I was wondering, is streaming considered stealing or copyright infringement to the law?
Yes, unauthorized duplication, distribution, or performance of a work protected by copyright law is infringement. There’s no question about it.
Services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc., are not infringing because they have authorization, that is, a licensing contract with the copyright owners.
I see. The uploader is doing copyright infringement, but does the same apply to the person watching it? I read this here:
If I copy the entirety of a book, and then sell the copy, everybody would agree that I broke the law.
But the analogy based on the OP deals with the reader. Is the reader of that copy guilty of infringement?
And incidentally–blanket statements regarding this issue are often not helpful. For example, your statement would mean that libraries are automatically guilty of copyright infringement. If you pay attention to the copyright statements found in a great many books, you will notice that they do not authorize such lending activity.
Note that some TV shows are not covered by copyright. E.g., a handful of episodes of The Andy Griffith Show (assuming the still-in-copyright music is taken out).
In addition some shows under copyright might be freely distributable for one reason or another. E.g., Fred Rogers stated in the Betamax case that he didn’t care if anyone copied his shows. The more kids who saw them the better.
Some people try to put streaming into a separate category from downloading. They are just fooling themselves.
Viewing a streaming work is not copyright infringement because the viewer is not making a copy (yes, there is buffering, but that’s never an issue).
It’s an infringement if the viewer has downloaded the file onto their computer because a copy is being made.
Copyright is the right to make copies. It only comes into play if you make a copy.
That article explicitly says that (Canadian) law “exempts temporary reproductions of copyrighted works if completed for technical reasons”, downloaded or not downloaded, that the rights holders do not know who the viewers are anyway (and therefore have no dealings with them), and, moreover, while it is possible that a given streaming site distributed a tv show without permission (in which case the site could potentially face legal problems), the overwhelming majority of streaming video in North America is in fact authorized.
In other words, enjoy your show.
Reading a book does not implicate any of the relevant exclusive rights of a copyright owner. Streaming is not the same as reading.
What libraries do is explicitly exempted by the copyright law. Streaming is not.
“Blanket statements regarding this issue are often not helpful.” A lot of streaming—for example what Spotify does—is treated as distribution of a copy of a work.
The internet user might not be committing infringement by viewing the performance of a work, but might be committing infringement by causing his or her computer to make a copy of (because, yes, streaming does this) and perform the work.
No. The right to make copies is only one of the rights implicated in copyright law:
You cannot stream without making a copy of the work. It’s not possible. Streaming just means that you start watching before the copying is complete, and possibly (though not necessarily) that the copy will be deleted shortly afterwards.
That said, for almost every TV show, there’s going to be at least one and often multiple legal ways to stream it, usually involving payment for some subscription service which has made arrangements with the show’s owners.
How is this different than watching a show over the air in the old days. Yes, I realize that generally the “copy” of an image was only fleetingly there and immediately replaced by the next, but this seems to be a difference of degree not substance to watching a video stream. Does it become copying when I have 2 seconds, 30 seconds, a half hour in my buffer. And yes, of course, it’s easier to capture that than using a VCR was, but legally what’s the difference if I don’t retain the copy?
No difference (you are not supposed to keep the copy forever, though). The EU directive (for instance) anticipates this:
There was a guy who was making money selling streaming players pre-loaded with a list of pirate sites who lost his court case, but, again, that really has nothing to do with you as the viewer.
At least half, if not a great majority, of YouTube music videos would, I believe, be illegal content according the same application of copyright law.
Let’s say you go to your YouTube playlist, and a notice pops up on one that it has been removed. Guess what? Last time you watched it,you were a criminal, because it was still illegal, but not yet removed under protest from the copyright owners.
Is the burden on a YouTube viewer to confirm that content is not copyright protected, before watching it?
Because the broadcaster was legally transmitting the signal intending for you to watch them!
I can’t believe people are making these lame excuses putting streaming into a different magic box from other copyright infringements.
Maybe if you only have a few minutes worth saved at a time, each individual two minute portion technically falls under Fair Use 
Are you suggesting that watching a show on Youtube or Netflix constitutes copyright infringement? If so, you are in the minority.
The guy who got in trouble was turning a profit selling custom pirate boxes. Nobody is going after the users of streaming appliances because (1) most streaming is completely legitimate and authorized, and (2) the police are not breaking down every citizen’s door to check whether they may have used a streaming service and done something questionable (the source may not have been legit, or the user kept a bootleg copy on his hard drive).
Is Streaming the same as downloading or not?
They also don’t authorize my putting the book on my kid’s high chair to boost him at the dinner table but that does not mean it’s illegal.
When you buy a physical item, including a book, DVD, or software, you own that physical copy and may legally loan it, give it away, resell it, shred it, or anything else besides make a copy of it.
There are two ways to look at this, although I don’t how the law looks at it (IANAL). One is the strictly technical way that you have described. It is not possible to view or listen to anything whatsoever on your computer without there being a copy of it on your computer in some form.
However, the law generally lags behind technology. YouTube user terms let you view a streaming video as many times as you want, but forbid you from capturing the stream as a copy you can store and replay whenever you want. They have gone after various online services that offer to do that, which I used to use but have discontinued the service, at least in the U.S. RealPlayer used to have a YouTube video ripper but I think it was discontinued.
So the companies who control the content definitely see a difference between “making a copy by doing whatever has to happen technically to enable streaming” vs. “making a copy that you have constructive receipt of.” (to borrow a financial term)
Violating a website’s terms of service is not against the law, though that is probably a sidetrack to the OP’s question.
ETA: a recent judgement that using automatic downloading tools in violation of a website’s rules is not a computer crime.