happypig
Staring at the rude boys
A couple of years ago it was reported on BT's intranet (the internal version of the internet) news page that they had "successfully blocked ALL streams since March (2017)" and would continue to do so. The senior manager was giving himself a hearty slap on the back for being so clever. Meanswhilst, people continued to watch, unaffected.
The truth is, the ISP's can and do block streams (especially free ones found on reddit and the like) but it's much harder to block them on a service you log-in to (usually paid services). If you also run a paid service through a VPN, it becomes almost impossible to block it as they cannot tell what the packets are carrying; even if they could tell you are receiving a stream they don't know whether it's a content thief or location restricted commercial services such as NBC sports which isn't available (officially) in the UK.
The police don't really have anything to do with it unless they are raiding a provider of illicit content, it's all the ISPs.
