[Bender]

Instead of backward I would say it's looking in from a different window. Both your dilemma and the one I described can both be true. I am not suggesting to not use a VPN but rather load-balance and cycle through a mesh of user-provided VPN's that do not have a money trail so that neither your local ISP nor a big juicy centralized provider have your data.

As for disclosure of people being busted I would expect gag orders, the violation and prosecution of which can in some cases be worse than whatever the crime may have been. In the USA judges can hold people for contempt.

[random307]

Yes that's pretty much it. You sign to not talk about it, and the obligatory no pirating ever again clause.