Under what legal precedent can you declare that using a VPN for those purposes is illegal? I'm curious about actual cases, laws, and rulings. Is the claim that the DMCA anti-circumvention laws make it illegal? You do know that the DMCA is only a law in the US right? Which in general is the country people VPN _to_, not _from_?
By circumventing such restrictions, the user violates the terms of the license granted by the site, and is therefore committing copyright infringement, except in the countries where just downloading is permitted.