I totally agree, that's how it should be. In reality right now there are countries in which you get cease and desist letters and a ~800 Euro fine for even a short amount of seeding. This is a cool technology but also allows more automation in this shady industry and laws will take years and years to follow up.

clicking a link wouldn't count, I mean, what link? oh, now you are seeding too?

Along those lines, Comcast/Xfinity for example has a defaultish setting on their routers to leave an open guest network available. If I connect to my neighbors guest network and download game of thrones, will my neighbor get the nastygram, or is it smart enough to know it is a guest network? Should I connect to my own guest network (not that I have it enabled) if I want to do illegal things?

The xfinitywifi network requires you log your device into a Comcast account. It's not strictly a "guest network" for arbitrary devices, it's more of a roaming access to your own account.

Pretty sure they can nail you even harder for piracy on this than on your own network where it might be someone else's device.

Not only does it require login, but it is not like they are giving you full bandwidth. Good luck to anyone trying to do a lot of high-bandwidth downloads over an Xfinity guest network.

Every one I've ever connected to gave you free access for a new account for some limited period of time. But that was like 5+ years ago so maybe they've changed it.

Usually, these CPE guest networks have their traffic routed via an IP different from the main customer one, and have their own bandwidth/QoS class as well.

Intent isn’t always nessesary for a conviction. Child porn comes instantly to mind.

Intent is a necessary element for that charge, at least on the US Federal level. But in any case, completely accidental possession is a defense, meaning, if you have something in your possession without even knowing that it's in your possession, that can be presented as a defense to charges. That would likely be the same when it comes to being an unwitting distributor of copyrighted material via a stealth torrent. Similarly we don't prosecute individuals whose computers are infected with viruses that propagate (and thus illegally access and trespass onto other systems) without the person's knowledge.

In theory, sure. But I’ve read enough horror stories. The reputational damage of even being charged is immense.

Do countries other than Germany also have dedicated, famous [1] legal agencies sending out cease and desist letters and suing for damages (~900€) as soon as you accidentally seed a compromised torrent for even a few seconds?

[1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frommer_Legal

In Sweden that happened for a year, then it stopped. Just refuse to pay abd deny all.

In the US the ESA RIAA and MPA hire out several different third parties (some of which they have very close ties with) to do that kind of work on their behalf. They include companies like Rightscorp, Vobile, OpSec, or PML Process Management

Mostly they just threaten people with lawsuits in order to get settlement money from folks who may even be fully innocent, but who cannot afford to fight against an international media empire in court. Lawsuits against random users are less common than they were, but still happen. The bigger issue is that the media industry has been pressuring ISPs to permanently disconnect users after nothing more than repeated unproven accusations of copyright infringement.

ISPs who fail to close these accounts risk being fined billions of dollars, so anyone in the US who has been getting DMCA notices from their ISP should take steps to prevent that or else they're risking getting disconnected which is a problem for those without many options for high speed internet access.

Permanently cutting people off from the internet over nothing but accusations seems very extreme, but the media industry has already taken several ISPs to court for not doing it and so far they are winning.

That's why for a decade already the law around here punishes you not so much for seeding, but specifically for failing to secure your Internet connection to prevent seeding (regardless of who actually seeded).