https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/pirating-streaming-movies-in-germany
I didn’t know how Germans pirated and how they got caught, so I tried to do some research and found the article above, which is quite nice.
To summarize, your IP is visible to your ISP (internet service provider) and a law company can basically send a legal letter asking your ISP to identify you and you will be identified and your address and details will be given to the Lawyers. Now, you can either pay up or hire a lawyer and pay a lesser amount.
Now, the solution the article provided was, just use a VPN bro. But yes, VPNs can fail and not all VPNs allow you to torrent. So, how do these Germans pirate and not get caught?
PS: I obviously don’t condone pirate, asking for a friend who is an author.
OCHs were way more common in Germany than in other countries. Biggest boards like boerse and gulli used only OCHs. My guess is its because of those laws that torrenting was risky. But the truth is that for one pirate who used vpns, torrents and OCHs, there probably are a hundred people using streaming sites.
If you are interested in the German piracy history, there is a book anout the gulli board: http://gulliwars.com/