Youtube started out 'allegedly' by members of their team uploading pirated hollywood movies (because they had no content), posing as users to fall under the "user-content" policy to make the company not liable.
They are all breaking the rules all the way down, but when they make it, they know exactly what to do to fill the loopholes to prevent others to do to them what they did on others. That's big tech's ethics for you: Move fast and break things, then wall yourself in.
edit: in previous years some anime communities uploaded episodes to photo sites. They chunked the episodes in small JPGs with the video data encrypted. Just download hundreds of photos, join them and you got the episode :)
I also remember how we (I?) used to hard link the /tmp/RANDOM.tmp files that youtube buffered into so the video parts don't get automatically unlinked and we could then stitch them back with ffmpeg or whatever buggy fork ubuntu had in its repos. Full Star wars in glorious 240p! (I had shitty internet.)
The good old days. Back when people called streaming what it really is (downloading) and exercised their god-given right to keep what was sent to them.
If you look at the plaintiffs, Spotify is number 8 on the list, where the rest are the usual suspects: major record labels and distributors. Seems like Spotify was dragged along because they are beholden to rights holders, and they have to show that they take this seriously, and do something about it.