I think you're still missing the finer point. Depending on the punishment (which under an authoritarian regime can be torture in prison or being summarily executed or dissapeared), even a semi-effective block can have a completely chilling effect.

Whether you can or cannot circumvent the block and get your hands on Taylor Swift's latest album will be the last thing on anybody's mind. Whether the fascists lie about the efficacy of the block will be irrelevant. They can point at a completely random person and have them shot and say it was because of "piracy". But you can substitute any word there and it will work the same.

This isn't a technical problem, it's a social and political problem.