Just curious: what kind of "downloads" are these where did you get them from?

YouTube and Daily Motion.

Both methods are quasi-legal or straight up illegal, I'm afraid, since the original uploaders likely don't hold the copyrights.  Using third-party tools to download them from YouTube is also against the terms of YouTube.  I'm mentioning this because many Internet forums ban discussions of these things because of the legality, and I just want Richard to be aware of that.  What's more, the movie industry is still actively cracking down on these things.  One of the most popular movie-ripping tools called AnyDVD was taken down earlier this year.

I will just say if you LEGALLY purchased these videos then it's ok to discuss them here. However if not, can you repost your screen shot without the movie titles?

It is unlawful to even rip discs you buy yourself (and/or download a copy that was ripped by someone else) and store the decrypted copy in your hard drive, if you want to follow the letter of the law.  I collect movies too, and I get why these things are done (and they are quite prevalent too); but I'm just mentioning this to help the forum.

Also want to say that I've seen the topics of ripping/downloading mentioned in this forum a few times, so I'm not mentioning this just because of Kevin's post.

I'm a big-time movie collector myself so I know the usual lament of movie collectors: there is often no way to keep a permanent copy of a movie unless you rip it from a commercial disc and/or download it.  I've gone that route myself, but have stopped, not necessarily due to the utter respect of the laws (which are imperfect), but to the increasingly greater downside if I kept investing into it.  There is a long list of downsides, which would be OT to post here.  Maybe a future thread in the off-topic forum.

One way to get lawful digital copies is buying movie discs that included a "digital copy" (see picture below).  Such a copy can be viewed on most streaming services like Vudu, Apple TV, Amazon, etc.  This is the closest thing to permanently owning a digital copy.  You would lose the copy only if your streaming service (Apple TV, Amazon, Google, etc.) went out of business.

As to why many forums ban these topics outright, that's because these topics may lead to increasingly shady discussions of what tools to use to rip or download movies, who make them, how to pay them, any how-to guides, etc.  I'm not saying you guys are shady, just pointing out the possibility of what this would lead to if these discussions were allowed.

I understand where you're coming from, and I appreciate your concern with making sure this Forum stays "clean" legally. That is, of course, my intention. As a copyright holder and content creator myself, I have the utmost respect for other creators and would never allow such unethical behavior on my website.

I will assume that any discussion about "downloads" or other movies are ones that the poster (especially one of my moderators) owns a LEGAL copy of.

We used to be able to record personal copies of everything with VCR -- record live TV shows, copy commercial VHS tapes to blank tapes, etc.  Back then everything was unencrypted.  And the law was that if you didn't sell your recordings for profits, it was fine.  Nowadays, the only commercial videos that are unencrypted are over-the-air TV signals that you receive with antennae.  But even that option is going away.  I have hundreds of over-the-air stations to receive, but the high-rise buildings and the weather cause poor receptions to many of them.  Many stations also have to shut down due to streaming's popularity.  Commercial DVDs, Blu-rays, and streaming videos are all encrypted, and you can't even make your copies even if you bought them.  If your DVD is scratched, you lose the only copy you have.  If the DVD is out of print (as every disc will be eventually, just like books), you can't even buy it except paying big $$$ to scalpers on Ebay.  So these are the typical frustrations movie collectors have.

Wow. That sucks. I was unaware. I've never been "a collector." I used to rip my own DVDs back in the day because it was easier to keep them on a media server than to try to keep track of DVDs. Same with making MP3s out of my CD collection. Today I just use Amazon for everything. Amazon music plays whatever I want to hear for $9 a month, and I'll either rent or buy movies on Amazon Video. So much easier than the alternatives. Then again, I don't watch a ton of movies. I usually wait until they come on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, etc.

CDs are unencrypted so you can convert them to MP3 for private use, which the law allows.  In fact, Microsoft has a help page on how to rip music from CDs with Windows Media Player: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/burn-and-rip-cds-235021d5-e1c7-8616-4efd-4f4965fe6b91 .  But DVDs and Blu-rays are encrypted -- the formats were inherently designed that way to fight privacy.  The CD format was created much earlier, at a time when piracy wasn't a top concern, so it wasn't designed with encryption.  Both the movie and music industries are quite serious about privacy, as we know.  That's why YouTube videos are easily struck with music copyright warnings.  If CDs were invented today, they would surely be encrypted just like movie discs.  It is not the copying of DVDs and Blu-rays that breaks the law, but the breaking of the encryption that does.

Your paid videos aren't encrypted, I assume.  So I would worry about people distributing your videos freely on the Internet if I were you.

You don't have to be a best-selling, well-known creator to worry about illegal distribution.  I heard one indie filmmaker who said that his low-budget film that few people had heard of was downloaded tens of thousands of times when a bootleg copy was uploaded to the Internet.

Sorry for going OT even though I said I wouldn't go OT.  Hollywood studios have a new way of combating illegal uploads: they upload their movies for free viewing too, to places like YouTube, Tubi, Roku Channel, and others.  And it's not just in the US.  Many international movie studios also do the same.  Rather than seeing bootleggers upload blurry bootleg captures from VHS tapes of old movies (because that's often the only source) and getting all the views, they dig into their only archives, restore the films to nice picture quality, upload them to YouTube or whatever, and get the views themselves, plus ad revenue to boot.  This benefit them as well as the viewers, because it's impossible to release every show on disc.