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Site blocking of alleged pirate sites has become routine in a number of countries, including the UK and Australia. Such blocks are generally trivial to circumvent and instructions to do so easy to find. These blocks take the form of injunctions to ISP's. A quick search reveals that the initial order was obtained by the Publishers Assocation and related to 7 named sites and 5 ISP's, BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk and EE. This may well have been expanded by now. I did not come across any change in the pre-existing situation regarding users and penalties. Users of course breach copyright when they download a pirate copy and are of course at risk of being sued. I'm not sure if there is a criminal offence involved in the UK.
I have not linked to the news reports concerned since they actually name the 7 pirate sites.
I do not of course advocate people downloading pirate copies.
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