Well, the Netherlands had a problematic court case some time back, and this fixes it. Well, if you're a copyright owner it was problematic.
You see copyright law technically doesn't restrict illegal downloading. It only limits distribution, and technically that means uploading, not downloading. So there was a series of court cases that said as much [1].
So now that case has been invalidated, and downloading material without a licence is now judged illegal in the Netherlands (like everywhere else).
One caveat that this case has for copyright holders is that it was judged to be a civil offence, not a criminal one. So illegal downloading cannot use police resources, and the copyright owner must sue (or appoint someone to sue on their behalf) before any action can be taken by the courts. Such action can only include financial sanctions [2], no jail time or impounding.
[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/113968/article.html
[2] keep in mind that not paying a court-ordered restitution IS a criminal offence. So turning a civil offence into a criminal one is possible. It has historically not been done (meaning in the last century, before that it was actually common).
To my knowledge in Germany and the entire USA only uploading is illegal, not downloading. Because of this only people who use file-sharing software like bittorrent or similar get sued.
Acting against the downloading itself is a whole new ballgame.
This was about people residing in the country illegally. Everyone understands the headline immediately, but it's still pretty ridiculous.