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

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

Kickstart70 — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 12:26:03 -0800

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.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 12:32:57 -0800

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.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 12:33:56 -0800

(oops, μTorrent is windows only)

By: zarah

zarah — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 12:52:13 -0800

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.

By: furtive

furtive — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 12:56:35 -0800

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.

By: lain

lain — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 13:21:33 -0800

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)

By: acoutu

acoutu — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 14:15:15 -0800

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.

By: WCityMike

WCityMike — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 14:18:10 -0800

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.

By: WCityMike

WCityMike — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 14:21:33 -0800

By the way, this may be of use in determining who is airing Season 6 in your area.

By: Kololo

Kololo — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:25:36 -0800

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.)

By: sneakin

sneakin — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:28:44 -0800

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?

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:35:46 -0800

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

Which laws spesifically?

By: Kickstart70

Kickstart70 — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:46:14 -0800

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.

By: bizwank

bizwank — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 16:27:30 -0800

For the record: http://tvnzb.com/nzb/s/11

By: somanyamys

somanyamys — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:39:41 -0800

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.

By: xammerboy

xammerboy — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:52:58 -0800

Just so you know, ignorance is not a defense for breaking a law.

By: WCityMike

WCityMike — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 11:51:58 -0800

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.

By: zarah

zarah — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 18:21:25 -0800

Kickstart, it also airs on one of my time-shift channels ASN, maybe you get it out there too.