""anti-piracy"" legislation is made by people who don't understand the first thing about computers or technology. a computer's primary function is to COPY. people go through so many hoops just to make it as hard as possible for your computer to do the thing it was made to do, and you end up with disgusting bloated garbage and a machine that barely works. "illegal downloading" is a misnomer for "changing the file reference from a temporary non-volatile storage system to a less temporary non-volatile storage system" which is a single instruction.
everything on the internet must be copied by every router it passes through before reaching your copying machine (aka computer)
it's not "stealing" any more than holding onto the karaoke microphone a little longer than everyone else is "stealing." the legislation has such loose definition it's impossible to actually not go against it, because every operating system will handle temporary data differently. Is it illegal if i look at my temp files and see something left over from when i was "allowed" to look at it?