I am in Germany and want to know what practices to use when pirating.

Reputable VPN.

Strong anti-virus/anti-malware.

Common-sense when running cracks/keygens (are keygens still a thing?)

edit: a good backup plan, in case thongs go awry (yes, I see it. Yes, I'm leaving it.)

Got it, always back it up in thongs.
- Beep beep beep beep
Well I have been following those anyways:D

I personally ditched torrenting completly. Haven't touched a torrent in literal years.

Usenet is the way for me. Still using via Mullvad nonetheless.

@RandomLegend @therantechguy how can I try usenet?
- You can come over to https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/usenet_invites and post a [W] for any indexer (popular ones are DrunkenSlug)
  
  Otherwise if you want content in german language you can look up houseofusenet and see if you can register there.
- It costs money.
- It probably requires a subscription to a Usenet provider. ISPs used to provide this service in the states, but I haven't seen that in a long time. Search for USENET PROVIDER or NEWSGROUP PROVIDER to find a service.
  
  You'll need a service that has 'binary' groups. It will also need to provide access to specific groups that people use for games. There are many, many binary groups, and not all providers give you access to all the groups (for good reasons). Something with 'gamez' or 'warez' in the group title is a good start.
  
  You'll need newsreader software. I used Forte Agent back in the day. I'm sure there are better readers out there now. It should have NZB support, and PAR file support is important (you'll want to look up those terms to learn about them).
  
  Usenet is more complicated than torrenting, but I wouldn't bother with a VPN on Usenet. Since you'll have a login for access, a VPN wouldn't help. But in this case the law enforcement target would be the Usenet provider, not the users.
What are the advantages of usenet when it comes to your security? Given that you're using VPN anyway. But with usenet you also need to find a way to pay anonymously for it, otherwise what's the point?
- The point is that you can download stuff without uploading it at the same time.
  
  I don't have to share copyrighted material in order to download it. That's the big advantage.
Usenet is generally better for 0-day and recent releases, but it doesn't hold a candle to P2P when it comes to older stuff. What's the max retention you get with the most premium plan with reputable providers these days? I think it was 13 years last time I checked. But aside from that, it's almost always faster than P2P (unless you have a bad connection to the server from your location) and certainly more convenient in certain categories like movies and TV shows. I still use P2P for games, software, and music though.

Edit: Forgot we were talking primarily about security. Of course Usenet is better in that regard as well. The other replies explain why that's the case.
- Hm, so usenet might be a bad idea if I were looking for old RPG rulebooks and adventure collections for Das Schwarze Auge, for example? That's too bad, I had considered signing up just for that, as the selection on Anna's archive is most incomplete.
- I am with you here when it comes to older stuff
  
  I have the fortune to be of the "Lan-party" generation and still have a big group of people i know keep ageold games, movies, etc. So if i need something i can usually get it from them... then it's a matter of VPN into their network and use ftp.
  
  But usually i don't really look for old stuff. But thats a "me" thing. I know this will not work for everyone... also, yeah despite the retention being "only" 13 years, i do find stuff that got reupload quite usually.
  
  I am searching for very old audiobooks and i still find most of them on usenet despite some of them being well over 20 years old now.
  
  Speed is unfathomably fast though. I have a 1gbit/s connection at home and i can download with ~900 mbit/s through the VPN
Good advice, that I would definitely recommend in a place like Germany. But still: First rule of Usenet is to not talk about the Usenet. :D
Haven't touched Usenet since 2020 or so because it was cumbersome compared to torrenting, especially for software. Has it improved, or was I just on a bad indexer?
- Didn't try it for software, only Movies, Shows, Games, Audiobooks
  
  I am on houseofusenet and the "should not be named" partner indexer that allows API access for *arr Software. Also i have drunkenslug
  
  I rarely search for something manually, only games as there is no "gamearr" or something like that.

The one and only a absolutely necessary precaution is preventing your torrent client from accessing the internet when the VPN is not running.
This must be done by binding your torrent client to your VPN network interface. [1]
A "VPN Kill Switch" or similar is not enough to prevent your IP from leaking to law firms.

It's also a good idea to use a reputable VPN company like AirVPN, ProtonVPN or Njalla VPN.

I'm also german and I've been using torrents for years, so this definitely works well for me. A friend of mine's brother received an "Abmahnung" from a law firm, as well as a more distant person ended up paying around 1000€. I feel like almost any german somehow heard of people getting letters.

[1] https://protonvpn.com/support/bittorrent-vpn/

Look into I2P.
It's a network similar to TOR, but more suited for usecases like torrenting.
For anything you do on I2P, you can rest assured noone else can even in theory trace it back to you.
Go visit http://tracker2.postman.i2p for a large collection of public domain content.

The only issue is that there is also a lot of content available in german and english language which is not in the public domain, and due to the anonymous nature of I2P noone would be able to warn you of that. So take care you don't accidentally seed the content to others, keeping it online for even more people to commit the same mistake with noone the wiser.

Today i have a torrenting server. A headless ubuntu server with qbittorrent-nox tjat i acccess via a webbroswer. I have trouble setting up the same with i2p (haven't looked at it super much). I get torrenting over ipsnark on my PC to work but the headless webui i2p torrenting I don't get to work. Especially when I whant to surf i2p with the same router that I torrenting over. The goal is to have it in docker.

One more problem I always get is that I am always "firewalled" when I search some people say open ports in router and other say don't.
- I have that exact setup working. qbittorrent (and -nox) are a lot more involved to set up with I2P, but there is some material on how and once you get it running it works quite well at this point.
  
  I don't use docker for it, but that should work too. For browsing I use a maintained fork of proxy switchy omega, which allows to choose a proxy profile based on the url, making it easy to pipe i2p pages into the i2pd socks port (I use I2Pd not I2P, don't think it matters much). qbittorrent can be configured in the same way to statically use the the local (4447 on i2pd) port as a proxy to prevent any clearnet communication. In addition it needs the dedicated I2P host 127.0.0.1 and port 7656 (the sam bridge, giving deeper access to I2P).
  
  Don't expect to do anything on the clearnet over I2P, the exits are not good and it's not what I2P is meant for. For that reason don't set I2P up as something like a system proxy/vpn, instead pipe the specific programs you want using I2P into the proxy ports using their proxy settings.
  
  To get rid of the firewalled status in the I2P daemon, you will need to forward ports. Maybe you have seen advice for servers that are not behind a firewall and nat, so that effectively have all ports "forwarded" already. The mythical dedicated IPv4 address.
  In your case you need to pick the port your I2P daemon uses for host to host communication randomly, then forward both TCP and UDP for it on IPv4. Also make sure you even can forward ports, depending on region ISPs no longer hand out dedicated IPv4 even per router, so you might have to specifically ask your ISP for one (I had to). But that is all generic hosting, if you can set up a minecraft server you can make I2P have full connectivity.
How does this help OP? They are asking precisely because they are downloading games that aren't in the public domain.

The easy route: Rent a seedbox.

+1
Any providers you can recommend to compare prices?
- The market is very volatile.
  For example my plan is a grandfathered plan which is unmetered and allows public trackers.
  
  i'd suggest looking on r/seedboxes or similar subreddits as they have a very broad table of many providers.

You can test a torrent client in ipleak.net

How about not torrenting and use Usenet?

Also I am not paying 2 subscriptions to just get access to to pirated media
Ey I am pretty new to this