Rule clarifications about illegal downloading?

It is all about format of the question and the subject. If someone asks about a current movie or a PPV, those are illegal. Anything done within the past 25 years are going to be copyrighted 99.9% of the time. If a person ask if something is in the public domain and if yes, where they can download it, that is ok. For answers, any general upload site is going to be a violation. It takes a site like Librivox, Hula, or i-Tunes not to be a violation as an answer.

If you know the material requested is on the web, TV, or Movie Theater but you have to pay for it, then report people asking for free. If you are unsure, just skip it.

All of those are violations here and some are illegal due to copyright infringement. It would depend on if the video was publicly posted and a disclaimer was posted. For instance if a band posts a video publicly and you decide to repost it you need to have a disclaimer on your video explaining you have no rights to it and you can not profit from it. Same with movies or anything video wise sold to gain profit or monetary value. -Jacob

Just to be clear it's not a violation nor illegal to post a public video here as long as the one who posted the video has permission or a disclaimer. I hope that makes sense. Sometimes I have a hard time explaining things. However if it's like a movie that's still in theaters or hasn't released it for free it's always illegal against the terms of service here. -Jacob

If they are not specifically asking for, or informing of an illegal site, no. There are free legal sites, they don't have popular or first run stuff, also all torrent sites are not illegal, it is something you have to take case by case.

If someone says, I have the Spiderman Reboot at this site, uh yeah, you can bet it's illegal.