it, but because it’s not illegal.

I meant more that that would require painstakingly going through every users history and confirming the identity of every IP. Wouldn’t something like monitoring the amount of data moving in/out of a computer be far less time consuming and thus a better way to police students for pirating?

[PengsPhils]

Wouldn’t this apply to basically all users of streaming sites? What’s the threshold for “substantial number?”

This doesn’t apply to the site itself, but rather a single person using the site. If you had a 200 person movie night on a projector in a park and used a streaming service, that would fall under “public performance”.

I meant more that that would require painstakingly going through every users history and confirming the identity of every IP. Wouldn’t something like monitoring the amount of data moving in/out of a computer be far less time consuming and thus a better way to police students for pirating?

I’m not a huge network expert, but tracking the data usage of every connection on a network with tens of thousands of computer would also take a while IMO. Seeing the websites visited doesn’t require a painstaking process: you just flag any visits to a particular website (say, thepiratebay) from any device - then after they are flagged you can note the IP and other information.

[i_wanna_be_Brown]

Gotcha, thanks for the clarifications.