Recently, my wife and I had a shouting match over piracy which went nowhere other than making me realize I couldn't back up my positions on anything other than the higher-level ethics stuff.

The argument went something like this:

Wife: piracy is federal crime, federal crimes mean federal prison, i don't want you going to federal prison

Me: thats not how that works

Wife: how do you know? What if they got a court order against you and you had to supply all your files to them

Me: incoherent monkey tantrum noises

To clarify, she is fine with piracy, she just is scared of me getting caught. And my position was "nuh uh!"

My understanding is that the biggest point of risk (of actual legal consequences, specifically) is when you are the one propagating files (because the feds will go after uploaders when able) and when using public torrents (if i forget to use a VPN, dmca snitches might send a "stop pirating" notice to my landlord who owns the router our internet goes through). Not 100% percent sure why these are the risky things, though, and I'm not sure if there's other things i need to be on my toes about.

The argument i have more trouble with figuring out how to answer is the question of "what if the feds change their strategy for some reason and start playing whack-a-mole with individual pirates like me?" What do I do to future-proof myself? Is just using a VPN across all my devices enough?