What is the best way to download free movies on the internet without resorting to piracy?

Not sure about downloading, but http://www.hulu.com is fairly handy from time to time. The selection is a bit limited, but free is free.

There are tools out there to capture the video from streaming sites like Youtube, but a lot of youtube content is in violation of copyright to begin with. Saving the stream to disk is probably a violation of Youtube's terms of service. If you want to have a clear legal right to watch content, go to Amazon's video on demand, or iTunes. Hulu is driven by ad revenue, but I don't think you can download their content without violating their TOS. Everything else is a gray area.

It depends on what you mean by "free movies". Downloading cinematic releases for free on the internet is piracy, unless free download is expressly permitted by the copyright holder or unless the movies are in the public domain; are you looking for cinematic releases, or independent, small films that never make it to a theater or other commercial release?

Fancast.com has tons of stuff. But streaming, not downloading.

What about archive.org's http://www.archive.org/details/movies? It depends what movies you are looking for, of course.

What is the best way to download free movies on the internet without resorting to piracy? There is none. Some, like Hulu, offer streaming. Netflix streams several items from their catalog for subscribers. I don't know, but I have been told that there are websites that exist where one can download free movies. Do these places actually exist? Yes, and they're all in violation of copyright, at least in the U.S.

mkultra is probably 98% correct, but keep in mind copyright is not in perpetuity by default. Check archive.org.

Probably not what you're looking for, but there are http://www.archive.org/details/moviesandfilms at archive.org.

I am assuming you are writing from the US and are asking about these issues with respect to US laws and regulations. Netflix streams are available to some subscribers. There's a US$4.99/month option that doesn't include streaming. I think the lowest cost plan there that includes streaming of some of the catalog is around US$8 or US$9. Anyhow while the streaming is cool and useful it is certainly not Netflix's entire catalog of movies (I assume because Netflix can't get permission to stream all of these movies), so don't get your hopes up there. Hulu, similarly, doesn't have all movies available for streaming, just some. Generally (with some notable exceptions), you'll find a lot of C-list and D-list movies available online for legitimate streaming, you'll find few B-list and A-list movies available for legitimate streaming. You have to be careful with downloading. Downloading usually contravenes websites' Terms of Use or Acceptable Use Policies. That you can download the flash video or other means by which these streaming sites (including YouTube, Hulu, etc. - usually by using browser add-ons or dedicated download tools) doesn't mean that that use is intended by the site's owners/manager or allowed by the site's policies. It also may be contributing to your delinquency in that you may be, in doing so, violating DRM and/or the DMCA. If it's a streaming site and it doesn't offer a legitimate (i.e. button-wise, link-wise) method for you to download the video(s) in question, then it's probably best to assume that it's not explicitly allowed and you are at the very least breaking the site policy if not an applicable US law. It is possible that there are some private sites or smaller community sites that have different distribution/revenue deals with media companies, so you really have to do careful research yourself to determine whether the use the site's putting the media toward, or the site's policies/deals are really appropriate to the use, even if it does allow you to stream or download movies you can't find anywhere else. Above all, though, remember that if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. Even YouTube makes revenue through views of videos (through Ads) and Hulu, which is a pretty good deal, still requires viewers to watch ads before during and after the streaming broadcast.