Once upon a time, there was a network of highly successful movie streaming websites based in Vietnam. The network comprised five domain names that gained worldwide popularity by offering free, pirated content to their users. The Motion Picture Association of America once referred to this handful of websites (including GoStream) as the “most popular illegal sites.”
In 2017, the US ambassador to Vietnam started holding talks with the country’s Minister of Information and Communications, Truong Minh Tuan, about fighting the plethora of illegal video-streaming websites based in the country. The network of those five websites we already mentioned was on the ambassador’s list (123Movies, GoMoves, GoStream, MeMovies, and 123movieshub). It took a while, but the ambassador’s efforts came to fruition when the five websites went down, at last, on 19 March 2018.
However, when an illegal video streaming website becomes notorious, many clones start popping up everywhere else on the internet. Thus the new websites perpetuate the original website’s functionality. And the authorities usually do not pursue the new clones for reasons only they understand. Unfortunately, this is precisely what happened with GoStream.
So GoStream is alive through several clones. Of course, the original website is gone, but the replacements are almost precisely the same in terms of functionality, and you can still use them.
Legal disclaimer: This is merely an informational article and is not intended to promote piracy in any way. We are strictly against all such acts. Also, we are not legal advisors of any sort, so don’t take any information you read on this page as legal advice. We encourage you consult with a local legal expert in case you are unsure about copyright laws in your country.
Is the GoStream site safe to use?
We covered the basics above. But should you use GoStream.site at all? This is the question that we will explore in this article. Unfortunately, the answer isn’t straightforward because illegal video streaming sites can complicate your life unnecessarily. After all, the clones bring on many new complications to the table.
There is a minimal amount of information you need to know about GoStream. First of all, it offers a comprehensive catalog of movies at no charge to its users. Second, the website itself stores no content. Instead, it aggregates the links that point to the servers where a specific title is held. It’s a link hub more than a streaming server.
Third, several clones are pestered with ads. These are not just annoying. Many of them have the potential to spread trackers and other malware, so there are websites in this network that are a genuine security risk. And last but not least, GoStream is illegal in most of the world’s jurisdictions. This is why it’s free and has no geo-location locks.
Is GoStream a legal website?
The most likely answer to this question is “no.” There are three countries in the world where you can own copyrighted material without paying for it legally as long as you do not use it commercially. And there are a handful of other countries in which there are no copyright protection laws. So unless you live in San Marino, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, and a handful of other jurisdictions, GoStream is an illegal website because it distributes copyrighted works without any authorization and compensation for the copyright’s owners.
That means before you go ahead and decide that GoStream is your cup of tea, we encourage you to find out everything you can about your domestic copyright laws and your government’s stance on them –some governments pay lip service to copyright protection and do little or nothing to enforce them, some others are very serious about this issue and using a website like GoStream could create severe problems for you.
In essence, it all depends on your place of residence. And it goes like this: Poland, Spain, and Switzerland allow you to have or use pirated material as long as it’s for personal purposes only.
But then, the countries that criminalize piracy but do not enforce the law actively include Slovenia, Uruguay, Slovakia, India, Romania, Singapore, Mexico, Israel, the Philippines, Czech Republic, Denmark, Netherlands, Iran, Greece, Egypt, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Canada.
Lastly, the countries that consider piracy illegal and prosecute it are the US, South Africa, Russia, Portugal, Latvia, Japan, Italy, the UK, Germany, France, Finland, China, and Australia.
And now, let us consider the difference between downloading and streaming a movie. Some users believe that both things are essentially different processes that have nothing to do with each other. But alas, it is not so. From the legal point of view, there’s no significant difference between downloading and streaming.
And even from the technical point of view, both processes are almost the same, with the only difference that, after streaming, no physical copy of the data remains in storage within your devices. But the information traveled the internet to your device, bit by bit, and you saw the movie at your leisure.
The relevant thing is the legal meaning that both terms have, and in both cases, you’re breaking the law in most of the world. So do not try to deceive yourself. If you live in a jurisdiction hostile to illegal streaming, GoStream can get you in trouble.
Let’s be even more clear about this issue: streaming a movie is precisely the same as downloading the film from a torrent site at the correct speed to see it in real-time and then deleting the resulting file once you’re done.