Is streaming movies/shows via free websites legal in the USA/California?
Pirating content is illegal, but the specific wording of it implies downloading or distributing content is illegal. When streaming a movie from a website, you aren't downloading it per se, you're just viewing it in the browser with the content temporarily buffered to memory that is inaccessible otherwise (obviously you can do things to access it but we're not doing that in this scenario).
If streaming was considered downloading/distributing, then simply watching it legally would also be piracy because you do the same for legal websites, not to mention all the copyrighted material on youtube.
Also to state the obvious, yes I know this isn't enforced regardless, I'm just curious because I've seen people say it technically isn't illegal even if you were to be prosecuted. Is that true?