I once arrived in Germany, opened my laptop with a bittorrent client seeding some movie torrents, took me 5 minutes to realise and close it. 2 days later got a 800 euros fine in the mail, for one movie. A friend of mine got less lucky and got a hefty 20000 euros fine for multiple torrents. There are horror stories of Airbnb hosts getting fined hundreds of thousands for the torrenting of their guests.
I have since downloaded torrents in Germany, but not before being sure that my VPN setup immediately closes the internet connection if the VPN one drops. Private trackers should be fine.
I agree. It's a whole business, and of course everything is automated. They hire companies overseas that monitor the most popular torrents, and when they see a German IP a letter is sent to the "offender" address.