copyright infringement?

[Steve]

I was downloading a video via Mozilla's download helperfrom a porn site and a pop up came about implicating me of copyright infringement,saying I have to pay a fine of 50000 pounds and I may have to spend 4-9 years in prison, it had my IP and location which I guess is not surprising. It gave me the option of paying 200 pounds now instead. I assumed this was a scam and closed it right away.
The problem is I am not sure and I can't stop thinking about it... the adress written on the url bar didn't look like a reputable one and didn't have like .gov ar anything resembling a company name.
The thing is I got scared and deleted my whole internet history without thinking. My question is - should I be worried, if it is an actual one will I get another notice before the time to pay the small fine is up?

[Matt]

Its just a scam. Pay it no mind.

[AFRO NINJA]

First of all, watching pornography is illegal in UK. Pop-ups happen and they can be legitimate and scary.
(Advice) Download Chrome, and download Ad block plus. It blocks most ads from Google to Youtube. Don't go on freakish websites which can potentially damage your computer. Trust me, i know a lot of people who's gotten big viruses on their computers.

[Natalie]

Install AdBlockPlus and Ghostery in Firefox. The pop-up is a scam, and a very good one. It even prevents you from closing the window. I've had it come up a few times and had to disable Javascript just to get the window to close.

It relies on threatening scary messages to convince you to pay money to scammers. Under UK law, streaming or downloading copyright material (porn or otherwise) isn't even a criminal offence - at most it's a civil offence that would be settled in a local magistrate court. And even then, the judgement would probably go in your favour.

Any pop-ups like that are just scare-mongering, hoping that you'll pay up for fear of having done something illegal. You haven't, so just ignore them. If you really had done something illegal, then you wouldn't hear about it from a pop-up. You'd have been notified in writing by a legal document from a court of law, or by the police.

There's a lot of fearmongering about copyright infringement these days, and scammers are jumping on the bandwagon. But basically, unless a couple of police officers turn up and your door with handcuffs at the ready, you haven't committed a crime. Anything else is just cheap tricks to get you to pay money to scammers.

[David Strange]

No you don't need to worry it was a scam to get you to give someone money or your credit card number. If you were actually in trouble for Copyright Infringement the government would send your ISP (Internet company) a letter telling them and they will contact you (E-mail/Phone/Mail) and you will have to deal with it that way. BTW there is about a 99.999% chance that you are not in any trouble whatsoever.

[Kaley]

That's really a scam! You don't need to pay for it.