(Standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer)
CaTaClYsM: Let's say you subscribe to CoolMovieChannel1, and tape NeatoMovie from it. CoolMovieChannel1 has permission from the copyright holders to air it, and under fair use laws, you can tape it to watch at a later time or whatever. When downloading anime, however, usually the provider (say, Usenet poster or FTP archiver) does NOT have permission to distribute, so the law's being broken on their end at least. Exception: Sites like Sputnik7 and one of Cartoon Network's sites stream anime from time to time, but I don't know about the legality of saving it.
But, if you download NeatoMovie from Joe, and it aired on CMC1 yesterday, and you subscribe to CMC1, you could try and claim the copy you got from Joe was taped from TV (a la TiVo), but still, Joe didn't have permission to supply you with NeatoMovie.
I heard the argument years ago that movie channels were against people lending taped movies to friends without subscriptions, and that technically, any movies you tape from their channels should be deleted when your subscription lapses, but I haven't heard about any lawsuits over these matters.






