In what’s considered a landmark court ruling today, the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice ruled that downloading films and music from illegal sources is to be forbidden effective immediately.

According to Dutch News, the European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that downloading films and music from illegal sources does not fall under Dutch home copying regulations and compensation schemes.

Until today, people in the Netherlands were allowed to download copyrighted material from illegal sources and to make private copies of content they own. Rightsholders were being compensated by a piracy levy that went into effect in January of 2013 on all writable media such as CDs, DVDs, hard drives, and other electronic devices including MP3 players and smartphones. Everyone who purchased a smartphone, tablet, set-top box or other device, paid a levy of up to €5 to cover the cost of home copying. Computer and laptop purchases were subject to a €5 charge and the price of a CD or DVD included a three cent levy.

Today the European High Court changed the status quo, stating in its ruling that “National legislation that makes no distinction between private copies made from lawful sources and those made from counterfeited or pirated sources cannot be tolerated.”

“This means that, as of today, downloading from an illegal source is no longer permitted,” said Ministry of Security and Justice Spokesman Wiebe Alkema. The ban is based on civil law, which means that Dutch law enforcement authorities won’t be in charge of enforcing it, he added. It will now be up to organizations like BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy foundation, to pursue cases of downloading from illegal sources by filing civil lawsuits.

In the past, BREIN had stated that they wouldn’t target individual downloaders. (A direct English translation is not available, the following is from using translation services) However, following this ruling today, BREIN director Tim Kuik confirmed in a press release that it’s now up to BREIN which fully intends to pursue illegal downloads on the Internet and the sites and services that make it their business to facilitate access to the illegal content. The press release also stated that there will be no more hiding behind the hypocritical argument that downloading illegal content is permitted.

In the judgment today, the court pointed out that “If Member States were free to adopt legislation permitting, inter alia, reproductions for private use to be made from an unlawful source, the result of that would clearly be detrimental to the proper functioning of the internal market.”

This ruling follows a lawsuit by some of the manufacturers of the devices who sued the Home Copyright Foundation over payment of the levies to the Dutch Home Copying Foundation, a member of SONT. They felt the levies should have been smaller, and that the financial compensation from the home copy levy did not offset the damage caused by illegal downloading.

Today's ruling is a major change for people in the Netherlands, and it leaves the door wide open now for BREIN to be in hot pursuit of downloaders. As for how this changes BREIN's upcoming Supreme Court case against The Pirate Bay, and other cases against ISPs in the Netherlands, that remains to be seen