Is a membership/subsription to a website through a referal program considered to be mlm?

I know that with mlm’s you need to sell a legitimiate product. However i was thinking that if that product was a subsription/membership can you create a legal downline with that as a product?
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Comments
It depends what the membership site is offering – if all it is offering is a money line or a pyramid scheme – it is illegal, if it offers advice, training, eBooks etc to members only then it may be legal depending upon the value that the site offers.
There are many instances of membership sites that are nothing more than Ponzi schemes and yet other membership sites offering real value and service are perfectly legitimate websites