Effectively that license is good for as long as it really matters. What you’re purchasing in most cases is a license to watch that video or listen to that song. You don’t need to dig far into any terms-of-service agreement to find such actions expressly forbidden.įor this discussion, to own a digital file is to be able to watch or listen to that content anytime you want, with no further payments, in perpetuity-or at least as long as you can get a device to convert that ancient 4K video file into something that your brand-new holodeck on your space yacht can read.īy that definition, well, you still don’t own anything. What do we mean, exactly, when we talk about owning something digital? Everybody knows-or hopefully everybody knows-that it doesn’t mean you can turn around and sell that digital item to someone else, broadcast it, or otherwise distribute it en masse.
This doesn’t mean you’re imminently at risk of losing every digital movie and TV show you’ve ever bought at the whim of a megacorp, but it is possible. The answer is a little complex, but the short version is, no, you don’t actually own the digital media files that you purchase. But when you buy a movie from a digital service like Amazon Prime Video or Vudu, does it really belong to you? What if you buy a song on iTunes or download one to your phone from Spotify? Are these files yours forever? If you cancel the service or, as unlikely as it may seem, one of these huge companies goes out of business, what then? It's worth noting the Reddit comments in r/piracy seem to agree with AACS 2.0 being cracked, even though there didn't seem to be anything that addressed the choice of movie.As the entertainment industry shifts its distribution strategy to let people buy or rent movies closer to-or simultaneously with-their release in theaters, you may find yourself amassing a larger digital library than you’ve had in the past. We'll have to wait and see if this isn't a fluke, which means either more 4K UHD movies will start appearing on torrent sites or they won't. To be clear to those admonishing online piracy and gasping at the possibility that AACS 2.0 was actually cracked, just because a 4k Ultra HD Blu-Ray copy of a painfully terrible movie from four years ago has surfaced online doesn't directly imply that. So not only would you have to download this amalgamation of wildly disturbing Smurf animation and acting worthy of every adult in any movie about a talking baby, you'd then have to be willing to seed it. Second, the file name is "The Smurfs 2 (2013) 2160p UHD Blu-ray HEVC Atmos 7.1-THRONE." That does not imply that this movie is anything else than the blue-stained squealing tire fire that is Smurfs 2.
So downloading a 53.30 GB file to port to your 4K TV seems like a bit of overkill.
Torrent files for top-tier movies at a pretty solid audio/video quality usually cap out around 9 GB (compression rates and version qualities vary in size), with the right compression creating files as small as ~750 MB for totally watchable 720p resolution movies. I haven't confirmed the file for myself for this and the second reason (also downloading it would be illegal and I'm not getting pinched for this film, no way).
The first reason is that this is a massive file.