When you stream a video, from Netflix or Hulu or YouTube or HBO Go or whatever else you have on hand, there’s a basic assumption: That video is for you to watch, and just that once.
Maybe you share it with whoever else is in the room at the time, but it’s given with the condition that you’re just taking it in as a one-off right there, not saving it forever, not rebroadcasting it somewhere else. It’s how the system works and how the deals are made.
But even with paywalls and user names and passwords, even though that stream might be broken up by ads, there’s a pristine piece of video somewhere in the code—unadulterated video beamed down from whatever server. A stream that, if you really wanted to, you could find a way to rip to your hard drive and upload to The Pirate Bay. A stream you could broadcast back out again, with your own ads up against it. That’s just the way that it goes. But what if that video had your name right there in it?
Source: Popular Mechanics