People definitely search for awful stuff, but that doesn’t mean that such stuff is the only thing shared on DC++. It is films and music that draws so many people to DC++.

20 years ago, DC++ was the best place to get full anime seasons with fan subs. Nowadays, nearly everything is on Hulu, or crunchyroll, or illegitimate streaming sites.

DC++ is still useful if you want full Blu-ray images of films. Most other public pirate channels are sharing only downsampled or remuxed films.

I'm just wondering if some of this could be automated scans (possibly by law enforcement?)

Even without the CP. Three decades ago, on the campus network when I was studying for my undergraduate degree, I fired up etherman (or something like it, it's been a loooong time). It helpfully parsed out the HTTP URLs for me, and I clicked on a few out of curiousity.

I turned that sniffer off soon after, and never ever looked again. Even the (likely) legal things people were looking for were hard to unsee.