Streamnation is now adding the ability to stream movies and TV shows to your friends in addition to photos and videos. It may sound a bit too good to be true but founder Jonathan Benassaya, who is also co-founder of music streaming service Deezer, says he is confident in the legality of the outfit.
If you're unfamiliar with the service, here's how it works. You upload a movie to your account and make it available on your profile. From here, your friends can see the flick and elect to stream it on-demand to any computer or iOS device. When they are watching the movie, it will be unavailable for you to view at the same time.
Benassaya says this method is essentially borrowing in the digital world as it has the same restrictions that lending out a physical movie would - you can't watch it while your friend is. He said the concept of borrowing inside of fair use is restricted to friends and family but more importantly, there isn't any copying involved. And since you aren't distributing copies of movies or TV shows to your friends, there aren't any copyright infringement issues to worry with.
How heavily utilized the new feature will be, however, remains to be seen. That's because some 25 percent of the site's users are pro photographers and more recently, they've been attracting small video production studios looking for an alternative to Vimeo and Ooyala.