A suit filed in U.S. District Court in Arizona Thursday alleges that William Homer, 41, illegally downloaded the 2005 movies "Are We There Yet?" and "Hitch" on March 25 from the Internet via the BearShare file-sharing program.
Both movies were in theaters at the time. Homer said Thursday he didn’t know how to download movies from the Web, and his neighbor coaxed him into downloading the movies onto his computer because using BearShare "would be perfectly legal to do."
Though owning and using a copy of applications such as BearShare is legal, downloading movies from a peer-to-peer network is not, even if a small fee is attached to the download. Music downloads are different, as many file-sharing companies have agreements with music labels. No movie studio to date has allowed downloads.
