IMO Its always been a bit of a grey legal area this. Im not sure anyone really knows what the law is as there have been so few test cases. But the way i see it:
1 - Its illegal to distribute
2 - Its illegal to host
3 - Its illegal to download
BUT - it isnt illegal to stream or watch. Otherwise if you happened to watch something on youtube that was against copyright law then you could be breaking the law. But thats just silly because its not your responsibility for what someone else has posted. Its mostly the posters and secondarily its Youtubes responsibility (or vice versa - depending on which side of the fence you sit on). Its the hosts responsibility to take down such content, of course, but it just gets re uploaded by someone else, resulting in this endless cat and mouse game between poster and hoster. And ultimately the consumer wins, as they have no real legal responsibility and in the meantime can watch should be copyrighted content until it gets taken down by the host. And this doesnt even begin to count all the numerous sites on the internet that host "links" to often legitimate carriers showing copyrighted content (Daily motion, Youtube and others).
The area i think a parallel could be drawn is with abandonware in gaming. Sites like home of the underdogs, which is not (as far as im aware) a piracy site have been around for a while now. And it hosts games that have been abandoned by commercial entities and hosts them free of charge for distribution. And their justification for doing so is that you simply cannot buy XYZ game at commercial units. So they host it on their website instead for free. GOG put paid to a lot of their titles (a good thing IMO). But they are still around and still host stuff. To my knowledge they voluntarily take down titles once they begin to be sold by a commercial entity. Gaps in the market like this invariably get filled by sites like home of the underdogs. And a whole host of retro films and TV shows exist online which are simply not catered for by the likes of Netflix.
I got incredibly pissed off recently when I realized that Netflix actually makes it impossible to take screenshots of their streams, which I find utterly ridiculous. Taking a screenshot of a show to use it to make a meme is textbook fair use.
If you are watching it on a PC cant you just do the old print screen button, paste it into paint, and do it that way?
I don't use Netflix, and I don't understand this.
Simple logic suggest the service provider sells the service
with a only one log-on per account at a time for the price.
Although this holds true, what about a family of 4? Mum and dad want to watch show A. And kids want to watch shows B & C. Yes they could get the premium subscription and have it on multiple devices. But i dont think many will see it that way because they dont always use it that way. And i have some sympathy with that position. Its a bit like me being charged a higher rate because i play 1 online game for multiplayer. When 90% of my gaming time is spent in blissful single player mode.