Please excuse me if this has already been asked, I searched through a few pages and didnt see anyone asking the same thing ->

How is this legal without paying? For example, you would normally have to pay for a certain cable tv product to access a lot of these USA channels... Are these channels themselves providing a live feed online, and thats what we're watching... Or is someone hijacking these channels and spending lots of money to host this for us to watch?

Thanks in advance for the kind, tolerant, and spoon-fed answers :P