You can currently download any copyright work from any pirate site and be free of all consequences, and this has always been so.
You just can't upload, since that counts as distribution, triggering civil and criminal penalties written in an age before the Internet when only shady commercial operators would distribute unlicensed copyrighted works.
You just can't upload, since that counts as distribution, triggering civil and criminal penalties written in an age before the Internet when only shady commercial operators would distribute unlicensed copyrighted works.