I'm not sure it will ever really be considered a major enough offense to "illegally" download something. IMO the act of piracy is actually the public dissemination/sharing of something you do not have licensing rights to publicly disseminate/share. For example:
"7. Can I show NFL games in my bar or restaurant?
NFL SUNDAY TICKET is available for commercial locations, including bars and restaurants.. For more information, please call 1-800-242-0473 or visit
www.directstartv.com/commercial.
Commercial locations require an appropriate license agreement."
Also, another related issue but with showing the Super Bowl at a church:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=4229536&page=1
The interesting thing about that is that unlike with the whole timeshifting argument, this is actually at the time of showing. So if public sharing of it can't even happen WITHOUT timeshifting unless an additional license is purchased, how should it be allowed WITH timeshifting? I realize in the first case that it's a commercial entity showing it and it helps them make money, but not sure a church could be considered a commercial entity.
I do think the law has shown to be on the side of people who share with their friends. People however are not "friends" with random people around the world online that they don't know, and even if it's under the guise of backup, publicly "storing" a file is no different than publicly sharing a file. If it was on a backup site where password was required to get the file, and the person putting it on there doesn't post the password publicly, then that to me isn't piracy. Even if they email a friend the password and that friend emails a friend the password etc. until it's gone to a million people. Or even if the first person gives the password to a friend and the friend posts it online - the first person wasn't guilty of anything but the friend would be IMO. The moment the password is posted on a public place, they've committed piracy IMO. If they're backing the file up on a site where it's publicly available without a password, at the point of putting the file up they've committed piracy IMO.
I say IMO because I can't pretend to know the law on this - I don't. But just judging from policies like the NFL one mentioned above, it would seem that the major difference between sharing and piracy is private vs. public and people you know vs. people you don't.
One gray area that I'm not sure how to interpret is a site like Hulu. Obviously some US shows do show on channels in Canada for instance, and as such Canadians can view those shows, but given that Hulu is US-Only more or less, it would seem that the license-holders of those shows do not want viewing rights to be given to people outside the US (probably because many of the US commercials would be useless to show to them). So there may be cases where piracy extends to viewing something you don't have viewing rights for, but determining who has viewing rights for what is a whole 'nother can of worms I guess.