Only German lawyers are disgusting enough to go after seeders and downloaders who never intend to distribute "illegally" downloaded content. Sometimes they themselves seed torrents and monitor who else is seeding or leeching. If they happen to not use VPNs or proxy, and based in Germany, they get a legal notice from them.

Nobody ever went to jail doing this. Some paid hefty fines, though.

But a friend said that you can send them a counter notice where they have to prove that it was you at that time at that computer downloading or uploading. After doing this, someone he knows never heard back from these absolute parasites of the society.

(I am not a lawyer, and this should not be taken as legal advice.)

Its a rite of passage in Germany to get a "Waldorf & Frommer" letter. I plastered mine on the wall and use it as target practice.

https://kanzlei-bennek.de/en/waldorf-frommer-warning/

Ignore these people and never reply.

What I did was to ignore the initial letter, and nothing happened. Over the years I’ve found that not engaging is usually the best defense.

Downloading isn't really a gray zone, even though some of the content industry would like to paint it as such.

But uploading content is ? hm? even when hatespeech may be seen as an expression of speech, the: "'190 visitors'(-rule)", 'viewed the content' -so it became a threat or worth to be 'investigated' is still such a thing (painting it as such) ?!