Really, I was just wondering if there were any examples of Americans being sentenced to decades in prison for copyright infringement. It sounds like the answer is no (?).

Also, I assume the multiple counts issue also applies to Germany and other countries, so the US penalties aren't necessarily that much worse. (Well, 10 years is much worse than 5 years, but it isn't decades worse.)

The German legal system does not simply do multiples. Assuming everything is judged together at a trial the process is roughly as follows: First it is checked whether everything was done in a single criminal act (which is defined pretty broadly)[1]. In that case, it is just one crime with one maximum. If not, the sentence is usually much less than the sum of single sentences would be (rule of thumb is "offense with maximal punishment + 1/2 sum of the rest" but can be even less). Everything is capped at 15 years unless there was a crime demanding lifelong imprisonment.

If there are seperate trials (even for totally seperate crimes), the sentences are also combined as per above at the later trial (unless the former sentence was already executed).

As far as I know this is not unusual worldwide. Certainly other European countries use a similar system.

[1]: Wikipedia tells me that the US system doesn't ask that question at all. I know absolutely nothing about copyright cases in particular but e.g. starting a filesharing client that distributes many files to many people is still a single criminal act in Germany (civil law is different of course).