I came across this topic again: Is online streaming illegal?
There are a lot of streaming sites. For example: http://musicmp3.ru/artist_neil-young.html ...
USA: Bill S.978 http://gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s978rs/pdf/BILLS-112s978rs.pdf
Streaming as such is not illegal (Bill S.978 never made it). If the bill would ever make it, it would only target websites or people who profit from illegally streaming copyrighted material:
http://www.coons.senate.gov/blog/post/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-protect-ip-act ...
This law isn’t intended to go after legitimate companies with streaming as part of their business model, or amateur YouTube users who are not intending to profit from their conduct.
Also in Europe streaming is not illegal. For example Germany: According to the Ministry of Justice’s opinion the watching of illicit movies on a browser-based streaming site now appears to be permissible (temporary copy), whereas downloading a movie which is stored on a hard drive for later viewing (reproduction) remains illegal. In the end the European Court of Justice will have to decide. Until now no such decision has been made. There is one decision of the European Court of Justice from 2013: Unauthorised retransmission breaches copyright. There was nothing said about streaming as such.
http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=134604&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=146971