The Dallas Buyers Club interests have made it known that the more than 4700 Australians who downloaded the movie illegally should be worried about being prosecuted for their activities. However, tech pundits are sceptical that the attempt to curtail the widespread downloads of pirated content will be effective.

iTWire has been running a poll for the past two weeks posing the question of whether Internet Service Providers should be forced to block pirate websites and, while the poll is by no means a scientifically accurate survey, the figures show that more than 70% oppose any forced blocking of such sites. The Australian Government is pushing to force site blocking legislation through Parliament in a similar manner to the data retention law that was recently passed in bipartisan fashion with the Labor opposition.

In a related turn of events, reports from around the web reveal that the interest in anonymising tools for web surfers and downloaders, such as VPNs has surged.

VPNs enable web surfers to hide their IP addresses so that they can download content without revealing their online identity.

According to a report from file sharing and net privacy news site TorrentFreak  searches on Google for the term “VPN” has increased fourfold in recent weeks.

One of the more popular VPN service and product providers TorGuard has reported a “massive jump” in Australian subscribers and VPN router sales after the Dallas Buyers Club court decision.