All creative content is protected by copyright laws in the U.S., which protect the creator's work from being used without their permission. The creator can give permission for the use of their content, in the form of a license. Legal movie downloading sites possess one of these licenses and are usually fairly open about this fact, as well as about the sources of their content. You should beware of sites that do the opposite, as it is likely that they are operating illegally. One way to access movies and TV shows online is to pay a fee on Video-on-Demand (VoD) host sites. However, there are many free, legal sites that offer videos that are made available by the multimedia files' owners for a one-time royalty fee or for a charity donation. Some of the most consulted ones include Archive.org and Open Culture. READ MORE:putlockers new site