What it is not so clear is about a person that watches an almost certain pirated movie posted online. Does the watcher also commits some sorts of felony ?
I'm not concerned with morality here, just with the legal implications of watching "free" movies online.
Those sites that lets you stream free movies are legal, at least in the United States. I built one of those sites myself so I know a little about them. As long as ALL your content are links posted to 3rd party sites, you're basically just an index. You don't expect people to sue Google for indexing bittorrent sites do you? Needless to say, you will still face legal complications- Sites that stream tv have been served before and shut down although the verdict usually results in a not guilty. If you check out the footer of those streaming sites, you'll notice almost all of them states explicitly "We do not host any content on blah blah.com. Please serve your DCMA copyright notices directly to the 3rd party websites that host them..."
Even the 3rd party sites that HOST the content is arguably hard to convict. The terms and agreements state that the responsibility lies with the actual user. The user agrees prior to signing up and every time they're making use of the website that they are not uploading copyrighted content.
[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071913-17/senate-group-b...
I'd be very interested in hearing about the legality of the users of these sites.
Currently using the (currently) legal www.zediva.com - $1 a movie, and I love the concept of renting a DVD player over in the states. I hope that it takes off.