To be clear, this is just a joke, and I don't look down on direct downloading. It absolutely has its place, and sometimes I do it myself if it's just faster to download a file directly. Torrenting is just so much more convenient, though, especially when using Jackett's manual search.
It's also Germany where torrenting without VPN is not possible. There's one single law firm that has contracts with most big IP holders. They look up IP's on public trackers and sent an "Unterlassungserklärung" to the name and adress of the person paying the ISP. ISP's having to give out names to IP's without a court order is the problem here.
Ouch, sorry to hear that. Anyone know if that's the same with other EU member states?
Not nearly. The Czech Republic is largely a free haven. We don't have good public trackers, though.
Use private trackers then