oops... but then I'm in canada and i've literally never heard of anyone getting even the most measly fine for it. Because "downloading" is not illegal here, only seeding is. We can all be mooches and ignore infringement notices because they hold no real legal power (or so do the rumours say, I'm no lawyer). Germany is a terrible place to torrent tho - I've had people I was couchsurfing at warn us not to torrent because we're on their wifi and they would be responsible for the fines. And everyone has a story about a friend of a friend getting a slap on the wrist for watching game of thrones illegally or some shit.2) If you're still torrenting on public trackers you're a moron.
I knew a guy high enough up at Warner Brothers to have a 1-letter email address. He relayed to me once how he had personally taken down Akamai for a day by using a low-cost alternative to host Moesha. He relayed to me that the safest place in the world to torrent was Time Warner Cable in Los Angeles because they never responded to a single IP request. Not because they were big on digital freedom but because they were so hopelessly disorganized that they had no actual way to determine who was on what IP address at any point other than "now."