Background story: I signed up for CinemaNow.com and started
downloading E-Dreams, the story of an Internet start-up in New York.
Fair enough I paid my 5 bucks. Then I realized I can only watch this
movie within a 48 hour time-frame thanks to Windows Media Player 9 and
digital rights management. I'm truly disappointed because I don't even
have the time really to watch this movie before weekend*, nor for that
price would I have expected a pure rental service -- I even planned to
burn it on DVD to watch on my TV. Anyhow, I found out CinemaNow.com
offers specially labeled "download-to-own" movies. Unfortunately there
are only a few dozen available movies, all completely obscure and of
no interest to me.

So here goes my question: Where, if anywhere at all, can I find legal
Hollywoodish movies to download and own? (Bandwidth or harddisk
storage both not a problem. Must work in Germany too.)

I searched for something like "legal movies" which brought me to
CinemaNow.com and Movielink.com (the latter of which does seem to have
gone out of business, or at or at least I can't find anything
"digital" there.) CinemaNow.com is good but there are not enough
download-to-own movies.

Also, would KaZaA be a legal alternative? I saw the program before but
from the looks of it it is slow, and copyright is mostly not
respected.

Note: If there is no such thing I'm looking for yet, a short overview
of the market and alternatives and when to expect this to become
reality to me would be a good answer as well.

Thanks for your help!

*As I understand it, the 48hr period starts when I hit "Watch" for the
first time, but I already hit "Watch" to check if it works!

PS: I have Windows XP Home Edition.

PPS: CinemaNow.com is a good service nevertheless from what I can see,
just that it's mostly a rental store.

kazaa should not be an option for you. it is simply a way of
transferring files between computers (peers), enforces no copyrights,
and is generally used for illegal music/movie/software trading.

if you are interested in legal movie downloads, don't bother with kazaa

The above comment is accurate when applied to the "legal Hollywoodish
movies" that you're looking for. However it is inaccurate as a whole.
An increasing number of independent artists, in a variety of media,
are using peer to peer as a means of distribution. It is a cheap and
effective way of getting their voices heard in an monopoly market.

Some older movies (mostly really older) are available for free
download at the Internet Archive. The most famous would be the
original 'Night of the Living Dead', the original 'DOA' and the
notorious propaganda flick 'Reefer Madness'.

Internet Archive - Feature Films
www.archive.org/ movies/collection.php?collection=feature_films

I'm looking forward to seeing other comments here. I'm sure there are
other legal places to download free movies, just as there are an
increasing number of legal places to download free music.

Yes, the archive.org pointer is valuable. I came across this site
before and in fact downloaded many movies there. Also thanks for
clearing up the Kazaa issue.