Here in Germany, it is almost impossible to pirate for free. If you download shows via BitTorrent you almost immediately get a fine ("Abmahnung"). There are some illegal streaming sites, but quality and reliability is poor in my experience.
But you can get a subscription to a VPN for about the same price as a Netflix subscription (~10€/month), that will allow you to torrent without worring about getting caught. Strangely, they manage to have an exit node in Frankfurt, and take credit card, although it is clear that they are frequently used for pirating. Alternatively, for a similar price you can get a premium "sharehoster" account, and then download all the shows using JDownloader.
I am firmly convinced that this is at least tolerated, if not even condoned by the film industry. The goal is to make pirating a bit inconvenient, and about as expensive as legal streaming. It is like a pressure valve. If it weren't for this "good enough" system, people would be motivated to build a P2P "Pirates' Netflix" (maybe with a friend-of-a-friend architecture, like RetroShare, where the lawers cannot get your IP). And that would really be a problem for the IP holders.
Torrents have been out of favor for a while. The pros are using Usenet subscriptions and a Usenet indexer (search engine) combined with Plex and automated tools such as NZBGet and Sonarr.
I doubt the Usenet subscription would trigger any fines. This isn’t like torrents where some seeder could be giving IPs to whoever sends you the Abmahnung fines.
Have they? Because it seems to me from my sample size of friends (say 20) that torrent+VPN is definitely the preferred method, way over usenet.
Usenet seems to be for people who are trying to download EVERYTHING (like OP was originally complaining about) instead of just watch movies occasionally.
Actual pros are just doing it for free with the same setup but added Prowlarr/Jackett and private trackers, so it's all free without having to pay for usenet. The issue then becomes getting access to the tracker, but it's not that hard, especially for general purpose ones.
But you can get a subscription to a VPN for about the same price as a Netflix subscription (~10€/month), that will allow you to torrent without worring about getting caught. Strangely, they manage to have an exit node in Frankfurt, and take credit card, although it is clear that they are frequently used for pirating. Alternatively, for a similar price you can get a premium "sharehoster" account, and then download all the shows using JDownloader.
I am firmly convinced that this is at least tolerated, if not even condoned by the film industry. The goal is to make pirating a bit inconvenient, and about as expensive as legal streaming. It is like a pressure valve. If it weren't for this "good enough" system, people would be motivated to build a P2P "Pirates' Netflix" (maybe with a friend-of-a-friend architecture, like RetroShare, where the lawers cannot get your IP). And that would really be a problem for the IP holders.