Technically it can be legal, in germany, to get a copy of something copyrighted from the web. "Stichwort Sicheheitskopie" ( keyword backup copy ), the point when things start to get nasty is when you infringe copyright by making things available for downloading. If you use a torrent, you are always sharing data with others, and if this just inside the ram of your machine, there are cases on court where some dudes sentenced to a fine for just such a thing.
The next thing was pointed out by Ocean to me in a dm.:
Some copyright owners may be a little more relaxed about their products being pirated, but that quickly comes to an end when the owner realises that money is being made from the pirated product by a third party. It can be as quick as you look that you get sued to hell and back.
Quite right, Mortarion! Sicherheitskopie is the key word, esp. for stuff you own in the first place. It is even something of a right to make a backup copy of something you own, which is why DRM, the type of which makes a backup impossible, is not quite legal too.
But it is, as you say, the download of copyrighted stuff via torrent where things get "interesting" and why you should never touch torrents at all in Germany and a couple other nations with similar laws.
And your (and Ocean´s) comment on how relaxed the copyright owners are is spot on. For instance, the makers of DAZ must be aware how "liberated" their not free products are. AFAIK there is no wave of DAZ sueing every Joe/Jane Average who uses pirated DAZ assets for making his/her fanart of game xyz or art for themselves.
But we can be very sure that you will get a decidedly not nice court date with them, if you use pirated assets to make a profit.
