I lived in Germany for years, and this is absolutely the case. Don’t mess with torrents in Germany without a VPN.

Except for those Linux ISOs, of course.

I got C&D from Daedalic Entertainment. They demanded 1.1k or something along the lines. I was on welfare at the time, so a lawyer was not within my means,so I objected. I'm not sure what happened next because I probably didn't open the letter from the court (getting a manila envelope is fucking scary in addition to the stress of already being broke) but they seemed to have got a verdict against me and suddenly I owed over 2k. That being said I got a few letters from lawyers and replied with a legal note promising not to do it again (with any clause concerning automatic fines removed) and beat them by simply ignoring their demands afterwards. So it's entirely possible that I simply fucked myself with Daedalic by not opening their first letter and replying with a note. I haven't pirated in years but have gotten a VPN and will start back up because the fragmentation in the streaming space pisses me off too much especially since there's stuff I can't legally get here.