Somebody save me. I need some super help on legaly downloading Smallville.

March 24, 2007 12:26 PM

We just moved, and the one single show that my wife loves (and I don't mind much actually - minus its whiny soap opera moments, but I think Chloe is nice to look at) is Smallville. The newest episodes are not on the TV channels here. We're in Canada. I want to download the newest episodes ASAP after they appear. I want that to happen legally.

I'm a Mac user, so I have iTunes available, but it doesn't allow TV show purchases in Canada. When we were in Vancouver BC, the show was on weekly, new episodes. Now that we're in Quesnel BC, the only shows available on TV appear to be reruns of last season.

Alternatively, I am connected to Gnutella, but I'm not sure that downloading Smallville there falls under the definition of timeshifting, which otherwise I believe is legal. Especially since those exact episodes don't appear on TV, at any time, here.

posted by Kickstart70 to computers & internet (17 comments total)

Well, obviously Canadian and U.S. law are going to be very different with regards to what's legal and what's not.

There are tons of smallville downloads on The pirate bay, I use μTorrent to download stuff and VLC player to view 'em.
posted by delmoi at 12:32 PM on March 24, 2007

(oops, μTorrent is windows only)
posted by delmoi at 12:33 PM on March 24, 2007

The new episodes do air in Canada on Space (the Imagination Station) & WPIX the CW affiliate out of NY... or whichever CW affilliate broadcasts closest to your city. I use tvtorrents.com when I miss an ep of a fave show.
posted by zarah at 12:52 PM on March 24, 2007

Democracy TV!

Here's a fantastic tutorial from LifeHacker. I use it for all of my shows and I usually get them late the same night or no later than the next morning, without any effort on my part.
posted by furtive at 12:56 PM on March 24, 2007 [3 favorites]

If torrents aren't what you want to do, you can try alluc.org , they have many tv shows, but I'm not sure if they are up to date. (Seems they have up to season 6)
posted by lain at 1:21 PM on March 24, 2007

The current TV season is almost up. If your station is a year behind, you'll be able to catch up in the fall. Or you could buy DVDs.
posted by acoutu at 2:15 PM on March 24, 2007

Smallville is not available on the iTunes Store or, as far as I know, by any other entity sanctioned by the show's copyright owner. Accordingly, the avenues described by others here so far (torrents, etc.) would be in violation of current American copyright laws. I don't know how Canada's copyright laws would govern same.
posted by WCityMike at 2:18 PM on March 24, 2007

By the way, this may be of use in determining who is airing Season 6 in your area.
posted by WCityMike at 2:21 PM on March 24, 2007

By the way, if you want to buy off of iTunes, I'm pretty sure that all you have to do is register a Canadian account (ie a Canadian address and credit card.)
posted by Kololo at 3:25 PM on March 24, 2007

TVRSS.net. They have Smallville and at least for what I watch, torrents of each ep are uploaded very quickly after they air. Legal? Who knows?
posted by sneakin at 3:28 PM on March 24, 2007

Accordingly, the avenues described by others here so far (torrents, etc.) would be in violation of current American copyright laws.

Which laws spesifically?
posted by delmoi at 3:35 PM on March 24, 2007

Thanks all, I've marked three best answers and here is why:

zarah: Turns out my wife's search for Smallville times didn't show up that it is on Space, so it looks like we DO have it available for viewing (if I'd known this, I'd never have asked the question)

furtive: I didn't realize that Democracy player could download anything other than the (IME, not very good) shows that are in the player itself. I tried it out when my main desktop was Linux about 6-8 months ago and thought it was lame because of that.

sneakin: In combination with furtive's answer, tvRSS feeds give me the ability to download Smallville episodes very easily.

I wish I had an answer about the legality of this in terms of timeshifting (actually, I wouldn't care if there were downloadable versions that included commercials, if that made the difference), but I suppose that question is still open for a lot of people.
posted by Kickstart70 at 3:46 PM on March 24, 2007

For the record: http://tvnzb.com/nzb/s/11
posted by bizwank at 4:27 PM on March 24, 2007

I know a couple of people who have received warnings from their ISPs (after the ISPs received warnings from the copyright holders) for downloading television shows via bittorrent (recently aired episodes, not DVD rips). So if you're really worried about staying legal, you might want to rethink this.
posted by somanyamys at 6:39 AM on March 26, 2007

Just so you know, ignorance is not a defense for breaking a law.
posted by xammerboy at 7:52 AM on March 26, 2007

Which laws spesifically?

IANAL, but my layman's view, support mostly cribbed from here, is that it's not fair use, the Betamax case just covers self-made personal-use copies, and digital redistribution of a copyrighted work is the exclusive right of the copyright owner per Section 106(3) of the Copyright Act. BTW, I'm not saying I agree with the illegality.
posted by WCityMike at 11:51 AM on March 27, 2007

Kickstart, it also airs on one of my time-shift channels ASN, maybe you get it out there too.
posted by zarah at 6:21 PM on March 27, 2007