Is it legal to capture live streaming video on the internet?

Since this is posted in the “Social” section, I’ll take a stab at this.

It is probably legal because some of these sites either own the rights to the shows/movies, or they pay royalties to the owner for each time one is downloaded.

Although I’m not a lawyer, I think it’s legal so long as you’re only recording it for your own personal use and won’t be distributing it, and you were able to watch it legally the first time around.

It’s illegal to make an unauthorized copy of something to which you don’t own the copyright or a license. Depending on the producer or rightsholder involved copying those particular streams may or may not be illegal.

The process of capturing streams, in itself, is not illegal.

Don’t you guys read those FBI warnings at the beginning?

I say do it anyway, but it’s usually pretty illegal.

Probably also against the “Terms of Use” for any web site that is serving up something interesting (NetFlix/Hulu). We all read those too, right? When we signed up ?

These days it seems more difficult to capture the stream on sites like that.
But frankly the idea of capture appeals to my hacker/libertarian side. If it made its way into my home it’s mine !

I can’t at all get behind any laws that criminalize deciphering/decoding radio waves. If it impinges on my body I have a right to do anything I want with it. You have a right to encode and scramble it as much as you want but if you can’t keep it out of my living room it’s mine to do with what I want.
I don’t find it cost effective to do anything unconventional with radio waves, but that’s how I feel about it. And in general I’m all for it if you can figure out how to do that, just look out for the DRM police.

I think it could depend on what country you are in. I know here in the UK copyright laws are still pretty archaic, they are looking at changing them but strictly speaking anyone who owns an mp3 player here and copies music from a CD they own to it, then they are breaking UK copyright law. If they buy an mp3 and put that on the player then they are not breaking copyright law. source